habits

rehearsing for the slam at ray’s house. interesting epiphany: ray performs his poetry as if he was on stage doing music. we are going over his pieces and i keep saying the same things to him. “you’re shoulders are too narrow.”/”you keep holding your hands rigid”/”you keep looking at the ground.”

only after i saw him packing his instruments did it hit me, he looks like hes holding a guitar or playing the keyboards or looking at musical notes. addressing the root of his performance it became pretty easy to give him a tip or two as to how to change it.

me, my big problem is that i hear too much slam poetry. man, i can tell when the three.minute.mark hits. good thing is that it seems to be my natural writing style but i am not interested in having a natural writing style. have to read more shorter work, started with some margaret atwood and will be absorbing some sharon olds as well.

poetically incorrect (btw, the worst name possible for a poetry series) was cool. crowd started thin and packed in later. i did the ‘ceviche’ piece. i could have busted out a political piece(!) i did during my workshop but i don’t know. political pieces at poetry reading is all about preaching to the choir. i did al b’s “who’s against the war?” trick and also threw in my “if you’re a poet, who do you read?” schtick. the crowd ate it up and i was just curious as to who did NOT like that question.

tonight is the slam and i have a strategy worked out and, of course, i have to be ready that the whole sucka could blow up in my face. just have to remember to leave it all on stage and accept the outcome.

also, strikeforce morturi is one of the greatest comic book stories ever done.