you you you you're going to be judge isn't like i'm not qualified who cares that's kind of the point you know the whole thing is the democratization of poetry to bring it back to the people not of the hands of the intellectuals that we love intellectuals who know they should be critiquing everything right so but because a for time and be for pragmatism sake instead of doing the five randomly chosen audience members we're going to have only three judges tonight and they're going to be three of our features for the evening so you are in the hands of experts in a way normally have five judges the high score is dropped and a low score is dropped and the three middle schoolers are added together and that creates your score so you're just as you could possibly have a zero point zero and the highest you could possibly get is a thirty because each minute of every individual poet poem is going to be scored from zero to ten i was with a decimal point because you know poets aren't too good at counting sometimes so point zero zero two wouldn't really really work for us slam works like this i'm going to draw the order the poets are going to come up one by one as i introduce them we're going to perform a poem poets pay attention if you're competing tonight we've got ten poets competing tonight each poet gets three minutes with a ten second grace period that's three minutes and ten seconds to perform one poem of their own construction they may not use props costumes or musical accompaniment so it's you and you alone props things like that like so if you have a piece about your keys and you go mckeith that's a prop boom you're done you're disqualified if it in your poem could be thirty seconds long if you really want to but you know you can get up much and the last in the first round will be r score they know what's going on the judges know first and foremost not to be influenced by the audience audience influence the judges that's your job all the noise you make is going to tell them what you think also you let the judges know what they're doing scoring wise like if they're doing a good job so let's say you see this fantastic poem and the judges give it a really really low score what are you going to  mediocre poem and gets a really mediocre score you just kind of peer animal noises and farm noises and ok so yeah all right do you know we have an order down ok now normally we would have a sacrificial poet a poet come up and perform one piece to kind of break in the judge and everything but they are they're already broken and they know how we're doing and cari was our warm up so we're going to jump right in the slam he already or scars he stares at the war scars on his arm the spots where the knife slay him but did don't harm because he remembers feeling more pain from bruises on the body belted by adults with anger issues who are loved by nobody and as they trip on their own egos and hit heart and he always feels miserable like he just can't start and why won't you hate him and cause him to bleed concentrate on something else but he knows it'll never be because he's still got memory of choke marks of slash wrists of tortured mother and as the imprint they leave behind these war scars the kind often missed let me stop for a moment and tell you what i used to know you were my universe and you were my flow but then that river ran straight towards a black hole so i banned the raft and learned a craft butterfly kick till i had no kicks left then i was left standing on this rocky shore unsure of what direction to take or how to begin to cure what ails me or this emptiness inside filling it with many ways to alter the mind never curing the war scars only killing some time always on the lookout for another river to grind but now i've gone blind and i don't know which way to go i've got my ear the ground and i'm listening for that flow no sound anywhere no escaping from this whole darkness all around till the day i grow don't you know these are my war us now the key to the speed and goodness of a slam is me not spending much time up here so the judges know what they're doing as soon as i get up here they're going to be like this what score is number say joe just please hold him up yeah and it there we go all right and i always  now my time scoring guy is going to add those three numbers up as quickly as he possibly can and then he's going to call out the total for that particular po poets in the first round they're going to cut it down to you know a number of posts in second and then cut it down again for just a couple few in the last round recency based on time but let's keep things rolling put your hands get a for our next in fact is quite scary tunneling through it's fucking tough i've had pleasure and comfort but had enough only concealers to the actual reality very much of the brutality locked into three four or more spaces separated by whom self imposed unconnected will with a dull down point of observation a nation united in fear and hate in fact it is quite scary watching reflection of ourselves more into guess is correct zombie children this will in fact our little ones more so than we have been all to make conditioning steering towards the edge of the cliff train full speed ahead all aboard is so swift