For four days, the best of the best spewed the most gut-wrenching and heart-clenching poetry LA has heard in a while.

SlamCharlotte Takes the Title as Champion at the First Annual InkSlam Poetry Festival
Move over New York City, Los Angeles is the new home of slam poetry. Every Tuesday night for the past 11 years, Greenway Court Theatre has been the home of the immensely popular Da’ Poetry Lounge, which has become the nation’s largest ongoing, open mic spoken word event. The soul-searching, quick-talking, and groove-loving regulars of the series have been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, won Tony Awards, and have been recognized as some of the country’s finest spoken …

If you spend enough time on Earth, you begin to think of religion as a clever way to charge for something that is inherently free. Spirituality is like photosynthesis for the soul, whereas religion is a kind of shuttered greenhouse, artificially controlling everyone’s growth rates.

Like a hologram, you have to approach Los Angeles from just the right angle, or it appears to be a flimsy nothingness. This is why housing prices here never really hit bottom; if real estate is all about location, and that location exists only in your mind, then Los Angeles is perpetually located in the hottest market. So where is here, in a city based on imagination? If you accidentally fall asleep and forget to project your own reality, does it all vanish overnight?

“The Indians are circling the wagon.”
“The rich buy art and keep prices inflated.”
“We’ve been sold down the river by big money.”
“The social safety net is dismantled- its a house of cards.”
Billy Shire fired off these warnings as he held court in his office at the recent Billy Shire Gallery opening reception for artists Tony Fitzpatrick and Chris Mars.