These were the best of the best.

I know that Doug brought them here to help make the slam a bigger deal and a more popular event in Fayetteville, but, since the crowd was small (by Walton Arts standards anyway) and the judges sucked, all they did was beat the shit out of us and make us realize that we have miles to go.

Mike McGee won the $1000, by .10 over Joaquin Zihuatenajo! .10!!!

I felt soooooo honored to be on the same stage with these people. I, at least, received the highest score of the Arkansas slammers (. . . or at least I would have if not for a .5 time penalty because I went 1 SECOND OVER!! Hannah Moore snaked me, AGAIN!). And the judges were terrible (except for two of them), they score-creeped like spineless bastards. Mad props to judges who stand their ground! I have GOT to go to a national slam event (there are two)! Being around people who are better than me, makes me better! I need that!

I could have scored even higher if I had done Female Dilemma instead of Book Sex as my second poem. I truly did not do justice to Book Sex, not like Wenesday, and the audience wasn't giving me the responses I still rely too much on to make me hit it like I should.
I think this kind of obsessing goes away as you perform more, and become more confident in your ability. Like Clayton not getting upset about not making the qualifier. He just said, thats "the nature of the slam." Plus, I think we begin to understand more and more, that "the points are not the point, the point is poetry" - Alan Wolf.

And I'm going to blame the fact that I only sold three chapbooks (and two of those to people who came out to support me at my request!) on the stark cover design, which I don't give a shit about. I love the cover. I'll consider it more of a challenge to be able to sell them.

Anywho. Gonna go have some beer and ice cream.

Well, I barely said two sentences on the air this morning, but thats ok because I got to say my name and that I am competeing tomorrow and then I left the true advertising to the pros. Both Doug and Clayton did a couple of their funny peices and it went over very well with the hosts. I think we gave the slam a GREAT plug this morning.

Now, Heather (I love her I love her I love her I love her - she was a graphic design minor and is busting her ass on this!) and I need to get that chapbook finished and printed. The title is Punchlines.

This is re-damn-diculous.

There were 12 poets competing tonight; 10 who were at high-quality slam level. People from the Little Rock team showed-up, plus our normal slammers, and a few wild cards.

I took second place.

I am competing on Saturday at the Walton Arts Center. I get $100 just for showing up.

After the slam tonight, someone asked me if I had any merchandise.

Damn.

. . . And I feel guilty.

I have become a high-quality poetry slammer, but I can't get a job. I can't provide financial stability to my family. How dare I go slam and be so fucking good at it. You see, I care more about "us" (Heather and I) than "me." And this success means nothing to the "us" realm. Not to mention that if don't get a job, we will have to move-in with my parents outside Chicago, leaving behind the arts and slam scene that I love, and am making a name for myself in, down here, and go to the Chicago scene in which I won't even make a ripple. So what meaning does this slam success have right now? . . . ?

Thus the guilt.

But, Heather says to look at it this way: regardless of my internal priorities of meaning, if I DID have a job, my poetry slam success would, almost certainly, mean more to me than my work. Therefore, my writing and performance abilities (my success in this slam scene) are NOT robbed of meaning. I just need to be willing to let it make me happy!

Geez. Not only does my wife have a high Intelligence score, she has a high Wisdom score too.

And I feel better knowing that tomorrow I have two more jobs to apply-for and an actual interview at 2:00.

And about the merchandise thing, Heather and I are going to try and have a poetry chapbook ready by Saturday. She has some helpful resources at work;)


And I can't believe that Clayton Scott wasn't one of the four qualifiers, and yet a poet who has very poor performance skills (although I love him as a person and writer) WAS a winner. But that is the nature of the slam. Weird shit happens.

Oh! And Doug and I are going to be on a morning radio show at 8:00 a.m. Friday morning to plug Saturday's slam!
Yeah! That's right! 8 fucking A.M. and I am going to be on the RADIO! Performing something! Acting happy! . . . I want to die!
I've never been on the radio! And I do not function at that hour!
I know that I have to help the slam, and give it (and myself) more exposure (I mean for the love of hibatchi, it's $15 a ticket for two local bands and a poetry slam! People are more likely to avoid the thing!), but it feels like impending doom. I'll give a report Friday morning. I'll probably never work in this town again.


. . . Now, I need to get started on choosing poems and placing them in order, learning copyright laws, thinking of the title, and deciding how much to charge for a desktop published, cardstock-covered, saddle-stapled, little book.

I really hope someone will be praying on Saturday. I don't want to get psyched-out and suck.

I am coming to believe that this blog is truly pointless.

This week/weekend is the Fayetteville Arts Festival. Today I compete in a Poetry Slam qualifier at Scarpino's. What I am competeing for is the chance to perform at the Walton Arts Center on Saturday in front of hundreds of people. The top five poets from the qualifier will slam with five nationally recognized slam poets from all over the country. The top performer will get $1,000.

Sounds great doesn't it?

Well, I really don't give a shit. And you know why? Because, no one else does.

I haven't practiced my peices aloud. I haven't worked on memorization. I have NO motivation. Lack of support will do that.

It's not Heather's fault. And it sure isn't the fault of Doug and the other slam scene people. Doug is trying very hard to keep the fayetteville slam and poetry scene alive and vibrant, (fortunately, the Ozark Poets and Writers Guild is still behind him) and I know he needs me right now to help do that.

