At the end result of my second trip to the Downtown Poetry Slam at the Fair Trade Cafe in my new city of residence, Phoenix, AZ, I saw passion, and fire, and deep thought, and I realized something. From the Cockroach in the ear to the Ode to Sarah Palin, to the growing up a brown skin lad in Idaho to as far as a poem dedicated to the boys in City of God.... i realized what I realized had nothing to do with any of those poems.
I have never felt the passion for something or anything or someone or anyone as much as those poets felt the way they do about what they say. Whether they spit about observances, past experiences or everyday everything, I simply have never had that.
Sure I've said I've been in love before. But have I? Many in my past will tell you yes, indeed. Others will say, most definitely. I could even say yes I have and you'd be forced to believe me. But I don't even believe myself nowadays. I have never loved anything, person, idea, thing.... like those poets loved their... their.... words.
I feel cheated. But by no one in specific, just myself. I have never allowed myself to feel that. I will not blame it on anything, not my childhood filled with my parents failed marriage or my inadequate community.... not my add or ability to mature quick enough... not even my several hundred dead brain cells that have erased a not so nice past that I force myself to forget... none of that. I have tried, actually. As one of my closest confidants put it today about her own self... "I get jedi mind fucked over over..." That's how I feel, but no one is waving their finger but me. I have yearned for that passion. Never to be had. I've tried to fill the vacancy so very many times, with everyone and everything.... and no one and nothing... and it has not came to be.
I want to love something like an addict yearns for their next hit. I want to feel something like an all star athlete winning the trophy. I want to do something, like the lioness defending her cubs to the death. I want. I yearn. I crave.
Yet I remain, absent. I know that more than ever. This slam was not an indication of my void. This slam was the dot of the i in the word... And the conversation with my close confident shortly thereafter... that was something else in it's entirety that will... will.
