1999 Ford Focus (Black)

When your mother lost her job at the radio station

the one she spent four years of her third decade

cutting checks to achieve

her father bought me as a gift

i was economical in the best of times

a convenient back end meant for cradling her banana bread

black because your mother never could keep a car clean

domestic, because despite his impressive portfolio

an import woulve been just too extravagant for her father

When your sister was able to sort out the angles

of the great sixteen year old paralellogram

she inherited my convenience

now i was some converted shoe rack

a black hatchback placeholder between

junior year and a maxima

She called me Ernie

Stupid fucking name

Made me sing Shania

And Shakira

And knowing these women on a first name basis makes me

want to grow opposable thumbs from my tailpipe

if only to stick lit matches in my mouth

When you and your girlfriend returned from college

and her car died from lack of california

they gave me to you both

and when you broke her

like teacups in the shadow of a sledge

she kept me.

nowadays

i have other smells

deodarants you dont wear

stains you didnt leave

but i cast my long memory on your sidestreets

i could be no other black 1999 Ford Focus

THe bumperstickers on the back of my thighs

still bear the prints of your thumbs

if its not too painfull to hear:

there is an empty pack of parliaments beneath the passenger seat

(his name is Franky)

he has never had anythin bad to say about you.

but hes a minority these days

working the back corner for scraps

while another man’s newports

mentholate

everything

Minty-fresh was really never your style.

Regionals 2010 For The Slam Geek

this is going to be highly-slam-math-intense. if you hate slam. dont read it.

This was the fifth regional slam ive attended. And not since the shitstorm 20 point beatdown of 2004 have I ever been in attendance for a regional slam that New Paltz lost. I clearly had no intention of breaking that tradition on Saturday.

It would be impossible to categorize all of what happened. In all my slam life it was the most exhausting competition ive witnessed. Emotionally and creatively and mathematically it was a wild, wild ride. I’ll do my best to give the highlights of how the competition transpired.

Setting the scene: four teams. Geneseo, Oneonta, Binghamton, New Paltz. The slam was held in Binghamton. Myself and the head coach of Oneonta were both in suits. We had a massive showing of slam fam alum. It was quite the sight. Predictably it was also an unbelievably disorganized event with a clueless host. So the scoring was a bit all over the place from jumpstreet

Oneonta draws the deathcard. We were to follow them directly. Kristen Tomanocy (more on her later) goes ahead and lays out a 30. From the A slot of an 4X8. Whats funny about this is that I dont disagree with the score, cus the poem is magnificient, but you gotta be wary of an A slot thirty in the first rotation of the biggest slam of your season outside of CUPSI.

We followed with our big, bad freshman, Mike Bunin. He does his thing perfectly, and comes away with a very respectable first-competition score of 27.0. This would be fine if Kristen hadnt just hammered us in the face. So now, two  poems into a projected 32 poem slam (with CUPSI registration on the line), we’re down by 3 full points. This is a massive hole to climb out of. Knowing pretty comfortably what to expect from Oneonta going forward we just kept pushing, hoping for some mismatches to exploit. We had purposelly front-loaded the first half of the slam with the intention of just punching oneonta in the nose early and forcing them to play catch up. Comically enough, we were the ones with the fat lip and playing from behind. Fortunately having those same poems up front was now more important because we need to cut into the lead, and fast.

(this is also assuming that bingo and geneseo wouldnt be a factor. not as an insult at all, but just based on the fact that it had been seven years since someone other than oneonta or new paltz finished in first of second place. i should also mention, as youll see, that this assumption wasnt entirely accurate)

The second rotation provided an oppurtunity for the lead to be sliced up. Given that we would be performing before or after Oneonta in almost every rotation, the head to head comparisons were important. Oneonta’s poet in the second rotation followed ours. Meg’s Corsets poem was preceded by her looking at me and saying “I am going to get a thirty. Do not worry.” Accurate prophecies notwithstanding, Megan’s 30 and the wake of it helped us cut that three point lead in half. after two poems.

