A Slam Poem

Day 4. What's up?

So today I was planning on typing out a post about something I did but it wasn't really coming together very well so I have decided to push that post back until (at least) tomorrow and instead will be publishing something I wrote for my English class during senior year. I hope that sounds okay to you.

I must confess that I never like English classes. Not that I didn't view them as important or anything, because I did. I know that it's important to learn proper mechanics, usage, and execution of language. If I wasn't required to take an English class every year of my educational career, I wouldn't speak or understand the language nearly as well as I do and I certainly wouldn't have the confidence to run this blog. It's because of those classes that I understand grammar and spelling and communication in general.

But even though I learned a lot in my English classes, a lot of the material seemed trivial at times. Why did I have to read books that were written 250 years ago, books with lessons that I can barely understand or apply? There are books with much better lessons and more relatable characters and plot-lines than the ancient ones we had to study. I often felt like the English classes I took in school were very outdated and could've used a refresher in what literature was.

And so, most of the English classes I ever took went this way. I passed the classes easily because I understood the language well, but I never really enjoyed the classes because they seemed stale and boring.

Until my senior year.

In my English class during 12th grade I had the good fortune to be in a class that had a student-teacher in it, and man, this guy was the coolest. His name was Mr. Ramjoué, and he was sick. He was a young guy and I really connected with him and enjoyed his teaching style a lot. He was super good at involving people in conversations and pushing people to be creative and think about things in new ways.

Now of course Mr. Ramjoué still had to stick to the assigned curriculum, but he did a lot of things that I really liked. He had us explore different writing styles and try to write in ways that we (or at least I) had never tried before.

One of these ways was through slam poetry.

After a few periods explaining slam poetry, giving us examples, and teaching us about general guidelines, Mr. Ramjoué let us loose and we went at it. There were few criteria except a word limit. We had complete control over our narratives, and he wanted us to run with it.

Here is the result of what I came up with. This is not a flawless poem, I know. But it was my first stab into the slam poetry void and I thought it was at least decent enough to share on this blog. Maybe I'm wrong.

Let me preface this by saying that it is entirely fictional. Not one bit of this is based on my own personal experience. I made it all up, it's fake.

Or is it?

I'll leave that judgement up to you.

So here it is, my slam poem, entitled "YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER LET ME GO"

"You said you’d never let me go.

Back in those days when we first tasted the sweet burn of passion, you promised.

“It’s you. It will always be you,” you said.

I guess your always wasn’t as long as mine was.

I remember the day that I came across the stunning perfection that you are. The bookstore we met in seemed to not only fade away, but disintegrate out of my consciousness when you walked by for the first time. The world lost all of its importance because it was stolen by the beautiful thief that you are.

I didn’t know that a person’s existence can make you hallucinate, but I swear each book you passed jumped off their shelf, hungry, desperate, longing for a single touch from you. I saw the words launch off their pages, begging you to read them just once.

You said you’d never let me go.

I wanted to write a story with you. I wanted our tale to be full of the elegant, charismatic plotlines they say you can only find in fiction. The books I had read infected my mind enough to make me believe that you were my destiny; I thought that you could be my heroine.

You weren’t a heroine of boldness and bravery, but you sure were a drug. The irony is almost funny enough to laugh at.

Almost.

You said you’d never let me go.

And so, the words we wrote together splashed onto my pages like dust to a photograph. The connection was magnetic, and the story we were creating was becoming increasingly interesting.

And I kept thinking about how you just might stick around until my story read “The End.” Maybe, just maybe, you could be the one that would kiss me goodnight for the very last time. The thoughts kept flying through my mind, and I kept wondering about how our story might finish.

But one day, I stopped wondering.

Because when you chose him, I knew our sentences were finished. I knew that when I caught you with him, I wasn’t the one you wanted to write a story with anymore. You severed everything that we had with your selfishness and your carelessness, and you broke my heart harder than I had ever thought anything could be broken. It wasn’t just shattered; it was obliterated.

You said you’d never let me go.

You were supposed to be in my story for longer than you were. But each night I spent with tears soaking my lungs and fragile breaths escaping my eyes, I realized that maybe a chapter of you is all I could handle.

I thought I meant something to you. But I suppose I was just another word, an insignificant assemblage of letters easily forgotten in your flawless narrative.

I hope the next boy you write is ready for a few pain-filled pages.

You said you’d never let me go,

but I guess maybe you just weren’t holding on in the first place."

SEE YOU TOMORROW

(Note: I am aware that slam poems are typically better when performed, not when read. There may be a time soon when I upload a performance of this poem to this blog. Stay tuned.)