Come Saturday night, four teams, SLAM Charlotte, Bay City All-Stars, Elevated, and Empire MindState, were left standing. Though I was pulling for the San Diego team Elevated, it was SLAM Charlotte’s Tavis Brunson, Bluz, Quentin “Q” Talley, and Twenty20 who wowed the five judges and packed theater.

To read more about the event and the winning team click here for Sophie Kipner’s article.

Video by Sean McWilliams.

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 word poets, eager to take the stage to showcase their free-flowing intelligence, abundant with heart and wit. From November 4-7^th 2009, the Greenway Arts Alliance presented inkSlam, the first annual Los Angeles Poetry Festival at Greenway Court Theatre. After two days of workshops, the nation’s top eight slam poetry teams congregated at the 350-seat auditorium to battle for the title of inkSlam Champion. Winning team SlamCharlotte included poets Twenty20, Tavis Brunson, Quentin “Q” Talley, Andrew Tyree and team leader Bluz, a.k.a. Boris Rogers. Bluz, whose works are inspired by the people around him, is fueled by the crowd’s energy. “I’m always nervous before I go up,” he confides. “I have all these butterflies, but once I’m up there, the adrenaline starts going and it’s almost like a drug. The crowd is so receptive. It’s awesome.”

Bluz has led his team to consecutive victories at the National Poetry Slam in 2007 and 2008, and is the 2008 LEAF Festival Poetry Slam Champion. He is currently ranked as 13^th in the world for Poetry Slam after his successful bout at the Individual World Poetry Slam competition in Vancouver, Canada. Bluz admits that despite early dabblings, it wasn’t until high school that he dove headfirst into writing. “My high school teacher told me I wasn’t any good. I’m the type of person who, if you tell me I can’t do something, will find a way to prove you wrong.” With incremental positive feedback from family and friends, he started to write more often and in doing so, fell in love with the art of the spoken word. “I’m just pushing and going forward,” he tells me with kind eyes and a Cheshire Cat smile, concluding our brief chat after his team’s triumph. Now with an inkSlam champion title under his belt, this self-described people watcher is proving he’s got game, one competition at a time. And this time, it’s written in stone.

Bluz – Poet Reading
Slam Poet Reading

See the video of this event here!

Photos by Nancy Accomando and Bona Hong

HELP!!
Somebody please help!
I’ve been robbed
My freedom is missing
In the early light of dawn
I woke to find her gone
She was taken. I know it.
I found proof
through the night
I found leaked
confidential files,
and amended
constitutional rights

It’s like I was mugged
Woke up in a dark alley
With my credit cards untouched and
a pocket full of cash
But my voice was missing
So I was unable to shout
I am not that American
Once revered
now feared the world over
That’s not me
With the pimp strut and the “and what?” attitude
Creating contempt and ingratitude
In countries at every latitude on the map
That’s not me
I’m getting a bad rap.
But it’s not all my fault, I’ve been voice-jacked
My voice was taken
And I’ve been silent for too long
And Dr. King would agree
He wrote
Our voice
is the proof
we are free
On the presidential ballot of his grand children
And stuffed that poem in the ballot box
but his words had legs that
kicked the box open
so he gathered up the splinters
and built letters
like crosses/that spelled
FREEDOM
and he burned that up on the white house lawn and said
“I am no little boy building fires I can’t control.
I light up the night
so you can look around and see things clearly.
From this moment I will not bring us back but forward baby I move.
I march
I walk
I wont stop
until the mountaintop
And one morning I woke up from his dream
and into our nightmare and thought I’m tired
I’m tired of walking ‘round with my eyes down
And keeping my head low
And because I said so is not a good enough answer
To the question
Why in the world that we live in today
Is it less off ensive to bomb families than be gay?
Why is torture acceptable under any conditions?
Why do we engage in rendition?
And wage wars of attrition?
Why do we spend more money on prisons than schools
On poisons than cures
Why did you take my morality and replace it
with yours
And why did I let you?
And it was at that moment
that I spoke with our new President for the first time
And when I told him they took it
He said you gave it
And when I told him the world is lost
he told me to save it
He said so long as you remain
complicit in the act
you will never get what was taken
taken back
I told him I watched the hands
and I checked up the sleeve
But I turned away for just
a second and fell victim to
thieves
Morality’s right and wrong
got switched for
partisan’s right and left
And now no rights are leftuntouched
save for the right to death
If you question the right about what’s best
Or suggest who’s blessed
Or who we oppress and who we detest
Or how to progress and when to protest
Or if we’ve digressed from destiny’s manifest
And made a mess of libertyfrom a leader’s duress
And his pleas to protect
And agreed his best guess was a reason to infect
Our diseased democracy with deception and debt
I told him we can never again be our best
And his answer thundered back YES…
We can
So tonight
We reclaim our right to express

As we regain our land
On your mark
Ready
Set
Freeze
This election was the raid of the decade, after the century’s greatest heist
We have confiscated our liberty and are taking back our rights
So if you’re looking for us we’re the ones dressed in all black
Leather and ski masks to match
Like Freedom cat burglars scaling down corruption’s hatch
Hacking into stolen accounts and transferring democracy
back
Catch us bumping into misleading
leaders on the street
And pick-pocketing power from the powers that be
And it’s far too late forthreats, cause we are nolonger scared
So don’t bother withthe getaway car
Cause we aint going nowhere!
We are grabbingJefferson’s pen
And adding our own lines
Next to Martin and Baracksname is where I will sign
so these words always remind
me that America is mine:

We hold these truths to
be self-evident
Th at all people were created
to live equal
And to die free
Now don’t just say it
Make it be.
Don’t just talk it
you gotta act
You are not republican or democrat
You are American- reborn.
What… you forgot?
This is the country that elected Barack
Its not enough to show up at the polls
You have to show up every day after
So call this vigilante justice
Call it self-defense
call me an Indian giver
Cause I am war paint on and tomahawk armed
Fighting to get back what I never gave to begin with
My values?…Gimme that!
My morality?… Gimme that!
My American legacy?…
Gimme that!
Consider this 3:00 / after school
And we are running the halls of Congress shouting
Fight! Fight!
So set your jaw tight
And put the fight in your eyes
This aint the time for tired
This aint the time to quit
Now is the time
To chomp at the bit
To spit cuss kick up some dust
We took our demands
From those who took it from our hands
And you have to hand it to them
They had the whole world in their hands
And they were not giving handouts
But we didn’t plan to go home empty handed
We handed our world in when the world trade collapsed
A lie said enough times still isn’t a fact
A bald eagle can’t fly with a knife in it’s back
The floodwater is rising and the levy is cracked
A new storm is upon us, the skies going black
The President is waiting for us to join him in a pact
Our work begins now– we must choose to act
and Take America Back!

This poem was performed live at venues including but not limited to:
• Oprah Winfrey’s Celebration Gala for Barack Obama
• The Official California Democratic Party’s Election Night Celebration
• The Inaugural Peace Ball
• The Declare Yourself Inauguration Celebration,
where they registered over 1 Million new voters!

By Sekou (tha misfit) and Steve Connell