[Previous entry: "Tuesday june 15"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "fathers day"]

06/18/2004 Entry: "Nerd Slam"

If anyone read the post prior to now I apologize for the mistakes in Grammer and spelling. It was late and I was elated from the win. Here it is as it should have been.

Today is probably one of the best days I have had in a long time. For weeks I have been trying to write poems for the Nerd Slam that happened at The Bowery poetry club today. I had started a bunch of poems that went nowhere or just plain sucked.
Today I did some work during the day and then took the rest of the day to write poems for the slam. I blanked, I couldn't think of a thing, so I decided that I would go to Bowery a little early to get inspired. I took my Superman notebook and a pen. On the train I was procrastinating by playing games on my palm pilot, but after a few minutes I said to myself. "Ok enough I am going to write until I get an idea". Outloud so I have to commit to it. For the better part of a year I have been trying to write a poem about being a secret nerd. I have never been able to get it going and I have never had a good way to end it. I started on that theme again on the train. It was 6:30pm, the reading starts at 7:15. For some reason when I am under pressure I am not so critical of what I am writing and so I end up writing much better. That happened tonight and I actually found a thread to go on for the secret nerd poem now called "night nerds". I ended up finishing it at the bar of the BPC, but was unsure of how I was going to read it, making edits on the sides the whole time. I wasn't even sure I was in the slam at this point since Shappy had said it was a closed slam but I forgot to ask if I was one of the people in it.
So after a little while I asked Cristin and she said I was in. Great. So I began on writing the second piece just in case I made it to the second round. I wasn't even going to write a second piece because I was going up against people like Mike Henry but I got an idea last second so I went with it. I read my piece and got the high score for the round. I couldn't believe it but I did go last in the round so maybe there was some score creep. Mike Whalen did an amazing piece about bowling that should have put him in the finals but who knows why the judges do anything, I'm not complaining. For the second round it was me and Post midnight in the trivia contest. I totally blanked on most of the question, I don't know why. My comic book trivia has always been my weak point because as a kid I didn't have money for comics. I never got money on a regular basis so when I would come into money(Christmas, Birthday) I spent it on toys. I have always been more about TV, Movies, and music, although I do own a good number of comics now. Anyway the trivia contest wasn't going so well so then I said why don't we just read a poem. Post agreed since we both had poems we wanted to read in our hands. I won the coin toss so Post went first. He read this great poem about wrestling and finding out it is fake from the NIck Foley autobiography. I followed him up with a poem about uniting the worlds of fantasy and sci-fi to go against the republican national convention. I got a standing ovation from BlackWolf the Wizard, the unofficial wizard of New York. It was very cool. It turns out that I won the Slam and a fifty dollar gift certificate to St. Marks Comics. YAAY. Last year I won the Cute boy slam and the Limerick slam but I did not feel like this when I won those. I was happy then but right now I feel validated. This slam is closer to who I think of myself as. I don't consider myself a cute boy and I am no limericist, so tonight was special. It felt really good to read to a nerd crowd and actually connect with them. I felt this way at nationals during the nerd reading too. I am really proud about this win, I don't know how else to say it.

I really want to thank Shappy and Cristin for including me in the Nerd slam, and for even putting on a nerd slam, when most venues wouldn't. The screen in the background was so cool. Playing video games and pulling up pictures of stuff that was relevant off of Google. It was really cool to be a part of it. Very Nerdy. Thanks to the Acentos crew for coming out as well. I realize that I never mention them individually so here goes Fish, Oscar, Rich, Jessica. It was cool to see them and eat with them (Rich, Jessica, Oscar) as well. I'll let you know what I buy with the money.

Todays song is "wierd friendless kid" by Emilliana Torrini from the album dunno for all the weird friendless nerds out there.

Replies: 1 Comment

Hey your site is cool. Congratulations on winning those slams. I have been writing poetry since I was 14, I'm 28 now. I live in Northeastern, NC and we don't have any poetry slams here. If we did I would love to participate. Maybe I should start a poetry slam website of my own to feed the passion. My job that pays the bills is Web developer/IT but my one and only love is Poetry..
Here is one of my poems just for the heck of posting one:
It’s a crying shame on how much I’ve given up
Country girls can change the minds of city boys
Break them down line by line
Over time
Small victories over my mind
Sometimes drown the city ways
Stomp and put out the wild desires of clubbing with whores
And drinking with fiends
I want you to know you didn’t make or break ME
You may have made or broke some of MY ways
Don’t fool yourself
Into believing you set me free
I set my own self on fire
And starting running to fetch my own water
Now I will drift as slowly as I want
Having seen the best and the worst of the face of a woman
I’m better, I’m stronger, I’m FREE

Posted by Cee @ 06/22/2004 03:43 PM EST