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Robsonnet — Say Something
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Published: 2008-01-26 19:26:37 +0000 UTC; Views: 154; Favourites: 0; Downloads: 0
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SAY SOMETHING!So, here you are.
Now's your chance.
A stage, a mic, an audience--
What are you waiting for?
Seizing the microphone, you do not hesitate,
but launch straight into your free-style rant.
It is loud.
It is angry
It is obscene.
It is--boring.
And it is a fucking shame.
If you cared enough to try,
you could say something.
You have the voice, the rhymes,
the intelligence, the talent.
I keep hoping it will happen
every time you step onto the stage.
But you keep disappointing me,
wasting my time with 3-minute rhymes
devoid of any message but, "Fuck you!"
Look, if that's all you've got to say,
Then I say, you have every right to say it
whenever and wherever a microphone is open.
But for God's sake, why can't you just
say it, and sit down.
"Hello. Fuck you. Thank you. Goodbye."
Or even just, "Fuck you, thank you."
(I'll be damned; that even rhymes)
saving over two and a half minutes,
that someone else might use for poetry.
But hey, I might be wrong.
Perhaps, somewhere in that barrage of profanity and insults,
you have hidden a message
that I'm just not clever enough to find.
Maybe somewhere in your ranting
is a precious bit of truth,
enough to justify listening to the rest,
enough to justify calling the whole thing
a poem.
For that's a poem's purpose, yes?
To tell the truth,
the poet's truth, at least,
regardless whether I or anybody else agrees.
And if your truth is jarring or offensive to our ears,
well, that's a price we'll pay,
cause when the truth is painful,
that's a sign we really need to hear it.
But it seems to me that you offend just for the hell of it.
You don't express conviction or belief in anything.
You bruise our ears, the way you turn
the pithy, potent beauty of our language
into noise, inane, profane, and hopelessly mundane,
in which you hide, lacking even
the poet's courage to reveal yourself,
except for that one outstretched middle finger.
You've simply got to try a little harder.
Learn to share some different emotions.
Treat your audience with some respect
and show us what we should respect in you.
Act like you care about us, so that we
will want to know who you are, so we'll care
what you feel and what you've got to say.
Cause till you do that,
all I feel like saying when you're done
is, "Hello. Thank you. Fuck you too. Goodbye."
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Comments: 10
Thanks for reposting.
While it wasn't why I asked to see the poem again, the last stanza is especially poignant considering a recent episode in my argumentation class. A classmate gave a brief and unsupported presentation on how global warming was "bogus."
When the time came for questions, I asked specifically about melting in the polar ice-caps. He said that was "irrelevant." Someone wanted to know about coastal dwellers. He replied with "[If it is real,] let 'em drown."
I shot back, "Well then screw you, too." My professor told me after class to keep my attitude in check.
When my classmate is being flippant and utterly dismissing the lives of a billion people, whose attitude needs checking?
-Michael-
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Incredible as it seems, there really are people who are so sincerely clueless as to support such a position, and being rude to them just reinforces their prejudices.
SW/Slam is not the politest of free speech forums, but this is meant to be a fairly mild-mannered rebuke. I've scored pretty well with it, generally much better than with some other pieces I think are better written, like "Don't Call Me Sir" and "Jester." I think it's partly because people aren't expecting a gray-haired poet to be dropping the F-bomb.
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One day, I hope to have the courage to go for an open mic night...I have an issue with stagefright, believe it or not.
And my thoughts aren't related to "fuck you" except to racists, sexists, and general assholes who waste time hating.
Maybe one day I'll get some cajones.
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Open mic poetry is lots of fun. It doesn't have to be "spoken word" pieces; most of us start by sharing things we wrote as "page" poetry, then over time start seeing how to take advantage of the differences to say things we might have a harder time presenting any other way.
If you find your way to an actual slam venue, you're likely to see the poetic envelope pushed way further than you might have ever imagined. You'll probably be a bit intimidated--I sure as hell was--but you'll notice there is a lot of variation in levels of talent and experience, and always room for a new voice. This is "poetry for the people," sometimes racy, sometimes raucous, but nearly always real.
Oh, and you don't have to say fuck.
But sometimes it helps.
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*chuckle* I do not fear the word 'fuck'...for I am She-Ra, Princess of Power...
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I keep promising myself to see that show next time it comes to Salem College.
I expect the common theme between the two is the element of determination to speak the truth, even a bit of an 'in your face' quality.
No... I don't imagine you do, probably you'd be even less inhibited than I.
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I've never *seen* the Monologues either, but my friend Dodi (here, she's *DivineNimbus ) has her monologue that she delivered while she was a student at Cornell.
Me? I dunno...if I ever sat down to actually write it, I *might* be able to deliver it. I've only ever spoken one of my poems, and it wasn't at this level at all...and since I have a degree of stagefright, it was beyond difficult.
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Some people love the limelight and don't have any qualms about making fools of themselves in front of an audience. Some dread doing anything that draws attention, even asking a question in class. Most of us are somewhere in between.
Since SW is something nobody HAS to do, you just have to decide whether being heard by an audience is important enough to you to justify the effort it takes to push yourself up to the mic and talk.
I might never have tried it, had the opportunity not come at a time when I was needing to reinvent myself, and determined not to let fear stop me from anything I wanted to experience.
I'll never be a top competitor in slam; I just don't have enough acting talent to sell my conviction to the audience consistently. Plus I have the handicaps of being old (compared to most of the audience and other competitors) and white.
But I gotta tell you, it's an amazing feeling, when you do connect with the audience. Slam is all about bringing the poetry to the people, taking it out of academia (which hates it) and trying to move people with it who might not even think they like poetry. It gave me a whole new respect for the power of this art form.
Hmmm... Now where did this soapbox come from? I think I may need to do a journal on this subject sometime soon.
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That's different, because it matters, I guess. Vagina monologues *mean* something to me; I've just never been put to it - in that setting or any other. I think in a *random* situation I'd pale. 
Slam poetry is amazing to me. There is some forking AMAZING talent there. Dr. Ed, you've read my writing - I don't *fit* in that. 
Your soapbox came from your heart. I heard it. 
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