An Attempt at Slam Poetry

I have not written a blog in several years. YEARS! I can't believe it. I used to write daily or at least once a week. Then I moved. And my life was turned upside down, mostly in great ways. So here I am, done will college, and taking a creative writing class to get back into writing. This week's unit topic was Slam Poetry, Procedural Poetry, and Found Poetry. While I do not care much for Found Poems, I had never heard of them and I am sure many of you haven't either. They are basically poems that are works of writings from other sources (i.e. a newspaper, advertisement, the Bible, etc.) and are retyped into poem form, novel form, etc. The poetry is actually the process it takes to put it together into a new form, not necessarily the words itself. It all seems to artsy and obscure to me.

What I loved most this week was Slam Poetry. Think of the spoken word poem "Woman, Whoaaaa Man" in the movie So I Married an Ax Murder. Or perhaps you're familiar with the Beat Generation. All of it used to seem so cheesy and out there to me, until this class. It is beautiful and so powerful. if done right, the words flow like lyrics to a song. The sounds roll off the tongue, fly at you and hit you in the heart. There is crescendo and finality at the end that is as soothing as actual closure to something in life. It is pure art and I only wish I had the courage inside to fight the paralyzing fear I have of public speaking to be able to read my poem out loud.

So this will have to do. I will share with you my Slam Poem. It is called Your Eyes and it is pretty straight forward so I am sure you'll understand the subject. I've also included some of the other poems I wrote this week. One is a haiku and the other is a procedural poem in form of a recipe. I hope you enjoy! And I promise to begin to blog more.

Your Eyes (Slam poem by Erin Felsen)

Your eyes.

They were closed for three months but your ears,

They never stopped hearing.

Cheering for you to get better, but you disappeared.

Fear inside of me knowing that my dad would expire.

Desire.

I wanted to see you sit up in that bed.

Head to toe yourself again,

But I knew.

You.

My dad. Glad you were not going to suffer, but sad,

So sad that you were going to die.

Inside I was afraid of taking steps alone.

Home would never be just that.

What was mom going to do without you by her side.

Hiding away from the family and friends standing there, holding you.

Glued to your bedside and trying to hold back feeling the pain.

Gaining nothing by being so shut down.

Frowns on the faces of those who watched you.

You.

You took your last breath and so did I.

Died.

Fire Mouth (Haiku by Erin Felsen)

A pizza slice

It burned the roof of my tongue

Water saved me

Recipe for Bullying (Procedural poem by Erin Felsen)

Ingredients:

Judgmental mindset and an audience

A busy hallway in a high school building

Societal pressures

Cell phone

Social media account

Snappy hashtag

Bad judgement

Instructions:

1.       Show up at school and hang out in the hallway before class

2.       Notice the differences in everyone

3.       Use a dash of bad judgement to single out the lonely kid or the nerd with no friends

4.       Take out your cell phone and take a picture of said nerd and post it to your Instagram

5.       Use snappy hashtag and share your post virally with the rest of the school