pardon me for searching to be free from the abstract love clung to hate psychosis at least that's how film and stories portray it number one solution number one question today listening very close well aid your recovery and the sirens you will hear saying awake you've been dreaming hands over ears must be removed turn around start running backwards and tell you find the fence climbing over it takes a cell wish sober shoulder no dollars spent as you climb with all your will sweating and pulling upwards sick and men and women children try and stone you and then some will stand back and get stoned and laugh and look at you say i wish i was a kid throwing rocks twigs anything to bring you back to their silent hill where we all still ponder on who created shaking off all these blood soaked viruses breaking the unseen ties old fashioned barbed wire tripping over past pain new ones also sever your grip the top of this fence is sure to break skin rip in fact is quite scary some emotions now when it is heard will stop so much that you could tear up tell drowning get back up little boy and girl our world needs you more than ever our world needs you and that fleshy massive beating heart i bring words of pain and show this door with love it's fucking scary out there once you step through unraveling all the things like to hide you find new once it's started no turning back keep on to press forward greener grass brighter night bring your flashlight have your brain beside beating heart  listen feel and speak out on the end of the star i have seen suicide with a shrug of the shoulder a man dons a dress and waves his handkerchief but the oncoming train suicide was sexy but it went out of style it ended in the ninety's with a bang gay teens have always been a retro don't let go don't let go pick up the phone and dial one eight hundred s u i's c id easy if you forget the number just remember how your dad he died in jonestown they decided to be a suicide it is a way to come closer to god maybe that wasn't so odd maybe christ was a suicide my friend from the cub scouts blew his brains out afterwards he came to me in a dream he said sandor and thought you killed yourself i said i thought you killed yourself it's like gotcha a little extreme for april fools but i didn't see it come and i didn't see it come and in that easy way he'd say one day i'm going to kill myself so tell me dead poets what does it mean was that decision despair or disease did and take notes from sylvia to find the best air to breathe i'm not suicidal but i know how i do it i jump out of an airplane into the blades of a helicopter be splattered into a volcano exploded my ashes will fall in the bowl of a hookah my friends will all smoke me and talk to me on the to find out if my sins been forgiven to find out if my sin was a sin to begin their this is a big money slam by the way judges i've got an eight point around the country around the world they have different words i mean i've been i've competed in slams where i've travelled cross country to compete and i want to pen i'm not getting or candy bar things like that and then there are you know where you can win ten twenty thousand dollars typically  whose eyes sun dance on the rise in a book pages we dumb through knowledge and sculpt ourselves in the cracked lens of lives of literature baptised and comic books life be sexy nerd sexy lead through ocean huge skies with cocaine colored clouds and switch blades of grass and my cousin skin more dark night than bet man in my smile more friendly than your neighborhood spider man we would have breakfast of champions the quipped with saturday morning cartoons ran  the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up luckily for you nerd there's still a lot of growing up to do s i've got an eight point four i've got to now on guard what does it look like he'll how about a sword no need you might be thinking emily that is clearly a microphone but i see things just a little bit differently you see this is a weapon when used correctly a sword a nine millimeter a verbal guillotine slicing into your mind with carefully articulated uncertainties a newsday or close mindedness on and alert you to a whole new world of possibilities they can try to take my guns but my freedom of speech is still with me unless they cut out my tongue which they can't do as easily or in conspicuously words are powerful and wielded correctly can bring life or death soothe you or hit you like a bullet in the chest true today is comparable to taking all the ideas and theories of religions you like throwing them in a blender and hoping you're right because easier to digest a smoothie of lies than to gulp down the hard truths of life we're not always going to understand why things play out the way they do but that doesn't mean we get to dictate what's truth it also doesn't mean we should passively stay silent in the presence of lies how people know truth if they never see it if you never hear it how do you believe it how do you adopt truth if the child you've never met a child abandoned by or society given pitied passing glances at best the child of truth is crying in the streets and we ignore the child for fears of offending this also applies to me a gun left on fire a sword left in