From 2006, “Just that Much or Something Similar” is the last slam I wrote for performance at the Empty Glass before Finn was born and I later moved to Pennsylvania and began my life as a family man. This details where I got to as a spoken word artist; I’ve told you that, early on, when I went wrote with the actual performance in mind, the actual performance was my focus and my subject. My primary concern was what I brought to the stage, because I knew if I didn’t bring anything to the stage, if folks didn’t take something away from it, then it was all for naught. I expected the same from others as well.
“Just that Much or Something Similar”
(A slam)
I want to be moved tonight,
that’s why I cared to leave the house.
That hope. That desire
to encounter
a real word stringer
an insightful vibe slinger
an in-tune with the Universe and it all
groove streamer.
That hope. That desire
to walk these East End streets
and come to meet
these stringers of words
and to hug old friends
and to lend an ear.
Listening…
Hoping…
I want to be moved tonight,
that’s why I cared to leave the house.
That hope. That desire
That some real sweet spitter
some bright atom splitter
some seeing through the green blips of the Matrix of it all flow fitter
will stand up and take the mic
and blow it up
and sway his or her ass
way out there,
risking absurdity in
classic Ferlinghetti style,
a word stringer who
done got beyond caring
what everybody thinks
and put it on the page
and brought it to the stage
to spit at folks who can take it.
I want to encounter a word slammer
who knows enough to say,
“Yes, the world is going to hell,
and we all just might be screwed,
but can’t we do
without some of the drama?”
Someone who can see the fine
dividing line
between living and creating
in the theoretical and the real.
Someone who can say, to life:
“All right. I see.
This is the hard of it.
This is what I have to take
to make it through.
I got ya.”
And then bends
to the task of taking
and making it through.
I want to see
a wave stringer who knows that
the words only begin on the page
and that there is no place
they can’t go from there,
the type of writer who knows
that they don’t have to change
the whole world with their words,
they only have to change their own.
If everyone would do
just that much
or something similar…
Paulelmo's Blog 