Toronto Poetry Slam - Online open mic

In a vacuum;
Consumed by creative language in my brain...
Strange thing is;
Most days I feel pretty sane,

Sometimes midnight grows teeth and calls soft,
Some nights I just can’t seem to get my demons off:
The hooks hit high upper cuts like flying fish,
Framed mistakes;
Painted in pained expressions of the state,

For art,
A sense of self and a chance to be great,

For eternal rhyme and passionate, colourful addiction,
For grief and release,
The Immaculate Conception;
A heart beat that started just over two years ago,
Ever-loving respect for the moment and the glow...

For torpedo punch lines driving pilings into the bedrock;
For bam bam, the green star and the diseased disciple’s rising stock,
For trade, craft and laughs in RD's basement,
For taking it directly to the faces of racists,

For equal rights, love and a shot at humanity;
For Calypso Joe and Mary Jane calamity,

For God dammed us or didn’t...
It’s up to us to figure the riddle,
For reaching for the top
Without forgetting the middle,
The bottom,
The trap door of the gutter:

I write for my life to overcome a quiet stutter
Of the heart and the truth and the fire inside;

For taking a stand and realizing we have to decide,
Do we hide?
Do we shine?
Do we let the anger get our best?

Do we rise up to the challenge: put our fists up in protests?
Do we guard ourselves peaceful, with a wing and a prayer?
Do we just learn to cope with liquor and dope,
Without the secret hope of Divine Intelligence out there?

Because we’re scared,
I’m scared;
That I’ll never make amends,
For the weight of the world that Atlas’s arms attempt to not bend,
For the chance to dance in the dusk of a dream,
For this illusion to never end...

For us to grow old together and watch our children do it all over again;
I write for the future,
Not
To make friends.

But if I do;
I will call them for what they are:
We are all specks in this galaxy of dust,
But the realest:
Are all stars.

And I’ll do it till the satellites block me out,
The signal tweaks and fades,
Until the last ray of sun
Just up and explodes;
Leaving the remains scattered in grey:
I do this to live on,
Because we will find a way
To get better.

This is my cheap therapy,
An open letter,
My call to arms,
Our last kiss of history,
A mystery of magical proportions
Stretched across a timeline obscured and blurred beyond any mortal’s ability to comprehend;
We do it for the love,
But not to make friends.

And the reward is found in the effort you make,
Not the winnings you take home,
But don’t tell that to the poet;
Who came to get famous
And win money
For a poem.