underground held a slam poetry contest.
they drew me from the crowd,
"wanna be the judge? hold your score cards,
the poets would soon get here."

I was sitting on one of those chairs,
front row, facing the competitors.
oh how young they were, glasses and what not,
distressed jeans, leather boots,
some had strange bracelets and weird tattoos.
and some looked just like me,
eager for a show of the best of arts.

"this is exciting" "no ****. a friend brought me here,
never been to a slam show."
that guy next to me was even more excited than I,
he frantically slipped through his stack of cards, asking me,
"how picky are you? you like poetry? how do you decide on a ten?"
I said, "a ten is one that makes me **** my pants",
to which he shut up.

slam
the performance of the words, the rhythm, the rhymes,
metaphors and the like were dropped like fire,
I tried to catch them but a few I missed.
didn't need to make sense,
for they were so good.
I just sat there and kept drawing my ten's.
I could hear the guy next to me mumbling,
"now that starts to smell real bad."
I gracefully turned to him and said, "thank you."

have you been to a slam poetry contest?
it is like a festival of *******, except
you could only use your mouth, and some
body gestures perhaps. it became good,
when one poet started to create illusions and reality
with a story about one guy waking up constantly
like me, who kept running into the vicious circle
of daily mundanes and forgettable details.
to listen and watch him was to see poetry at its rawest best
posing itself ****.

underground poets, here I came to give you
my stack of ten's. for you have created
such lively, dedicated
recollections of my world.