Slice of Life Post for April 23, 2024

It’s Friday night, the crowd is large inside the Viking Theater at Grandview University in Des Moines, Iowa. I’m ready to perform. I’ve practiced hard, and I’m confident. At poetry slams, you draw a card to determine the order of performances. I’m number 3. Five judges are on the panel: Paul Brooke, Dawn Terpstra, Caleb the Negro Artist Rainey, Jennifer Knox, and Leah Waughtal-Magiera.

It’s my turn and I perform my poem with emotion and energy. By the end, the crowd is laughing, applauding loudly, and I feel really happy about my performance. When I get to my seat, the gentleman sitting next to me congratulates me and says, “You rocked it!” The judges’ ratings are verbally reported, and sadly my ratings are not all that great. My highest score is 9.4 and my lowest is an 8.1. Nuts!

My goal for this event was to make it into the second round. I really had two other powerful poems I wanted to share. As I sat listening to the other poets, I kept debating about which one would be best. I thought I had a good chance of moving on, but it seemed like the judges began to rank people higher after my performance.

Who understands how these things happen, but when they say goodbye to the people who will not advance, I’m on the list. My heart sinks. I feel stupid and like a complete loser. I am also perturbed because two people who advanced, I believe did not perform as well as I did. For the second year in a row, I do not advance. I’d already decided I would not do a slam again, but now this decision is firmly sealed.

Last night I woke up around 2 in the morning and it was my failure to advance was my first thought. I am truly struggling to let this go, but I know this is disappointment is not a big deal considering things that really matter. It’s just a big deal in my mind. Who the heck gave me the 8.1 is my big question. Why so low? I have thoughts that my age is a reason. More and more I feel impacted by ageism biases in society.

I am also haunted by the fact that I realize I was four seconds over time which gave me a .04 reduction in score. Had I had those points, I would have advanced. So now I can just be unhappy with myself, again feeling like a failure wondering how I went over time. I practiced so hard three different poems. I keep second guessing myself. Maybe if I should have done that poem or that poem, and if I had I would have been performing in the second round.

One thing that helps assuage the pain was the fact that so many people commented on my performance the next day when I attended the Poetry Palooza workshops. One lady said that I inspired her. She said my performance made her believe she could also compete. (Yes, she is a person of age, too). The best part occurred in the afternoon when I attended Deb Marquart’s session on writing eco poetry. I have been a fan of her poetry since the early 90s. I shared that with her and asked her to sign her newest released book. She wrote me the best note ever, and so even though I’ll probably still feel like a complete loser for months, I can open her book and feel some pride about my last poetry slam performance.

I'm sharing the poem I performed. Thanks for reading my blog today:)

my father was an angry man,
an angry, angry man
and who could blame him
five kids, really six, a daughter
who left him for her adopted father

his divorce made front page news
his wife, he said, was crazy jealous
he couldn’t live that way

later he married my mother
a round faced 5 foot two woman
he described as pleasantly plump
an angel really
stricken with disease at 36
bed-bound until her death at 60

so who wouldn’t be angry with
an invalid wife
five kids at home to feed
five feral scrappy kids
always fighting
we learned to endure his wrath
learned to tread carefully, 
so often full of fear,
fear of his attention, his path of destruction
we were the ruins of his life

and he was always full of advice

I remember once he tried to tell me
I could do better
I could be on the top step
that the boy I was seeing
was the bottom step
yeah, he kinda was,
but the top step
never
I never could commit
to such high stakes
I Just wanted to be loved
feel loved
maybe even worshiped 
a little 

and after my mother passed
he started dating
a whirlwind of women
that had our heads spinning
and all that advice he’d given
was quickly forgotten

I remember my sister’s story,
how she got a call from a mall cop
there was a situation she had to help fix
my sister who was due with twins any day
had to go to the mall
to find that my Dad had fallen
and was drunk
when she got there she heard the cop say,
Richard, do you know you’re wearing two ties?
damn right, I know I’m wearing two ties

you see my dad was color blind
needed his girlfriend’s advice
about which tie looked right
a girlfriend that wasn’t so nice

after all these years remembering
the fear he instilled
I just want to tell him,
Dad, you could have done so much better
you could have been on the top step
that woman you were dating was on the bottom step
but I know he just wanted to be loved
feel loved
maybe even worshiped 
a little