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The Just Poetry slam site, blog and gallery have moved!

You can now visit us @ www.justpoetryslam.com
and find out your latest Just Poetry News.

Come early, come often, come soon, come slam!

Now we return you to your regularly scheduled life.

Happy Holidays

Happy New Year Poets!!!!!! I hope everyone had a wonderful time with family and friends!! I know some you have been greatly inspired over the holidays. Just to catch everyone up.....The December 2005 Just Poetry winner is a man whose name is defined as "to recite the details of..." it's.......Naaaaarrrrraaaaatoooor. (Congrats) His poem was off the chain. I also would like to thank Eric for coming out. Eric......you had some deep words in your poetry. It was also great seeing Rasul "the nobody".

There was also a specil treat at this Slam. Two young girls were so inspired by the poets at the November Slam, that they decided to come out and slam at the December Slam. These girls are eight and six. It was such a joy to see poetry inspiring all ages.

Well, the January 2006 slam is comming up. Please sign up on line and be on time. We allow 12 poets to slam and the winner takes home $100 cash. If you sign up on line, please check in with TrayJay by 7:45pm. We also have allowed time for Open Mic. Open Mic anyone can sign up at the slam. You are not judged and you can read/recite another poets work. Please come on and enjoy.

Wordsmith's keep the pen/pencil flowing

TrayJay

Season Two

The November 2005 Slam was a real treat. It was nice to see the new and familar faces. Our winner was TS. (Give that man a Hand) TS has been putting it down for almost a year. He has been working with some very good poets (Lyric Av). I was happy to announce TS as the winner of the Nov. 2005 Just Poetry Slam.

Then we had Open Mic.........that's when a different side of the Slam was exposed. Poets got on stage and verbal reminisced their poetry. Thank you for sharing your world with us.

The December 2005 Slam will be on 12/12/05. That's right we will not be at Cafe Guternberg. The last Monday of the month lands on the day after Christmas. So please come out.

Happy Holidays to All

TrayJay

Two Double 0 Six

It is now time for our Next Season of the Just Poetry Slam!!!! DL and I had to take some time off to recollect and reflect. We had an incrediable Just Poetry 2005 season. We are very thankful for all of the positive energy that came from it. There were soooooo many good poets with different styles. It is awesome to know that Richmond has so much hidden talent.

So thanks again to the Poets, the audience, and the judges that came to our Just Poetry 2005 grand slam. Also special thanks to Yellow House for all your support. (Stephanie and Justin you are the best) Thank you FireHouse Theater for allowing us to express ourselves in your space. Thank you James River Writers for everything. Most of all thank you Switch for your sponsership. If I misssed anyone then I would like to take the time and say thank you.

Now on to the Two double 0 six season (2006).

I would like to thank T.S. for running the Poetry Jam at Cafe Gutenberg. I heard we had a great turn out. I hope to see all of the poets from the Poetry Jam at the Poetry Slam.

Please remember that if you want to Slam to register online. And we do have an Open Mic after the Slam. You can sign up in person for Open Mic.

So Wordsmiths keep the pen moving.

TrayJay
"DL's partner in Rhyme and Tyme"

Little Tidbits

We had two winners of the regular slam, that were unable to partake in the Grand Slam. One was Taheem the other was Tina. Tina has moved to PA and could not take off from work. Below are two poems by Tina........We miss you.

Gender Poem

They say that this is no place for the bending of ingrained gendering.
they locked up eyes, chained down tongues to keep anyone from chanting
There is always room and space for bending.
A community, a crew, a gang, a gaggle of pride eyes;
we intertwined solidarity elbows because fighting your oppression
is still fighting our oppression. As far as we see one more voice shouting,
is one more voice heard and there is always room and space for bending.

They can pluck out our pride eyes; we’ll learn to feel this expression out,
make it come through our skins. If they can harvest our cells to study,
we’ll show them how to see our pasts without eyes –
how to take this voice box and make noise!
If they take our chords to string up, we’ll stamp our hands and feet
to wild-gut rhythms till they cut them off, displaying our digits as wall trophies.

