Poetry Slam Winners

Poetry Slam Winners

Here are a few of the winning poems from ArtHaus Poetry Slams...

THESE LOCKS DON'T HAVE KEYS
by Jill Hughes

Hair.
Speak for me.
I unleash you to call out with entrancing tendrils.
Drop your voice, past my shoulders,
and outline,
my,
thoughts.
Articulate, percolate, conjugate my form, so we might procreate
new structures for foreign verbs to translate.
I need you, hair, to convey with your tips what my lips have missed:
Your ends are the means to mine.
You must glisten in the dim light of our classroom,
recite the lustrous language you've learned,
weave your spelling into lengthening ropes of words that bind his mind to mine.
Crown him with gold.
Teach him to root in me, and we'll make new heirs to my throne.
He'll learn: these locks don't have keys.
It's a golden bondage, my hair language.
You're lucky I keep my tongue tied.

*   *   *

CAR-FREE VS. CAREFREE
by Emily Scali

I double – no, triple dog
(dog sticking his head out of your mechanized window)
dare you to taste my liberation!

It tastes like guzzling gas, motor oil slushies, and
It tastes like ignorance seasoned with exhaust.
Your 4-wheel drive is crushing my car-free freedom.
Your hatchback fits more than my backpack.

But your primary, convenient, transportation method
is costing you 8 G's a year, on average,
with the average delusion that a Prius is prime for pleaing minor impact.

I feel the major impact, as my feet pound the pavement,
across the while lines of the crosswalk,
invisible to your yield, on green, when turning left.

I left and arrived on time (since)
I left you behind, stuck on the two-lane,
blocked with two tons of twisted metal.
I took measly manpower over horsepower.

Still, I can't get into the bar without a fuckin' plastic card,
saying that I can manage a machine, and that,
if I'd love to, my heart can be taken when I'm mangled in a wreck.

But my heart? It goes out to the squirrel pancake and insect mush you made
On your six block trip to the store, for shit
too bulky to buy and bike back to your big garage.

I'd back down, but your coupe just cut me off.
I've trailed in your tail lights
I'm sick of you shifting the sidewalk for shoulders
And making lots. And lots of excuses.

I've left the dream of an Aston for acquisition of asphalt alternatives and anti-auto creams.
I know you get more miles with your hardtop than my hightops,
But your ticket for speeding's still more than mine for the city bus

I won't dis your rhymes, just your ride,
since your rims are so dull
and your shiny paint is suffocating my style.

I can't drive it in more, but
Curbing your colored, convenient chariots
And trading your Geico for some cardio
is key to parking parallel to my position.
Since your heap, is too heavy, for the road we're on.

*   *   *

WHAT YOU USED TO THINK
by Charlie Langton

Maybe I could write it like the French.
All I wanted was to be a blond.
Have it thick, but short,
parted in the middle.
Or curly even. Kinky.
That would be okay.
That's all I ever really wanted.
Write it like the French, that's the ticket.
Or sound translated from the Spanish.
But first you've got to plan it out,
you've got to have a plan.
Figure what you want, then get it.
Just don't go to places where you feel unhappy,
don't see people who make you feel sad,
stay busy and it falls in place.
Of course you'd need some money,
can't do much without the money.
Then you could have a companion,
buy him stuff, a pool to show him off.
This is Roger, my secretary,
helps me out with things.
Like that, but first you gotta plan.
Of course you can't be a blond if you're not,
driving out in the perfect sun
with the top rolled down
and a horn that plays a tune.
That's the truth, it's what's inside that counts.
You might be alone, but you don't have to be lonely.
Everyone's got something to offer,
you just gotta keep busy.

Them's the facts. That man,
it's incredible, you read it once,
read it in the papers,
said a man shot up his TV set
and then he shot himself.
Incredible, a Rams fan, left a note.
Just couldn't stand their fumbling any longer.
He wasn't a happy man.
He just didn't plan,
maybe he could've been for the other team,
then he'd've been happier,
like you know who to write like.
Of course, even great teams slump sometimes.
You just can't know these things, I guess.
I guess you just see this thing
and you say, no, I don't like this,
and then you see this other thing
and you think, yes I do, I like this thing here.
And then if the thing goes bad that you like,
or if you can't have it,
you can't just start up liking something else,
I mean, you're not a water faucet, are you,
on and off and on and off?
Cause you start liking something else,
and pretty soon you start to think, to say,
I still sure wish I had that thing I used to want,
I still sure wish I was what I used to want to be,
cause you can't stop thinking what you used to think,
you can't help it.
It's a problem.

You can't stop wanting to be blond,
but stay away from booze is all.
Roger may be out to bars,
but you stay home and write it like the French.
You work, the money comes.
Like that, it falls in place.
He'll look better lounging by a pool,
drinking up your gin for free,
he's bound to come, all that sparkle,
you just set your butt down now and write.
Polish up your accent, wait and see.
After all, who's Roger?
Just some joker trying to get tanned.
A man can't have it all,
don't get so hysterical, have kids.
Mondays you get drunk and free,
Tuesdays you're disgusted with yourself,
you're not a ping-pong ball, you know,
back and forth and back and forth.
Your friends should be enough, and work,
and knowing how he's bound to come, of course,
Sundays in the perfect sun,
driving by your hill to catch the glare
from off your pool and wonder,
quite the eyeful for your wife,
blond, with the top rolled down
and a horn that plays a tune,
and she'd like to ask him up for gin,
but you think not, a stranger,
and break her heart, like that.

