Baby's First Slam Poem

I did it, I slammed. Although Wonder Dave informed me you can't have props/costumes in Slam which I did in the form of the namesake of the piece. I got a decent amount of praise for the poem last night, which I wrote in about an hour right before the show. Some dude who looked like the Ska Militia Santa Claus (he had a red beret and checkers somewhere in his outfit, sported a fluffy white beard and a jolly belly) loved it and asked if it was online. Here you go:

What.

Are you laughing at me or my tin-foil hat?
Because who are you to judge fashion, dressed like that?
A stiff suit and a tie, pressed to fool and impress,
‘Cause your overpaid PR guy tells you how to dress?

I mean, really, what’s so funny
What are you, the popular kids I was trained to fear
And crave to be like In my formative years
By sucking down cigarettes and swilling beer?
To insure my addiction to another ball and chain
Like buying into the idea that without high fashion, life is pain.

Because if I don’t buy my hat new
To help keep the economy afloat
I’m drinking the sweet nectar of the wrong kind of powered mix and wasting my time in the sinking love boat?

Oh, I’m lookin’ at you, pal, sideways - and all your shadowy friends
Pockets overstuffed with my late and later credit card payments
Hemming and Hawing about what is really going on
And jumping on the name-calling to tell me right is wrong.

So I “live life” from paycheck to paycheck
and I guess I gotta do it for the bennies
The ones that keep my health in check;
Oh no, I’m working for the pennies.

I fell for it! Ya got me there. The artist’s life
Really isn’t life at all or realistic; it’s suffering and strife.
I’ve been distracted by your shiny metal object of television
While you keep a watchful eye above the pyramid prism.

Yet the more I open my curtains to look outside,
The more I see how the world is this assembly line
And those who break free, if not shot and killed,
Might be taken to camp and “not tortured” or pilled!

The bribes and the promises of international bankers
And the unnecessary production of a gazillion oil tankers
Keep us all punching in day in and day out
To earn just a little money and even less personal clout.

But, see, my hat is transmitting to me the truth!
A divine message from far beyond
That life is not a race of rodents uncouth
And the best lays are not always blonde.

I want to believe it when I’m told that every vote counts
Along with everything else in ginormous amounts.
Yes I bought into the idea that the more user-friendly is a Mac
But I don’t think that wire-tapping is the way to get my safety back.

So you can sit there on your court of high-ranking Illuminati
And tell me that she’s qualified because Sarah Palin is a hottie,
But I know words and I know when the space between means nothin’
So don’t for an instant think this ticker isn’t clicking away at somethin’.

I don’t need money because I’ve got intuition.
And I don’t need a career because I’ve got a mission.
I’ve got goals and I’ve got dreams and I’ve got a mean to inspire ‘cause after the nuclear holocaust, we’ll all be sharing the same trash-can fire.

Have. You. Heard.
We Are Not Alone.
I am here in a room with you and there are people outside and there are people in homes.
There are people in cars. And bars. And czars in thrones.
And desks that sit obediently in fronna drones.
But We. Are Not.
Alone.

Because really, I find it impossible to believe
That we were made millions of years ago
Then God, or whatever, chose to leave
Us alone to fight, kill, and figure it out on our own.

I stopped shaving with Occam’s Razor because Anything. Is. Possible.

The prescription is asking questions
And my doctor’s name is Leary
For possibility and thought, he’s a bastion
And for what you call conspiracy theory.

So along comes a dude asking for change
Putting his hand up for the whole nation to high-five
But after all this shit, it’s hard to rearrange
The programming and allow ourselves to let him make us feel alive.
And worth it and safe and comfortable – do we dare?
Or is it a thin blanket of hope over a black hole of despair?

So, my hat’s off if indeed and without doubt you are true
And not a shadowy overlord like most that came before you.
But I feel pretty solid in my faith of all the praise that you warrant.

To quote my friend Brett
Who's as perceptive as they get
“He isn’t black – he’s transparent.”

- Courtney McLean, 10/27/2008