The third rotation was another one I felt we could jump on. I had a definite preference in who I hoped Oneonta would use. I thought the poet they used would match up much better with my next planned poem. They did as I hoped. What i hadnt counted on was how much better this particular poet had gotten in the three months since i’d last seen him perform. Still i thought my poet would outscore him when the poem was over. Unfortunately it’s hard to outscore another perfect 30. Tom, my third poet of the first round is an absolute monster. He literally fell from heaven into my poetry lap out of goddamn nowhere. Knowing i couldnt cut the lead in this rotation, i just needed him to keep punching back for us. We couldnt afford lose more ground. Tom tends to be the least competitive/intense of the bunch so it was like a goosebump grenade in my face when he absolutely went IN, blew the room out, and slapped the shit out of my hand walking back to our area. Tom got our matching 30. Were holding steady at a 1.4 point deficit with five poems to go (or so we thought).

Then, the madness begins. We send up our grand slam champion with a heavy piece we hope will put a chink in the lead. About 30 seconds into the poem, one of our alternates in an entirely good-hearted but misguided effort, walks on stage with his camera (as he’s been filming everything for documentary purposes). This inevitably distracts the poet on stage, gives me a hand-waving, clipboard-throwing nervous breakdown, leads to a minor slip-up and the scores take a tumble. Oneonta slaps another 29.8 in our face and all of a sudden we are back to square one, behind by 2.8 points. All the while, were lookin in our rearview at a steam-rolling Bingo team that has just put two thirties back to back and is breathing down our necks. Not a good first half. We head to the break. I take the championship trophy from our section and move it to a more neutral table in the room. I dont wanna have to hand it over personally, so im just putting it out in the open, as the lead seems impossible to overcome.

First Half Scores:

Oneonta - 118.0

New Paltz - 115.2

Bingo - 113.3

Geneseo - 110.3

At the break things change significantly. The tournament director informs us that we had the format wrong. That the slam was three rounds, not two. That the top two teams after the next round (cumulatively) will move forward to a two-team, clean slate final round. (4X2). There was some discussion about how/when they decided and informed us of this. Regardless all four coaches sign on to this agreement and the slam moves forward in a whole new light. All we needed to do is fight back Bingo and get to the finals. Then Oneonta’s lead means nothing and its just four of ours versus four of theirs. My co-coach and i immediately reschedule everything. We move our bangers back to the “final” and plan to just skate by Bingo, no longer attempting to catch Oneonta.

Realizing now that our chances of repeating as champs just changed dramatically, Tracy, who is just a giant ball of pride in my chest, rehuddles the team out in the hall and goes Vince Lombardi on the team. I came out to find her and she was pointing her finger and getting the whole squad amped the fuck up. I turned into a goosebump. “ITS NOT FUCKING OVER”

We go back in renewed and juiced like a muthafucka.

We let Tom lead it off with the Einstein piece and he predictably slaughtered the rooftop. His 29.9 bested the 29.8 by Oneonta, so the lead has been shaved a bit. But as mentioned we were much more concerned with Bingo who opened the first rotation of round 2 with…another 30. Three in a row if youre counting at home.

Rotation two we send up the gslam champ with the Plants poem, which is one of my favorite funny pieces in years. Funny had been scoring fairly low so we knew it was a risk, but wanted the slam-submachine gun “Pen” in finals. He kills it. A 29.5 knocks some more polish off Oneonta. Their 28.6 means the Oneonta lead is now 1.8.

But…A FOURTH thirty from the hometown Bingo slam team has them 1.3 behind us. It’s an absolute fucking dogfight between the three of us now. With two poems left before finals.

