He’s walking to the stage.
What is he gonna say?
The most amazing slam poet you’ve ever heard,
Weaned on the coal fired curds of black tooth mountains,
Lava fire fountains of spoken destruction raining his brimstone down on vulnerable onlookers,
Their fingers taut against the underside of tables, bleacher benches,
The pew sitting faithful unable to utter a whimper from the gape of quivering lips,

Why, all the other challengers just flipped out and ran at the pounding of his steel toed sentences,
Belly-splitting, pop-culture comedic references,
Tearing down fences of their puny imaginations with one flick of his tongue!
He’s so good any other slammer would be risking verbal castration,
Performance suicide against the onslaught of such an unstoppable foe.

So you might as well suit up and strap your fat jowls in for the ride,
‘Cause you can’t hide from the unleashed microphone, fury-filled,
Iron-willed, sensually appealing power of the most amazing slam poet you’ve ever heard!
He’ll turn judges scorecards into 10 to the 10 to the 10 to the 10 to the 10 to the…
High scores! Really, really high scores!!

Don’t even start thinkin’ I’m talking about me,
‘Cause he’d shrivel all my Shaggy lookin’, red-haired wildness to a shrunken, walnut sized thing I used to call a brain.
I’m just the warmup for the fourth string splinter puller of the third string pine rider
To the 5th string backup spit bottle carrier for the replacement understudy to…
The most amazing slam poet you’ve ever heard!
And I feel his presence now, approaching the stage.
Oh, man, he’s so good!
What is he gonna say?

But the most amazing slam poet I’ve ever heard didn’t say anything.
She couldn’t even speak,
Too weak and incapacitated to utter a sound or even rise from her bed,
All the mental synapses in her head riddled with 8 years of Alzheimer bullet holes,
But every memory or ability stolen from her body couldn’t stop the joy explosion in her eyes
Every time we’d arrive.
And it wasn’t just inside her.
It was all around her,
Coming from her,
Flowing through,
Her mind gone,
Body feeble,
But she had something that made her human,
Made her God-like.
Gave her treasure that nothing on earth or in heaven would ever take away.
She didn’t need to say anything,
The wealth and beauty of her life uttering more volumes than any poet could ever pen.
My grandmother knew what it meant to live,
Even in the face of suffering that seemed to have no end.

So when it’s my turn,
And the real performance of my life has begun,
I remember how she won the race,
Her adventurous pace of living forever that cheated the grave,
Speaking to me every time I turn the page or come to the stage.
So now the microphone’s yours.
What are you gonna say?