Springfield

I know what you're thinking.
Springfield has a slam team?
Don't worry.  No one else knows this either.
It's hard to form a slam team
when you only hold a couple of slams a year.
But this has not stopped them.
No qualifiers or semifinals.
Just a few flyers and a post online.
"Come to the Martin Luther King Community Center
to win a spot on the Springfield Slam team! 5 pm"
One would expect that a place called the MLK Community Center

might be in a predominantly black community,
and it was.

I was not expecting it to be Mayberry RFD,
and appropriately enough, it wasn't.

One might also imagine such a community center to be open 

to the community
prior to the published start time of the poetry slam, 

rather than surrounded by 8-foot chain link fences

with the gate to the parking lot padlocked shut.

Fortunately, there was a cheap empanada place across the street

and by the time I'd grabbed a bite at quarter past five

the gate was open.

A volunteer from the MLK Community Center

greeted me skeptically
and checked to see that I was in the right place

twice.

She assured me the poetry slam was still happening

and that I was waiting for someone named Maurice.

Thirty minutes later, I was jotting the last lines of a new poem
in an empty community center lobby.
A man in a tattered army jacket

who could not stop shaking
entered and sat beside me.

He asked questions about the poetry slam
as though I looked like I knew.
When I told him I had no idea
he kept asking.
He showed me his book of poetry,

a sheaf of hole-punched printer paper
with a paper fastener binding.

He asked if I'd ever done this poetry slam thing before.

I told him, "Yeah. A couple times."

He said he was going to give it a try.

He said he was nervous.
He said it again several times.

One might expect the poets competing for a spot on a slam team
to have done this before.

One might also expect the host to be impartial, or skilled
or, at least, to be present at the start time.
One might not expect the first place prize in a poetry slam
to be a spot on a slam team and also a gift basket of scented oils and bath salts.

But as it soon became clear, 

this was not going to be the most predictable of nights.

Maurice arrived a full forty-five minutes after the posted start time for the event.  

He was the third person there.

I helped him pull folding chairs out of conference rooms

and set them up in the lobby.

He assured me the slam would be happening

that people would arrive

and eventually a third poet came,
an urban pretty boy with shaved, frosted hair
puffy white vest, and huge rhinestone sunglasses.
He looked like a store mannequin
dressed like a Korean B-Boy,
and his every motion seemed posed,
as though he expected the paparazzi
to be sneaking photos from the parking lot.
One would not have thought it possible
for anyone to look more out of place in this location
that the fat white guy from New Hampshire.
In fact, it was.

One might not expect the judges of a poetry slam
to be the same people who gave the third poet,

the eventual winner,

a ride to the event in their car.

The fact that they and the volunteer from the community center

were the only others in attendance had everything to do with it.

They insisted they could be unbiased,
and I am sure they were
trying.

Maurice made this much easier for them by mentioning at least three times publicly

that I was the only white person in the building.

He then told a story 

about another white guy who had also been to one of his events.

He said that guy had pulled Maurice aside before the slam

and asked if he would be required to "rap on the mic."

I did not, at the time, believe the story to be true.

Maurice assured me I would not have to rap.

Given that I was attending a poetry slam, 

I had already assumed this to be the case.

I am pretty sure he was inventing the story
possibly for my benefit,

to make me feel comfortable
possibly because he wanted it to be true about me
so that he could have a story to tell.

His story was not all that beneficial.

I had not been at all uncomfortable, 

until he tried to make me comfortable.
I was still the one to leave that evening
with the best story.

There were nine people in the lobby of the MLK community center

including three competing poets

an hour and forty-five minutes after the event was to have started.

I did not have the heart to leave.

While we waited for the promised masses to arrive for the event, 

Maurice explained to me that this slam would choose

the fourth and final member of the poetry slam team.

It did not matter that they had no regular venue,

no plans to actually compete anywhere,

and that Maurice did not exactly remember

the rules for a poetry slam.

He thought he did, 

but he was a member of the Hartford, CT slam team
years before.

And I know what you're thinking.

Hartford has a slam team?

They did. In the '90s.

The slam began, but suddenly

Maurice was not the host.

It looked like Maurice.

It sounded like Maurice.

but now he wore a shimmering gray suit jacket
and had a black hair pick stuck in his fro
with a handle molded into the shape of a clenched fist.
It stood straight up, tall and proud
as if to say, "Fight the power"
or whatever it is that raised fists tend to say,
and he was no longer Maurice.
He introduced himself 

as MC Soulfighter!

And here he was, 

standing behind two turntables,

booming into a PA system,
and "mixing",

calling out to all eight of us
to raise our hands in the air

and wave them like...

I'm sorry, but I am not doing that!

This is not a dance party.