that sheet are both in effect of like secret beliefs we need to choose our words we need to speak but ladies and gentlemen of the jury i'm also not saying just keep your lips flapping because the words are just words it's not backed up by action thank you have a six point three i've got an eight and eight point six  and keep making no blame as doc decreed and all the old macdonald has a farm don't try convincing him that rooster he has is merely a bird because his belief is based on faith and unsound religion with no foundation he knows about the civilizations common sense a period of time a period in space within a period entire unrestricted universe pressurized compressed the true trick lies not in the fairy tale others tell but in the we the mighty predator tearing into one another for pleasure or for gain as surely as dinosaurs turned into birds old macdonald we came from crocodile when the rooster crows  my minnesota with fraternal but not identical cities with to determine senators with one thousand languages when the wind stops my minnesota right  soup with a girl whose tree traces back to finland further back to mongolia and russia the recipe from a korean adoptee from her cambodian husband from  his mother in law my minnesota where i learned to butcher of french arabic song for a man whose parents left taran who songs with a british accent whose voice untangles five tongues by minnesota where i take middle east literature from an east asian woman with a man marked half african american motherless german by passport proficient in all things joy and english who always had readers in the cupboard my minnesota who gives me cuisine from every country of sports bar for a real a can pond sometimes the aroma of ninety nine cent sandwiches during lent sometimes bar manager left to serve the country in iraq where the spanish speaking chef crafted musical soup and by minnesota with your italian restaurants with the chuckles of aki and waitresses after class every year how i cursed your irish looking for parking in st paul with your underpriced all these and your overpriced co ops where i can't distinguish from my bitterness for your redundant stop mill road and my fondness for the locals who stop at it every time my minnesota an exchange for multiplication and division packets you gave me an a for ninth grade algebra summer school but you inspire the landscape with colleges and universities you reimburse with infinite museums and cultural centers here theatres charm me back optimism my minnesota rich with labor movement history poor with being fraying where farmers and city full carved niches along the mississippi where the churches and temples share the same sheet of concrete or thirty below wind chills send me into the arms of warm tunes my minnesota with your bipolar seasons how each in you main winter you i got an eight point four i got a nine point three zero and the first one of the night other getting her scorn a second but let me explain what happens next like i said this is around poetry slam which means poets if you progress to the next round you have to perform again better have something if you don't it's a twenty seven point seven for a all right so this is going to be a cumulative slam what that means is we are now going to go in reverse order from back to front of everyone from you know one to ten now we're going to go ten to one  we're doing a cut in this one now granted to people decided not to perform so that cuts to right there so we're going to cut to fargo from ten to five poets in the second round the five highest scoring poets of this round move on and then   sometime without beers and without i will ask my mother's mother's middle name i will also ask my other mother's mother's first name and will both my mother's father still be at war and which of my lovers fathers mothers will they be staying in that time well both my nameless father's father still be drinking sampling each between stoic silences passed from the scars of cannons intoxicated belts on boys in between and fertile cornfields or the aftershocks passed from charred rice fields from broken husband to breaking wife from imperialist soldiers because even after the fire for ever i am all my mother's and all my father's unfinished dreams when i step out of the skin and trade water for wind will the nature of buddhists confucius and strawman's greet me first or the nurture of catholics protestants the amalgamated native americans claim me and is the culprit for my temper birthed from the stubborn korean son or passed down from the hand of the sometimes austrian but usually german valley's is my passive aggressive nature re gift from the norwegian and finnish jewels from korean hierarchy and etiquettes that resisted japanese cleansing to a small following in the third the father's footsteps of the french revolution or is there a cellular affinity to  hold both koreas on one back but my father's father's will still be fighting in my mother's mother's still mending pieces of battlefields collecting emotions the men couldn't afford to carry and then one by one i will find all their fathers fathers and all their mothers mothers tracing the land of the morning calm digging up graves in the land of the rising sun trying