Third rotation gives us Meg again, using a poem we knew would be over-time so shes somehow manages to shave off twenty seconds of the poem with the help of Kerri to get the piece jussst under time. 30.  Weve now outscored oneonta on five of the seven poems performed. Yet are still behind by 1.7 points. That 30-27.0 way back on poem one is still the difference. We’ve fought back twice in this event to get within striking distance. All we need to do now is hold off Bingo (whose 30 streak finaly broke with a 29.4 in rotation three of the second round.) in order to clean the slate and go head to head with our archrivals.

The choice is a tough one. We have a team piece in hand, and the last slot belongs to Bunin, the freshman who got that 27.0 a few hours earlier. No team piece used so far had scored less than 30, so it was a way to guarantee our way to finals, but we really really wanted to have it for finals cus I was fairly positive Oneonta had zero team pieces avauilable. We rolled the dice with Bunin’s “Fathers” piece. I’d been lobbying to use the poem all weekend and i was vetoed into using his other definite solo piece. I was confident if he killed the piece, we’d get our chance with oneonta. And i was right. Bunin’s 29.7 was enough to overcome Bingo’s fourth thirty in five poems. And we squeaked into the finals, trailing Oneonta by 1.5 with a clean slate in front of us.

Scores After Round 2

Oneonta - 235.8

New Paltz - 234.3

Bingo - 232.7

Geneseo 228.7

With the lead now gone, we were looking at a match up of depth. Whoever had the most poems would be at an advantage. We had to leave three poems out of the slam that we loved because we assumed only eight poems were required. Now we moved some things around and had a final set of four poems we knew could compete with anyone. It was more a matter of what oneonta was able to save, given that they knew they would be going to finals even if they each got up in turn, went to the microphone and farted into it.

We won the coin flip and took the B slot. It happened quick but the first score for Oneonta was a low 28.4. This was the open door. We needed to attack quickly, put them behind us and just push. We sent the team piece up. The boys absolutely mauled it. Room was going crazy, we were all jumping and screaming. Boys came back to hugs and screaming and 10’s. Lots of them. The thirty took the table and flipped it upside down. We were now up 1.6. Three poems from the win.

Oneonta’s second piece was a banger. They were not going to go away easily, and the 29.9 from the judges confirmed that for us. We had the PEN poem at hand and let it go. Chris kept punching back and his 29.9 maintained the lead with two poems left.

Oneonta puts up another tough score, 29.4. This started to smell like victory. I knew we had the best poem in our entire repertoire up next, Meg’s “Pendulum” poem. Barring something really strange happeneing there was no way the lead was going to slip. She got the 30. We’re now up by 2.2. It would take something epic and monumental to be able to outscore Tom Bair in the final rotation with that kinda lead. Oneonta did their thing, put a 30 in front of us and dared Tom to score a 27.9 or better. He got his second thirty of the night. (Tom finished with a 89.9 out of a possible 90).

And that means, we won regionals, somehow after all the shit that happened mathematically and emotionally. It was quite a little journey. And just for good measure, if you do the math cumulatively and not clean-slate, We still beat them by .2 (354.2-354.0).

I take the numbers more seriously than many people, and im okay with that. For one, i get OFF on slam/the math/the competitiveness of it. I mean, if the points arent the point, go to an open mic…right? There are better poets and poems and im comfortable with that. Slam isnt the best way to quantify those differences, and it almost always gives you a few wacky results, but its far and a way the most FUN and entertaining way for me to see how poets stack up. As dia has told me ten thousand times, I like to compete at everything. And im okay with that too.

The day i see a poetry slam cause actual bad blood between the npaltz and oneonta bond is the day i quit. I love those kids. I love my kids. I love the suny muthafuckin slam fam.

Back

To back

All time NYS championships in poetry slam.

New Paltz 4 Oneonta 4

No other school has ever finished better than third since 2004. Full amazing report on one of the most fucking intense and glorious poetry slams evaaaar coming later.

A quick nod to Sean and dia who are laughing at me uncontrollably for taking this wayy too seriously. Kiss kiss bitches.