The crowd eagerly waits for the festivities to begin.
Believe it or not, we actually had four MCs:
Dr. Lape (a.k.a. Norizzle), Kindall Scarborough (a.k.a. Kindizzle),
Professor Jones, and Lamb Chop.
Kindizzle and Norizzle
Professor Jones, Norizzle, and Lamb Chop
The Writing Center family, otherwise known as the "peops"
Congratulations to all who slammed their poetry!
Sydney Lanier, Lloyd Eugene Dunlap, Tiffany Billins, Rebecca Rae Olds, Felicia Harris, Leslie Rader, Azul Bushie, Kristin Taylor, Erick Richman, Derik Roberts, and Charles Watkins
Thank you for participating.
Meet the Winners
Final Score of 28.95
Sing
“Sing me that song,” he says,
“The one you wrote yesterday.”
So I sing for him
because he’ll say my song is beautiful,
but these are the things he whispers when no one else is around.
I’m thinking
it must be something unusual
to say our kiss is just
his mouth and my mouth meeting.
I’m thinking
it must be something unusual
to say our kiss
just makes me feel so small next to his years.
But I try for him
because I want him to want me,
because he’ll say my mouth tastes lovely—
like something to be devoured.
His just tastes like alcohol.
Maybe that’s why the rest of it happened;
I don’t know.
Or maybe I am the one to blame.
But do you know what it’s like?
Do you know what it’s like
to sit there
as he unties your halter-top
and you’re praying that he’ll stop
but he doesn’t?
You’re unable to move with
his tongue on your skin just that—
a tongue sliding on your skin—
his hands just hands slithering on your body
until he overtakes you.
“Sing me that song,” he says.
“Please, no,” I say, but…
but he is too strong for me.
He demands this time:
“Sing!”
as he forces,
entering me anyway.
So I sing.
© Kristin Taylor
Derik Roberts, Second Place
Final Score of 28.75
Mine is a land
Mine is a land
Where princesses spend treasures on tattered tubes of denim with empty pockets.
Where knights gallop over stale water on fiberglass stallions,
Over waves that were never wild nor fierce. Predictable.
Where the golden sun
smiles
and the shimmering ocean
laughs,
but your gaze is fixed on empty riches and false fame.
Where all is a silly dance, a masquerade concealing injury.
Scars long hid, but not forgotten. Hopeless.
Where life bears countless questions that no one stops to ask
And where love has no more substance than the vanishing foam on the sea.
God is not lost. Men are.
Well this so-called American dream is starting to sound like a nightmare to me
And I’ll call them out, I’m tired of these lies.
My first allegiance is not to a flag… not to a country… not to a man…Its not to democracy and its not to blood it's to a King and a Kingdom.
Am I un-American now?
Am I laughable to you?
We’ve forgotten Our first loveYeah I said we.
And made it nothing more than pretty pictures of crosses and doves
And about as useful and relevant as string cheese.
Now let’s take a journey. Pretend your living for a living, Pretend that inside your skin you’ve got a friend who’s willing to give you everything you ever wanted and gave up everything He’s ever been to do so.
And here’s what I need you to believe now.
Believe that here stands a man that pretends not to fall apart.
Who still gets scared sometimes when it’s dark.
Who gets so nervous that his lips peel back in terror.
Who doesn’t have all the answers but loves with abandon none-the-less,
So God-solid scared that you’re gonna wanna talk about tomorrow again.
Maybe we have more in common than you thought.
With borrowed verse
we’ve got to stop acting like nothings happening,
When we’ve got six billion daunting truths,
Setting six billion different suns on you.
But we six billion gods, we’re all still up in arms
about what its going to take to follow through again.
Enough with truths, there are two great lies that i’ve heard: “the moment you eat from that tree, you won’t die. Gods holding out on you.” and one more;
that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like them.
Predictable.
That’s not my gospel. That’s not my Savior.
No it’s far more exciting than that.
Well mine is a land where there is hope
and life
is in community.
Where love reigns and all those cliché ridden words you’ve heard before mean something.
Where we are sons and daughters of The Beloved King and my adulterous heart is found restored.
Where a man died so that I could live and not because I’m worthy, no no, because He loves me.
He did not come to bring religion. He came to proclaim Freedom. He came to bring Life.
Where the divine is within reach and a man is wearing the scars that save. Revolution is
NOW.
