Oh, I wish… after last night’s slam, I was ready to set it ablaze and chuck it in the pond out back of our house. Finished dead last (again). Finished behind a guy with a six point time penalty, if that gives you any idea of how badly I sucked the life out of the room.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t have my heart into it. I haven’t felt like performing for awhile, now, and I slammed BECAUSE I didn’t feel like it. That seems to be the time when you need to get up and face the apathy the most. Didn’t work., though; and– might as well be honest– the poetry sucked. It was “So what” poetry. I didn’t think it was… I hoped that it wasn’t, but it was.

And that is where I am having problems.

In slams, it is rare that I connect with an audience. I’m a short, chubby, Southern woman who hates following trends (remind me to tell you about my intense hatred of “The Hunger Games”). It’s tough to create work to which people relate. I see other poets get up there and have people eating out of their hands, and I could weep. I can rarely bring the humor and the utter pathos that seem to grab the audience and keep them enthralled. I’m trying, though. Reading, watching YouTube performances, going to see poets as much as I can. But what moves me is not the same as others, and I don’t know how to make it beautiful for them.

That’s not to say I haven’t, though. There are a very special few pieces that I have written that connected. I have to try to remember how I did that.

I’m not going to quit, though. I’ll keep turning out crap; and maybe, just maybe, there will be a few diamonds come from them… or at least some semi-precious stones worth of poetry.