We are seated in folding chairs 

in the lobby of a community center, 

and there are only nine of us here.

We don't need two turn tables
or the microphone, or for that matter
instructions for how to dance

at a poetry slam.

But I did not say this out loud.

Instead, I swayed a little bit

while the two ladies to my right

started moving and grooving

in ways that my body just does not move.

MC Soulfire began to explain how a poetry slam works.

He had to stop several times to check
with one of the competing poets
(that would be me)

to make sure he had it right.

How he had managed to conduct other slams in the past

was beyond me.
In addition to a spot on the slam team
and the tiny shrink-wrapped basket of bath salts and oils

MC Soulfire tantalized the not-at-all-enthralled smattering of audience
with the promise that the winner would also receive free entry
to something called "Artie Robb's Silly Saturdays"
which was to be held at some chicken restaurant in Springfield,
provided the person was able to show up early.
One of the completely unbiased judges,
a middle-aged woman in a leopard print outfit
chimed in, "Yeah, they best show up early,
so you can sneak 'em in!"
The others in the room laughed nervously
MC Soulfire did not deny this to be the reason.
He also did not draw randomly for poet order.

He just made up the order as he went along.

I did not question this decision.

I did, however, remind him

as he was calling up the man in the army jacket

to do his first poem
that there is typically a sacrificial poet.

He thanked me

then rummaged through pockets

for a rumpled paper.

He read his own poem

as though he had never seen it before in his life
and as though English may or may not have been his first language.

The judges gave him what would prove to be the highest score of the night.

My internal dialogue
at this point in the evening
went something like this:
Why am I here?
I don't know
Why don't I leave?
It would be rude.
I should leave.
No, I should stay.
This is a great opportunity to practice
in front of strangers.
Maybe I will win.
Maybe some of the poetry will be good.
Is Maurice really a poet?
Does Maurice realize how ridiculous this situation is?
No.  Or maybe yes.
He doesn't look much like an MC,
of the Soulfighter variety or any other.
Either he suffers from delusions of grandeur
on a scale I have never seen
or he is determined to turn this halfhearted
cluster of attendees into a successful
and well-attended community event
simply by willing it to be so.
I wish I had that kind of nerve.
I am so glad I had that kind of nerve.
Will I win this?
How could I not win?
Are these people even poets?
What if they're better than me?
What if they aren't, and I still lose to them?
Will I be insulted?
Should I be?
Why would I?
How can I not take that personally?
What would I even do with a gift basket of
massage oils and bath salts?
I don't know if I want to win.
Would my wife even like that stuff? Massage oils...?
If I gave them to her she'd want to use them.
Great - just what I need is to have my house smell like lilac massage oils.
What am I going to tell my friends about this?
I have been here for two hours now.
At least, with three poets,
it should all be over soon.

It was not over soon.
It was neither as quick or painless
as I might have hoped.
Following MC Soulfighter's reading
and subsequent less than skillful attempt to
scratch and mix a James Brown record over Chaka Khan
(I would have thought he'd try it the other way around,
but what do I know about such thing?)
the first poet was again called forward.
The nervous man spent the first two minutes of his allotted three minutes
explaining that he was nervous
that he had never done this before
and that he had assumed there would be a podium
on which to put his large book of poetry,
but there was no podium here
just a mic stand
and where was he going to put his poetry book
he had just had it printed at Kinkos
he supposed he would just have to hold it
but it was hard to hold still because his hands were shaking.
He said again that he was nervous,
buried his face behind his book,
and began to read.
His poem
rhymed.
It lamented about his hard life
in ways that were vague, yet repetitive.
It could have been more terrible, somehow.
It went on for at least four more minutes,
but either the stopwatch held deftly by MC Soulfighter
was just for show.
or I was in caught in some anomaly of space-time
that made everything seem to drag on
much much longer than it actually should
in this, the near-eternal poetry slam  that wasn't.
In either case,
No time penalty was assessed.

The pretty boy followed him,
reading off his iPhone.
He read impassioned lines
smoothly but without feeling
and was done in under two minutes.
His fan club scored his poem well.

I led off with a crowd pleaser
sure to demonstrate my skill as a poet
and a performer.
It is always in that moment of over-confidence
when the next line escapes recollection.
I had thought memorization
might prove to be an asset
but then I had to go and drop a line,
one I knew well
and in that moment that follows a blank stare
I allowed myself to apologize
and say, "I know this."
before picking up where I'd left off
and rallying through the last lines.
Except for those few seconds,
I thought I had done well.
Just after I finished,
a 15-year old judge
held up the lowest score of the night
while simultaneously giving the best unsolicited advice
I should never have needed:

"You know, you shouldn't apologize.
It make you look like you don't know what you doin'.
Just skip it and say what you remember.
Nobody know the difference."