to unravel the past present some prisoners from the land of the free in cloud in this time secret stories of which crusade and which in this time from all those last centuries that led to now without a reflected image an evening light to reveal who's the winner you know first second third place watched as my mother was being great as the man held a cold steel gun to my head was it as i came home from school in fear the only white child in an all black neighborhood who had no idea of the culture or the city or the place which i had been brought to was i a partaker of white privilege when i was thrust into prison for be ignorant of the law was married to a black man and her distorted view was pushed on to me i got one more painting in the front like that lobby were you just come into the theater here there's one that's on an easel off the side that was called the storm catcher yeah thank you very much that these these the originals the original paintings are like nothing right now put your hands together again hotline at fifteen tell them to do it tomorrow then listen to the downbeat a broken breath as they realize that tomorrow is a reality for they'll make sure they know you care now because you are checks because you know the deep cold tendency of feeling invisible within the phantom embrace of your family's warm arms arm yourself with the wisdom of experience meaning read meaning read more meaning study meaning experience life and the beauty of breeding let them know that they are beautiful despite the scars carving have a good mix into upturned limp wrists decipher the design and one glance and know they misspelled love for themself on their self speak with the precision of a bomb specialist when trick wire for your words tight rope over a bed of swords surgeon with a scalpel is what you are you gypsy you knife juggler allow your voice to be as steady as a stick a kid holden hammer holding the hammer when you pull the trigger of knives stuck in a crevice of their backs no they perform the mental acrobatics as a safety mechanism to trick themselves into believing that of life isn't important and that you are dehumanised the concept of death you don't know that you are black in fifteen and a pound full of years into high school and that your uncle at thirty seven blew out the back of his head into him to a mere a wedding ring insecurities against a backdrop of granites as if god finger painted forgive me in the suicide note of his listen to their stories as if they were a miracle because they are a miracle like the courage they conjured with quivering fingers down in this number into the silence of the receiver when they answer when you answer to convince them to die thoroughly impressed across the board here i've got an eight point two a nine point three and nine point three when i say i'm impressed because i've been doing this a long time and i've been to lots not to slams and maybe i just wasn't there that night but i had not one of the poets who are competing tonight i've never seen them in any stage before the slam stage or anything so it's not like they're really well  the goose wonders where her head is gone and why her blood is dripping up chris tells me he doesn't like showers because the first blast of cold nails into the stall to tell them to adjust the temperature before stepping into the stream now his hair is cleaner than it's ever being i put my wallet away before collecting my change but my wallet away before changes made the goose has never seen a room so small and can't remember if there was ever a christmas so hot  fly flies into the belly of a bull frog saying hey you eat me chris his eyes glazed like he'd be gay for me if there were no women he thinks can you read my thoughts i think i think so can you read my thoughts he thinks i think so his chin glistens with goose juice and the goose wonders where the goose has gone of the second round is once again put  scores or if she makes it to the next round i swear to governor here's something from the ocean what was the first to get dolphins than giraffes birds six point five i've got an eight point three and an this next round is going to quick it's going to be a flash what my guy's going to do right now is he's adding up all the scores and everything and he's in a take the scores from the top three three score cumulative scores and then we're going push on from there our wonderful feature battle but he's going to pass the mantle of judging on to buckley be funny all right while he's talking up the scores i'm going to tell you about the local poetry tuesday doors open at seven slam starts at eight i believe it's a five dollars cover charge there for the competition free if you compete and competition is open to anyone and it is all ages a maybe seven now is kind of going up worldwide as slam becomes more and more popular from that the st paul poetry slam happens on the first monday of every month the first monday at the artist's quarter right here in downtown st paul as part of jazz club doors open at seven slam starts at eight seven dollars cover charge free if you compete it is twenty one i'm sorry eighteen plus for that was not all ages eighteen plus and you can get information about that at soap hyphen boxing dot com