“Yep: Typed at Henry’s Open Mic”

“Yep”

I’m not a slam poet

I write rhymes not to show off

but to climb over the recesses in your mind

and wash ablutions to the subconscious tunes

that play on repeat against the echo of your ego

Don’t get me wrong

There’s not much wrong with slam poetry

I can stand up here and tell you this or that about the world

About how you shouldn’t be sexist toward girls

Or hurl your avant-garde original opinion on deaf ears

Let those who have eyes to see hear

Slam stands up and says

dramatically and stomping on non-rippling puddles

I have a popular opinion

surface level political

and mentions of maternal

that none of all this is what all this was

That time and buzz words and creation

and racism and back of the bus

and all that

For you see

Racism is wrong

Expletive

It’s too repetitive of a style

Too pedantic

I get tired just thinking of it

and a migraine from the eye rolls

I’m not a slam poet

I rage against the waking of the day

I keep slaying words spliced on keys across the screen, the everlit page

gazing at the sighing eyes of wine bar patrons caught up in the not yet spring

all glad they’re here.

It’s a cow town times city with the cocaine blues

hyped into apathetic madness with room to fall and grow and empty soil from their shoes

The violin plays to laughs

while the devil drinks in hell

well, in the alleyway

shooters for even hell has become gentrified in the last century

and he hasn’t paid off his tab

being the devil and all

revelry driving cleverly towards every generating memory and re-memory and tomorrow cavalry of musicians toppling beveled dreams and sentry queens spending too much vain seconds in mirror beyond the castle wall

Someone told me today “Don’t quit your daydream”

It means to stay in that ozone efficiency

that no bone huger

thirsty for creativity

and pining longing mining gems of ideas from way deep

past your programming

past your insecurity

past the mental mountain of all the anger this world has taught you

Learn to be a tree and you’ll float up to the sun

someday

photon wind with crisp living again and again

alien mistress made this her getaway planet

and we’re all here to dig and be dug

just like that groove hep cat mover of words and worlds

spat,

that dapper Langston

that pioneer to hip hop and social rap

yep.