Round two began after a musical interlude.
Our MC scratched lines from the Fresh Prince
over a Neville Brothers song,
inviting us again to get up and dance with him.
This time, not even the middle-aged judge
in the leopard print dress
bothered to oblige.

On the whim of the MC,
I went first in the second round.
Determined to redeem myself,
I picked a sentimental poem about my children
and performed the heck out of it.
They gave me about the same score
as when I'd dropped the line.

The guy in the army jacket followed me,
this time without the lengthy kvetching.
He finished his poem about racial inequality
in the allotted time.
The words were nice enough
and drew a few knowing responses of  "Mm- Hmm!"
from the judges despite the sound of his laborious reading.
In the docudrama I will one day make of my life,
this scene will be played by Tracy Morgan,
who will be attempting to read from a book
by Cornell West.
He will mispronounce a word on every other line
and remain on the mic after the conclusion of his oem
to apologize for this.
He will blame it on the shaking of his hands.

The B-boy in the big shades stood holding the microphone in one hand
while waving his iPhone in the other.
He delivered the first few lines of his poem,
then stopped.
Then waved his phone around some more.
The next thing he said was,
"I can't get a signal."
and then he walked, straight out the door
and into the parking lot.
Technically, his time was running.
He had clearly begun his poem,
but after two minutes in the parking lot
he strolled back up to the mic
and I heard the beep
of our fair and balanced host
re-starting the stopwatch.
His poem was about a girl
and contained as many cliche ways to say
"baby, I love you"
as there were painful seconds to be endured
before he finished.
He got a higher score than I did.

Third round, almost done.
OH, no.
There is an extended dance party now.
Scratching Bobby Brown over Run DMC
Michael Jackson and Tina Turner,
then (surprise!)
it's an unannounced spotlight feature
by the judge in the leopard print
who was actually not so bad
and then a second spotlight by our dashing MC
who I believe was either trying to trying to save face
by doing a poem from memory
or just making up a poem on the fly
and pretending it had been written and rehearsed.
He was terrible at both.

Round three began
with as much pomp and scratching as MC Soulfire could muster.
I expected the B-boy to be up first
since he had yet to go first in any round,
but our sage host had other plans,
calling up the guy in the army coat first, again.
I was so lost in bemused silent screaming
that I didn't really listen to his poem.
When he sat down again
I told him it was his best one of the night.
He said he thought so too.
I went second with a funny poem
which two of the judges later told me was their favorite poem of the night.
While this may have been true,
their scores said otherwise.
Mr. Mannequin did some form of
misogynistic hip-hop inspired
"girl I'm gonna git wit you" poem
and scored slightly lower,
still high enough for him
to be crowned champion.

MC Soulfighter tallied the scores.
All nine of them.
It took and entire Cypress Hill song
and a little Chubby Checker til he was sure he had the math right.
With grandiose gestures
Soulfighter announced that the winner
was the well-groomed man, who was
still wearing his oversized sunglasses indoors
at 8:30 in the evening.
I came in "a close third."
He repeated that the prizes
were a free admission to Silly Silly Saturdays,
the final spot on the Springfield poetry slam team
and
a lovely basket of scented oils
valued at nearly $80
which had been generously donated by a woman
who supported "what we were doing here."
I wondered if the woman really knew
what we were doing here.
I still didn't, exactly,
and I was there longer than anyone.
He checked to make sure the mannequin-looking guy
would use the oils and bath salts.
He said the lady was a single mom on welfare
and that selling these baskets was her home business.
If the guy didn't want it,
Soulfighter was going to give it back to her
so she could sell it and make some money.
He said he would keep the basket,
said he was going to try out the scented oils.

I was really glad I didn't win.

I stayed to help Maurice stack the chairs
and move the furniture back the way it had been.
He told me he liked my poetry,
that maybe he could get me a feature some time
one Silly Silly Saturday.
I told him, "Sure. Let me know."

The lights went out at the empanada place across the street
just as I stepped into the parking lot.
Of all the disappointments of the evening,
this was the greatest.
Those empanadas were so cheap
and so good.

• One might expect the homeless man who spent a full two minutes nervously shaking, or maybe just shaking, to have a better excuse than that he assumed there would be a table or stand for his 8.5 by 11 manuscript.
• One might expect him to receive a time penalty.
• One might expect the pretty boy with the fashion sunglasses to know his poem
• One might expect him to know how to read off his phone.
• One might expect him not to walk out the front door to get a signal after he beaks into the mic.
• 
  
• One might not care about getting free entry into Silly Saturdays, providing you show up early
• One would not expect an awkward dance party between rounds.