But even if I make the qualifier, I can garuntee you that against five slam poets with impressive national cred, the winner won't be me. You can take it to the bank.

More importantly, I can't make myself excited about going up on that stage and trying to be a poet and performer when my life is falling apart. I still have no job, and I HAVE been looking. I have had callbacks and interviews, but no one wants me. My wife has Mono and can barely make it through five hours of work before she collapses. We are in financial quicksand. . . . And I'm gonna go put time and energy into prancing my silly ass on stage and performing poetry for no reward?! . . . Yes, I know it is supposed to be personally gratifying and that is supposed to be reward enough, but in the face of all that is wrong and broken in my life, I cannot believe that slamming poetry is worth a shit. At least not without support.

But everyone else has their own agendas and their own problems. And Heather and I are so good at being stubborn about help and putting up a show of being OK. And I know damn well that the poetry slam doesn't mean a tiny fraction as much to any one of our friends as it does to Heather and I.

I can't really blame them. I had friends come out to see me perform at the Ozark Slam Finals, and what happened? I pissed away first place by a stupid mistake and I embarassed myself, Heather, and everyone I had invited by walking out as fast as possible and throwing a tantrum.

I push everyone away. I have no one to blame but me.

And I hate the thought of going up on that stage and performing the same crap I have been doing for the past year. I haven't written a new slam poem in months! Lack of support will do that. Or at least, lack of support in conjunction with our lives going to shit.

Alas. I know that today I will feel the pressure come upon me and I will practice each of my peices at least once. But right now, I can't think of any reason why I will be going up on that stage.

. . .

One of these days I will write something happy on this blog. But happy things have been overshadowed for a long while now. My happy things get shared with other people or get buried. My ruminations are black, and, unfortunately, they come out here. I fear burdening or annoying people with how dark my vision is, so I put it out here.

I caught a fish last week! My first keeper since I started fishing again. My first in 10 years. Heather and Tigger were there. It was a lake trout. But, I caught it at City Lake and it had these red sores that we noticed once we brought it home. So we're not going to eat it, but we still have it in our freezer. Kinda morbid. But it means so much to me I can't let it go yet.

. . .

I DO have some good friends right now. But I also miss my old friends - the ones from college who are still here, near town. Randomly discovering most of them at the Stricken concert last spring left me with a palpable sense of rejection. It was like a gouge in my chest. The goat roast party was a formal thing, not so much a get-together or an outing. And I still wish I knew what I have done to push them away.

Or does everyone feel this way and Heather and I are simply caught up in the wheels of some sick but natural estrangement?

Or do I really, eventually, push everyone away?

And if so, can love really be so absent in me? When I tout it as so principle and central a thing?

. . . This has probably begun sounding random and stupid and self-indulgent. I'm sorry.


"Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes."
- A. W. Tozer

Why do I resist sleep so stubbornly? Hell, I'll consider napping a preferable option for how to spend time during the typical waking hours, yet I'm unwilling to fall asleep at a normal human time. . . . Ah, there it is. "Normal human time." I hate time and the ever increasing speed of it's passage. I hate normality - the status quo, conformity. And I believe that most people have the meaning of our humaness all wrong. No wonder I'm unwilling to sleep right now.

As the world around me sleeps, these hours hold a serenity, a privacy, a comfort that I do not feel during the day. I have always been this way, when I was allowed. Summers, while growing-up, were spent in much this way. First shift day jobs also forbid this pleasure. But whenever allowed, I have fallen into this routine. It is in me. To be awake when everyone else is asleep. It is my rebellion. My tiny personal victory over the tides of life.

But does it actually mean anything? I mean, does it matter? Am I any more special because of this? If not, then it is a very tiny victory indeed.

Heather wishes I would sleep when she does, as we used to do. She likes falling asleep with me.

Yet I would hope that someday, somewhere, my being awake while you sleep would matter, that you would take comfort from it. Comfort to know that I am here, and vigilant, full of thoughts and prayers. To know that I have dominion (as utterly foolish as that sounds) over the hours that you lose. To know that at least someone does. And perhaps, you'll feel a little better knowing it is me. Because to me those hours feel lost, feel dead, and I want to make them live, in my own simple way.

I am teetering on sleep. Eyes are heavy. Sleep drugs in my system - to make my legs not not kick violently, to make me not wake when mt heart has to jumpstart from lack of oxygen . Soul-sickness inside me.

Life dwindles. Heather has Mono. I still have no job. Joy becomes more and more difficult to find.

The goat roast party was a huge flop . . . at least as far as the preparation to result ratio is concerned, it was a almost a total waste of time and goat. (not that it wasn't very memorable at points - but those points came BEFORE the party!)

I think my role in the party was too heavy. Too many people simply find me creepy. I am becoming resigned to the resultant social rejection. Self knowledge is not often a gift.

I try to run away from, or just ignore, problems. And I compensate by taking it all in at once and having chest clenching, shoulder wrenching panic attacks.

I am consumed with dissatisfaction . . . I want to read Fight Club again to find catharsis. Maybe take a broom to an oak tree.

I wonder what the dreams of sleep hold for me tonight. Attempts at fulfillment of sexual fantasy the disappointment of such foolishness. Anger of the unconcious spewing into offending persons or things. I am no longer weak in my dreams, so long as I am enraged. But otherwise, I am lost, confused, shut out, unable to reach my loves - like the dreams of last night.

Teetering.
Falling.

And all the king's horses . . .