*   *   *

COMMON GROUND
by Rob Carbonell

We are now on common ground. These boards, this floor, on joists, on walls of brick sit on the foundation buried steady in our Common Ground.

On the other side of this water and dirt covered rock we call home a village grows, people coming together to work, to love, to live and

Survive-all is job one. Draw one more breath, defying death long enough to make another

Generation! Imagination! Discovery! Eureka! Art! Invention!

Creation-ism, Buddhism, socialism, capitalism, minimalism, nihilism even the rejection of all "isms" has an

Is a man truly only as good as his word? I hope not, because words are cheap and easy to

Manipu-lately I've been thinking about God. Common Ground.

Humanity's oldest fictional truth, universally renowned from Tokyo to Toledo, every culture has a system of

Fffaitheist? Really? Of COURSE there's no proof of the existence of our gods! That's the point! The journey of belief is its own destination! Common Ground!

We hope for our children. We hope they don't cry, hope they don't fall ill, hope they won't die or have to learn how to kill, hope they don't become addicts or thieves, hope they won't fail and hope they won't grieve but they will and they do. Every parent that's ever been learns to painfully, joyfully let go. Common Ground.

Bi-Polar bears, Hindi African - Asians, Lesbian - Caucasians, Conservative - Transgender Irish- Brunettes, Liberal Japanese - Catholics, Red-Headed Italian Protestants, Gay Korean Muslims, Native American Jews, white-bread Lutheran Scandinavians like you and even me; all-of-the-none-of-the-above. Just another Ellis-Island Mutt.

We all share this water & dirt covered rock of Common Ground and we all know love.

Our differences are just inside-out translations of our samenesses; diversity is the similarity we all celebrate.

So take the hand of the person beside you – go on; do it. Feel the Common Ground…that they, too, masturbate.

*   *   *

NAMING THE ANIMAL
Nancy K. Barry

Because I was
a stranger in your house
I couldn't kill
the thing. I thought
you wouldn't let me,

It would mean pulling the bed away from
the wall, rearranging furniture
that wasn't ours. I remember how you said

"Don't bother.
Even the strangest
sounding feet
become familiar."
But I kept hearing

the sound of paws moving between the panels
of the bedroom, where space is the only sound
the dark syllabicates, in the accent of dreams.

All night
those feet ran
behind the bed,
between the floor
and ceiling, window and door.

Frightened, I felt for your hard breaths
with cold hands, listening to the animal's
scratches moving through our sleep with foreign

sounds neither
you nor I
could explain.
Still, you slept
purring like wind

upon the snow drifts. I felt for
the animal until my hands splintered
from the raw lumber. You awoke, cursing

my efforts.
"It's a damn
squirrel who's lived

twelve winters
inside the wall. Leave

him alone. He's warmer than I am."
Outside, the snow stacked like bricks
into walls around the house. Finally

I fell asleep, chanting
"squirrel, squirrel"
as he ran in rhythm behind us,
knowing that morning, the snow, and your eyes
would run and claw with stranger motions,
and I, in polite silence, would apologize

for waking you up.

*   *   *

HARD TIMES, GOOD TIMES
by George Shardlow

We are sitting in Cancun listening to "Jay" give us a tour of the resort.

He is explaining that if we were members of the "Private Residence Club," we could even ask the former chef of the King of Spain to come prepare us a meal out in the jungle (where they have spider monkeys!)

We are trying to explain to him that the only reason we are there is because we got a deal on our rental car by agreeing to come listen to his presentation on "Cancun's only eco-friendly" resort.

Rather than simply saying "no," my father starts to explain himself.

"I'm not getting a bonus this year, we have two mortgages, etc., etc."

Jay, gelled-hair Jay, perfect tan Jay, nods, faux-understandingly.

"I get it," he says, "Times are hard."

No, Jay

Times are wonderful

Hard times?

Hard times were when times were good.

Listen,

The days when we had a smaller house and our neighbors were closer,

Those were the days when we would laugh with our bellies.

The days when we had a pool and some acres?

Those were the days when I would plant my head in my pillow and think about smothering myself.

Times are good, because I finally like what I see in the mirror.

So, I don't care if I never sleep on Egyptian cotton sheets,

Because that's not hard for me to accept.

What's hard for me to accept is the idea that I would come to the land of Chichen Itza, and Dia de los Muertos, and Tecnochitlan and wall myself in with BLAH.

Because as we are walking past the pool,

I hear a teenage girl ask her friends why they don't like her.

And as we are, finally, driving away,

I see a poor, indigenous woman standing by the side of the road, laughing with her belly

Hard times?

Hard times were when times were good

Because the days when you had cancer were the days when I would think about you all the time.

So I hope hard times are here to stay.

*   *   *

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