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

Mean Girls Mean Nothing

Over the weekend I spent time with a friend and her teenage daughter. Causal conversation about the outcome of her first year in high school turned to a serious conversation about friendships and being betrayed by two very close girlfriends. I listened to her explain how she and two girls were a tight group. They were the three best friends that did everything together. Out of the blue after a day down in San Diego together, the two girls stopped talking to her. They uninvited her from plans the following day and stopped texting/returning calls without reason. Nothing prompted the shunning and no explanation was given.  Are girls really this mean?

It made me reflect on my experience in high school, which definitely had its fair share of drama and run-ins with crazy friendship fallout. But have girls really gotten this bad? The look on her face while explaining the situation was that of extreme sadness and confusion. The thought of her sitting there with tears in her eyes while her two former best friends are out together makes me so angry and makes me want to hold the parents responsible for letting this behavior continue.

A girl at fourteen years of age is an emotional disaster – perpetual poop face, misunderstood, misplaced anger. They lack control of their feelings and are completely irrational thanks to the wonderful development of female hormones. It should therefore be a mother or father’s responsibility to talk with them and guide them to make amends and act better. 

Thinking back to my own high school days I can remember several “mean girls.” Funny enough, several of them are now my Facebook acquaintances. But there were definitely rough times in my school career where I was bullied and treated like an outcast because I was not as “cool” as the other girls. I was a bit of a tomboy – played varsity volleyball, basketball, etc. I went through an awkward phase and had to grow into my features and find my sense of style. I was not “trendy” like the popular girls; I was into grunge with a bit of goth and skater thrown into the mix. 

These “mean girls” used to walk around like they owned the school…and their parents probably did, or at least donated enough money to provide us with the gym or some important part of the building. They acted like royal snobs and stuck together in their incestuous clique, excluding and berating the “lower life forms,” AKA the “nerds.” They were your classic bitches – making fun of intellectual kids or kids who didn’t wear designer clothes. They chastised other girls who had not yet developed or grown into their own skin. Snarky, harsh comments were a constant. There were days that were definitely a living hell and several times I can remember coming home in tears wishing I never had to go back.

But looking at them today, they are nothing special. Some are still the same bitchy girls as they were in high school, still friends with the same people, still judging and living for the limelight. Others are very different – kind, working hard, living on their own, decent people. And everything that happened that hurt me so bad in the past is completely inconsequential now. It is nothing – holds not weight in my life and took no part in forming who I am except maybe making me stronger.
 

But my friend’s daughter is cute. She is not awkward, in fact she is gorgeous. She has perfect hair, is not only in style but sets the trends, and is kind. She has a warm, innocent disposition, is very kind and loves her friends unconditionally. I do not understand why her so called friends would just stop talking to her and act as if all the memories and fun times they shared never happened. Perhaps it is jealousy. Maybe her beauty and stellar personality threatens them and so banding together and shunning her from the group is the only defense they have against their own insecurity. 

It seems like as technology and industry and learning progresses we humans should progress as well. But it is as if kids are progressing in a negative way – they are getting meaner! They have more outlets at their fingertips to mock and ridicule their peers and can make life even worse for those they feel deserve it. Social media is now a tool to publicly humiliate and make others jealous through posting pictures of what they were not invited to. It is completely unfair for these kids to be treated this way and it is ridiculous that parents do not step in and correct this disgusting behavior.

Kids are just that. They should not parent themselves and do not come into this world all-knowing. Parents need to step it up and take more responsibility in terms of educating their children on communication and acceptance. They need to be taught diversity and how to have a compassionate understanding that everyone is unique and that is okay. 

I feel for this girl, but want her to rest assured that in the end when she is thirty and looking back on the past, all this will have no meaning. Everything that hurts so bad right now will hold no ground in her life and will actually seem petty. As much as it hurts right now, just know it is not worth another second of your time and doesn’t deserve another ounce of your energy. Find the group for you and surround yourself with those who push you to excel and celebrate your uniqueness. And know that I love you.