so boxing jennifer write down time all right we've got three poets going up in the last round she's determining the order by random draw and just hand me something anything first in the last round is going to be r i like her home if i should have a daughter i will tell her she doesn't have to trade as your song of her voice for chicken legs to marry the pompous prince on land i'll tell her she doesn't have to tame a hairy beast with buck teeth tantrums and fists of fury to find a gentleman i will tell her no matter how many times she gets down on her hands and knees for anastasia and her stepmother it will never be good enough for narcissus so save yourself some cartilage and learn from those mistakes no no in from marshall product glassed windows marble tiles will be enough for a god falls in love with his or her entitled delusions so skip daisies get pleasure skip candle a recipes sticks and stones saris self blame skip thinking it's about how you let the bristles touch the ground at a forty five degree angle or how you didn't fold the regs and origami and place them two inches from the wall and one millimeter from the door i will tell her she can wear seashells as a bra if she chooses and have squirrels my jellyfish seahorses even tea pots as friends but she must have a support system beyond the seven dwarves who are trying to get down her pants i will tell her that some women have lived richer lives marrying a magical dwarf instead of the prince i will tell her she can keep the king up all night telling stories to stay alive because even men who are captive of their own addictions can fall in love with a good story that never ends i if i should have a daughter i will tell her there are two identical white mushrooms one will take your life like an invisible spell first consuming your intestines and swallowing your broncos  mouth your main to grow i will tell or a snake's venom can kill you long after it's done breathing that some butterflies can smell each other three miles away that nymphs locusts in a single summer can devour rings an oak tree is trunk that weathered hundreds of visit beehives with a skull and crossbones in their keep while hoarding honey every double shift and the worker bees are charmed by his sneaky squeaky sounds that may as well be their queen i will tell her that some salmon do make it upstream against gravitational currents to mate and go home that i'm old grows on trees and releases spores i grow inside ants had controlling his brain to walk into a sticky death trap the parasite from cow dung finds its way inside an answer that slee walks every evening to the tip top blade of a grass to be eaten in a pasture reincarnated back into the cow's digestive system so groundhog day can repeat itself that our bones have unique cells called which means cell births and they rebuild broken limbs if i should have a daughter i will tell her that the sparkling glitter of helium and hydrogen be dazzling the night sky is the same as in our haemoglobin i will tell her that with my heart and i love her no matter what and our love is to stand by valves as thin as tissue paper that pump seven thousand liters of stars each sunrise so with our blood in star manner we will always have the strength and sonnets to make our own fairy tales come  pov sort of how they can like john coltrane calling the saxophone we climb back cool in this chair like miles davis he commanded conversations in a crowd of chocolate skin peers peering but across i gaze at the cats whose voices cat called scales of jazz soul see i like to hang around words and overhear them talking to one another so as a child sitting on the side of my eyes my ears east drop in on their conversations i always wondered why i was so transfixed with the curve of the lips the respect of the earn the three performers who are performing in this last round don't leave stick around after the so if you want to get your money you got to be here and give it to you ok well we got there that's a twenty  together for th but pridefully the lamb declined you must be a last that has and i for last said pan not to be a jilted man i like men but you're an ass said the lamb and turned so pan could see her can must you taught me with the glorious he p go cried at the scornful sheep just go away a little bit in this creeping into the forest she she played leaped too hot to trot lee followed through shallow brambles and yellow land thinking of the things he'd have her swallow and of blood cross through his eyes manhood raged in all his pride towards the nymph who sat between his thighs what is your business with my niece said aries says he aimed his horns i wish to admire her soft whit fleece pant said thinking she would look quite nice and porn the parts of pan that were go would go chase spawn girls by a moat but the parts a pan that were a man bade him wait and form a plan that night when arius mounted on his bride through the forest the seder sneaked and deftly he jumped in for the ride when arius rose to take a leak the lamb kept on her bonaire you'll bleat for she was nearly satisfied but pan felt no sweet friction on his meat arie's had spread her thighs too  also women i'm very happy we had several ladies on the station night ladies you have a