Cuz they choose you your gender and they tell you your sex,
before they ever even see the color of your eyes;
and Lord help you if you’re born in some space between pink and blue.
They dress you up in fire truck sweaters and frilly lace dresses;
and may The Goddess look out for you if they put you in a dress
because it is surgically easier to dig a hole then to build a mound.
They take all our possible vastness as humyns, things innate unto ourselves,
and they stuff ‘em down two pigeon holes – like right and wrong, black or white,
boy or girl.

And they tell you that you gotta have the sheness or the heness,
and that those with the sheness gotta love those with the heness
so we can get into that quintessentialness of god’s divine plan.
Well, I ain’t down with that shit, and if their “god” can’t handle that,
then it ain’t a synthetic myth they’ve created that I’m gonna celebrate.
See, the molds of gender are broken cuz because we ain’t seen it
as a boy/girl thing in so many years.
And I reminded every day by those around me,
that biology is not a hard science,
that the soul is larger than the package it came in,
and that things like sex and gender are made of liquid –
and that’s the kind of vast fluidity to which
we will proudly stamp our hands and feet.

Voicemail

Y’know, sometimes I don’t get me,
and most times I don’t get you,
or why I take it to heart and you take that hurt
and put it in your heart; and then we perpetuate
this cycle of loving and hating the things we fight about –
because, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter
if you had this or that tone, or I wanted this or that thing,
because at the end of the day the only thing I really want
is you.

And I must confess the thing I’m sure you know:
my emotions are always on overdrive.
They’re hard to hold and wrangle into rationale,
with the wild, wild horses of my heart
beating faster than I could have imagined when
I came into this world.

So I call, minutes after slamming the door,
because I take every word to heart and I expect the worst,
and that thought of you not being there when I get home
is more than I think my fragile heart can take.
and I thinkIbreakatinypieceofyou every time I slam that door,
like your heart is between the framework. I know mine is.
So, I break you, I break me and I break us,
and then stand in the school aisle of a craft store
wondering what I’m gonna do,
how I’m gonna craft a way in my mind
to get you into my head so you can see
all the things I can’t ever seem to show you right.

So I call, making friends with your machine, but what can I really say?
I don’t know how to form words through frayed lines of disconnection,
and then there is that daunting, ever looming, fear of you giving up,
pulling out, pulling up the stakes and traveling on,
leaving me with my transparent tape and glue stick
wanting to fix it all so easily.

So I call, listening to your voice on the machine
because that’s better than the echo of my over reaction,
better than you in your silence of uncertainty,
it’s better than my inability to hold you
as long as we need
in this moment.

And even in this poem I am talking circles,
because I am spinning in this wanting
to tell you that I make so many mistakes,
I forget to say so many things
like I love you and I’m sorry
And I don’t want you to mistake me
for unloving, uncaring, unconscious of
the space between us, but yes!
It scares me to give you my full weight
because then because then
then I am at your mercy!
My stomach is in my throat, my heart is in your hands –
squeezed between fingers gripped tightly;
and if I slam another door or take another thing the wrong way,
you’ll squeeze harder, feeling the energy of my pulsating snare drum –
and simply extend your hand flat; fingers spread Bob Fosse style,
and watch it plop to the floor gasping for recitation,
for reciprocation, for breath.

Grand Slam 2005

On September 26, 2005 The Just Poetry Slam had their Grand Slam. We were blessed to have the top 10 poets from the monthly slams. The following poets particapted in the Grand Slam:

Joe "LMS" Greene (2nd Runner up)
Charles "CJ" Jones
Darlene Scott (3rd Runner up)
Preston
Kelly Lane
Iman Shabazz (4th Runner up)
Rasul "The Nobody"
Rachel
Narrator (1st Runner up)
Chances R Goode (Winner)

The competion was incredible. Each poet came with their game/poet face (whatever that really means). The winner of the Just Poetry Slam is Chances R. Goode. This poet stumbled accross us in August 2005. August was the first time he had ever Slam and he tied with another poet. So I guess his name speaks for itself.

I would like to take this time again to thank each of the poets for particapting in the Grand Slam. Each of you were wonderful. I know it is hard to stand on a stage, be judged on your words and creativity.