© Derik Roberts
Charles Watkins, Third Place
Final Score of 28.43
Click
The Damage here along the gulf coast is catastrophic…
Click
There is a frantic effort to find…
Click
The same idiots who can’t get water to a destroyed American city…
Click
There is an uncounted number of dead…
Click
There are buses on the way to New Orleans to bring those…
Click
Refugees are being shown here in front of what looks like…
Click
A third world country…
Click
With no food or water, I fought for my country…
Click
In Baghdad, they air drop water and food…
Click
George Bush doesn’t care about…
Click
The refugees down in New Orleans are dying in…
Click
What used to be the home of the Saints is now a…
Click
Symbols of death now pervade the city where…
Click
The Superdome is now the final resting place for those trapped…
Click
In a city best known for Mardi Gras the people…
Click
Have begun to walk from New Orleans to Baton Rouge because…
Click
Their government has failed them…
Click
In an effort to control the tidal surge caused by Katrina…
Click
George W. Bush has finally made his way to New Orleans where he found…
Click
Television only tells part of the story of…
Click
Unrecovered and unknown dead bodies are floating through the streets…
Click
Of this once proud city need your help, please don’t turn off your…
Click
Final Score of 27.86
A Song Entitled Deep
What we have is deep…. You see/
I want to write a song about you and sing it with my heart/
I want you to compose the music and orchestrate it with my body parts/
I want…. no better yet I take that back I need/
I need for you to be on stage front and center with me
Because you see…. You’re the only half that makes mine complete/
And when they write our music down it won’t be expressed as half notes and wholes…. /
It’ll be more like she sang with his heart and he played with her soul/
And the title will be ‘Deep’/
Written by us/
Inspired by true love and not just by lust/
See what I have for you is deep - /
So deep that it goes way past my heart and down into the innermost parts of me/
So deep that its no longer something you can see…. It’s something you can feel/
Letting you know that it’s something far more than real/
See we got something… we got something here/
Something like the audience can close their eyes and ears and listen with their bodies/
And they’ll ask us how we did it and I’ll say –
Oh it’s just a few tricks love taught me/
See we got something here/
Something like your mind thinks my thoughts/
And I’m finding things you sought/
Back when/
I was you and you were me/
Sort of like a twisted game of hide-n-seek/
Like I planted the puzzle/
And you just happened to stumble/
Across the piece that fit with me/
Way back then/
Back when/
God determined destiny/
The roots of our relationship going down deep past you and me/
So our song would be a history created melody…. /
Yea we got something here…/
We got something deep…. ///
© Felicia Harris 04/28/2003
Erick Richman, Honorable MentionFinal Score of 25.84
Confusion?
Confusion?
Confusion burns,
Like a torch, in your mind,
made to scorch neurons and neutrons and electrons and...what...wait...what?
Confusion inspires,
Cathedral spires, funeral pyres and abandoned tires,
creating liars and dragging us down into mires of muck, yuck, and and
wait wait what?
Confusion tears,
Like a pen, dragged through a paper scripting hate for the world stage,
just so we can wage wars based on lores of cages and wages and wait wait
what?
Confusion hungers,
Eating away confidence and ripping apart conscience,
like a grown man’s cries choking on his own tie or an anorexic's thighs
tossing down grapes like cyanide,
I’m running inside running ragged running wait wait what?
Confusion drives,
Lost kids to search for escapes and highs in weed and dope
and don’t say you don’t want to hear this
when obese 12 1/2 year olds in miniskirts are chugging cherry cough syrup
take a break take a look from confusion and you’ll see what’s so sick
and wrong in society that i
drivel, rant, and rave and waste entire days coming up with
flurries of my righteous lyrical fury about the
lost hope that one day we may raise ourselves above the horrors of
Confusion,
cause confusion burns...um..confusion tears..nah...confusion..drives
confusion...
Confusion needs to end.
Cause nowadays, people think that thoughts are a rarity,
but as sure as I'm alive that's just a fallacy,
because everyone who wants has the ability,
to rise up above confusion,
and find clarity.
© Erick Richman
Let us know your thoughts.
In the words of Dr. Lape, "The Writing Center is of the people, by the people and for the people." So we're interested in what you have to say. Did you have a great time at the slam? Would you like the Writing Center to host another slam next year? Leave a comment on our blog, and let us know.
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