The Way I Write | A Slam Poem
I was asked to write- on the way I write-
That steady demarcation of black on white.
I suppose, your query
Was not, by hand or type?
But why I chose, this guise
Playing loose with my prose
A mix-
Of decisions and provisions
Hurdles, Opportunities
That have coalesced or disapaced.
I decided-
That I would never let ‘words’
(and their purported real-ness, diction’ry defin´ed-ly)
confine me.
If Shakespeare is so lauded
For all he recorded
And credits abound
For the words he set down
Than why
should I
Keep within the bounds
Of letters as they ought to be
All ordered accordingly
See-
I always read aloud
...just in my head.
The very idea
Of running your eyes
over a wordy summise
and not hearing spoken
Lyrics unbroken
baffles me!
It’s also, clearly, hampered me,-
I cannot read without narrating and that’s mild-infuriating.
Basely confining me
to consume text stringently
no faster, than that voice, in my mind, allows me.
But-
I think it also forces me,
to wend words chorally,
To navigate
each note
I pen,
Aurally
If I am forced, the world consuming, to constantly narrate
I might as well find places where that will carry some weight
Not be a hindrance horrendous
but a harmony stupendous
A hymn of declined declensions
For me to propagate
Where also-
my drudging dyslexia, won’t
Necessitate
I
exile
in absentia
Where my scribblings won’t-
be held up for wrong homonyms,
mispent commas
and mispelt ostentatia
I’ve always been caught,
In a bind of distance
Between myself
And what meaning a page will insist on
I twist my words, I lay them out lengthways
And somehow people still don’t get what it all say
I knew what I meant, how did they not?
And it’s why I write to be spoken a lot
I take some of the base
instincts of comedy.
Never repeat a word
when it precarious synonym
will provide more colourfully.
I did learn something from all that schooling.
That compliance with assonance produces a resonating song
That artful alliteration is aesthetically alluring.
And some things come
simply from
repeated nights
Tacked before the machine.
When you’ve graduated from, the pen and the sword
the word-processor primes you
to play with position.
‘The english language is wonderfully reworkable.
Language in english reworks wonderfully.
Work and re- your wonderfully language, English.’
Never too seriously
Never too tight
Never repeat or run a’mill or run away from the fight
Experiment and play and don’t fear their laughter
Read broadly, listen widely and write even farther.
And you’ll make mistakes
You’ll look back and self-censure
But you’ll have written a line here, a piece there,
good ventures
You’ll write upon your writings, moving up and moving out
And you’ll write yourself to here
With all the life you’ve writ about