D.L. and I are going to take a break and regroup. There will be no Jam or Slam in October 2005. But, the words will began to pour again in November 2005. Please remember if you sign up on line your name is on the list. The list fills up quick. We are only accepting 12 poets to compete. This gives us an opportunity to hear the poets that would like to do Open Mic. You do not need to sign up on line for Open Mic.

Wordsmiths kept writing. Newcomers keep coming to the experience.

TrayJay

The Grand Slam

The time is near. We are finally at the point were there can only be ONE. The Grand Slam is Sept. 26, 2005 at the FireHouse Theater at 8pm. Good Luck to all of the poets.

We did have two poets that were not able to compete. The first is a young man who came all the way from the Tidewater area. His words made me go back and rethink the way I was writing my poetry. His poem was about "What would you write...If you knew you were going to die tonight". His energy and words flowed through the crowd like lighting.

So...just to give you a sample of what you missed..... below is a poem by TAHEEM.

Peace TrayJay

"The Poet's Responsibility"

My responsibility as a poet is to use the stage like Bally’s, Gold’s Gym, Nordic Track, Flex squared: that’s

Solo and Bo,

In other words find some way to get my work out and leave an impact on my genre like Bob Marley,

that’s why the flow stays sharper than Steve Harvey with the intellect of Marcus Garvey,

the hustle of Tubman and the diction of Douglass,

Energy untapped like the cell phone number of Moses; unpublished and undiscovered, raw and uncut like the veins of a new born.

Do poems for the generations, I’m talking from

Atoms to Adam to Adam,

Atom being the particle that can not be broken down or reduced combined and used to form the molecules that define our very existence,

The second; slightly different, formed in God’s imaged and placed in the Garden of Eden to be tempted by the Nemesis of Michael the Archangel

but the third

Adam is much later, that’s A-D-A-M, After the Death of All Men,

when all righteousness and sin alike dissolve into an ultimate depth called Amen,

Amin, Ashe, so be it,

Elders need it, youth repeat it, so it’s time to bridge the gap between Hezekiah and Hendrix,

Methuselah and Mumia, the philosophy of Socrates and the lyrics of Kweli, and I wonder how Malcolm X would feel about black men calling their self State Property.

My responsibility is to sojourn with truth, in the midst of hypocrisy and hip hop monopolies

Because the crowd gets bored with poets that walk the coast of the Atlantic for cheap thrills like Baltic Ave,

So I say 1 for spoken word, 2 for intimate venues, 3 for dope artists that continue to reach the masses and encourage closet poets to join the ride,

But unfortunately every good thing has a negative flip side so it’s 1 for arrogant poets, 2 for disinterested hosts, 3 for people at the bar who talk while someone’s on the mic, and 4’s for second hand smoke,

5 for plagiarism, 6 for male bashing poems, 7 for the election in 2008 because too many non creative pieces about George W. Bush are killin’ the art form, even he’s like,

“Back then they didn’t want me, start a war they all on me”

These writers, basing their crafts on CNN headlines, but writing without reading is still illiteracy,

and so I stay on my grind like Sam Ralstein of the Tangiers minus the mafia ties,

so you won’t get caught up in the lies of someone who claims the revolution but has no involvement with the community,

Even Cab Calloway would shake his head at their buffoonery, walking pass the homeless yet prancing to the stage pretending to be an activist,

but I tell you: Garcia Vega is still a blunt, it just comes in clever packaging,

like Africans packed in ships during the middle passage, growing Tobacco on Jamestown settlements, and their descendants settling with being called anything but Africans, just as blasphemous as tracing the trail of tears with a wounded knee and not realizing that Apache’s and Cherokee’s were not savages, nor Indians, nor Native Americans because they cultivated this continent before Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci were ever here,

The spirit of fear pulls wool over your eyes like thick skull caps or Navajo quilts during a storm,

So let’s mourn for those chalk outlined poems, theatrics, and antics,

These semantics are designed to humble the middle class, keep determination alive in the hearts of blue collar workers, and encourage others to speak with credibility,

so this is far from a hobby, but this is my responsibility.