Once again violence has visibly bruised the peachy keen skin of the Green Mill’s Uptown Poetry Slam. This time the aging Slam Father, or should we say Great Grandfather, was not the focus, nor the cause. In fact, he was completely absent from the scene, off on another self-congratulatory tour hawking his Idiot book and unsellable CDs in an attempt to monopolize on a movement that belongs to hundreds and hundreds of unsung heroes, not just He Himself as he would like the world to believe. (Just how many other slam demigods are out there claiming to be the most important personality attached to this international community of over-the-top poetics?)

Well, that’s another story, this month’s news concerns certain out-of-town slammers (I ain’t mentioning where from.) who traveled to Chicago, the Mecca of Slam, to compete at the Green Mill Uptown Poetry Slam. (Sorry, New York, but contrary to your myth-makin’ spin-doctors the slam did not begin with Bob Holman shouting “your mama” insults at Miguel Aggwa-laira (sp) outside the Nuyorican Café in a staged promotional stunt to attract YUPHERS [Young Super Hipsters] to the lower east side to experience authentic urban culture while empting their designer pockets.)

As is often the case with sudden bursts of hostility, the altercation was proceeded by a brief era (about an hour) of good feeling. My Uncle, John the Eel, was hosting, and doing a modest job of it. (His inexperience may have been one of the factors contributing to the violent undressing of the evening, but in truth, no one, not even the grand great grandfather himself, could have anticipated what was to occur.)

The out-of-town slam team received good scores in the first two rounds battling against four favorite sons (and daughters) of the midlands. (It might not be appropriate to mention that the visitors were from a coastal state, so we won’t.) However, in the third, and decisive round, their scores went flat.

I was there and I can testify to the fact that they kicked ass. I mean there was not one popular political thought or newspaper position excluded from their work, and the singing which proceeded and completed their performances took me back to places very familiar and stirring. And for a change the singing was not off in the realm of quantum notes. It was rhythmic and loud enough to rattle the stools in slim corner where I and my associates abide. That their performances received 9.3s and 9.5s instead of the maximum 10s, to my mind, was a blatant display of hometown bias and totally un-Slam as we in Slime Corner have come to regard Slam and its principles, if you can call them that.

But I’ll set my personal point-of-view aside and let the facts speak for themselves.

When the final-round-scores were raised above the stupored judges’ heads, the entire audience threw up a exuberant cheer of uncontrolled revelry resultant from a very entertaining, if not too thought-provoking, event. John the Eel, slowly and carefully (as is his way) tallied the scores which showed the Chicago team to be victorious by a margin of .31875 of a point. Once again the audience erupted in ecstatic applause at which John the Eel exposed his famous upper middle-tooth-gap-grin to provide clear evidence of the communal joy.

Then it happened. The visitors began shouting.

At first we all, Slime Corner and everyone else, thought the clamor was something like: “Way to go Slam Brothers! Way to go Slam Sisters! Power to People! Power to Poetry! Power to the Slam Community!” (We have been, of late, brainwashed by his Slamliest, Mister Smith, to believe that -- despite past occurrences of bigotry, rage, and downright nastiness -- “All in 21st Century Slam is good.” Even when not so pretty displays of human behavior occur we sometimes erroneously assume the positive instead of assuming the position.)

(By the way, this “All in Slam is good.” adage spinning out from the Great Grand Slampapi’s mouth is a slick bit of irony. Read some of our (Slime Corner’s) previous articles and you’ll understand why.)

What the out-of-towners were actually shouting in not too poetic form was: “This is a bunch of Bullshit Score Fixing and we didn’t come all this way to be fucked over by a bunch of fly-overs! Who are these judges! And where are they from! That’s what we’d like to know. The slam is supposed to be poetry of the People, by the People, and for the People. It’s suppose to be about community building. This ain’t no way to build a community, motherfuckers.”

Well, what made matters worse was the laughter that all but barfed out of the audience’s communal mouth. We all thought that the venomous out-of-town outbursting was just part of the act. The regulars, Slime Corner included, are so used to seeing Smith’s head turn red and fume at the end of the evening when some poor drunk talks too loud or stands up to relieve herself during Smith’s final (show ending) poetic profusion that they, the audience (us included) took the out-of-town outrage as a welcomed and well executed diversion from Smith’s usual curtain call.

“Funny! You all think this is funny! You want funny, eh? We’ll give you God Damned Corn Clod Meat Packers funny!”

Now there are a lot of sights in your life that you afterward wish you had never seen. Some of them could have been easily sidestepped. Some of them you might have been eager to see at the moment but later wished freedom from the reoccurring nightmare flashbacks of them burping up out of the backside of your brain during the wee wee hours of the morning. In this case, the vision thrust upon us was so sudden and unexpected, so entirely unavoidable (except for those fortunate few who chose that particular moment to follow the drunks to the restrooms to relieve themselves) that it falls into the category of preordained fate.

In an unbuckling, infinitesimal span of time the entire visiting team from that unnamed coastal city hoisted themselves atop the revolving Green Mill bar stools, dropped their jeans (and undergarments), and circulate their exposed tooshies around the club for all to see. Ugh. The most disturbing particular of this astonishing exposé was that one of the drooping protuberance popped outward from the bend-over bore a kite tail of tissue hanging from the crevice of its nether region, and another that could have put said toilet paper to good use, hadn’t.

I do not know who the improv genius was who in that instant of “present-moment-ness” (without allowing even a four second gap to expire between the dropping of drawers and his inspired speed reaction) thought to shake his bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and spray joyously the visiting bottoms -- but that’s what he did. Needless to say, as it is with all good ideas, everyone joined in.

The bottle hosing caused a mild riot which Uncle John, slowly and carefully, moved to quell. “A disaster situation” you might have called it -- very sticky. By the time the police arrived (in their usual punctual fashion) the visitors had departed (not wishing to take their chances with Chicago’s fair-minded finest) and the floor had been mopped clean of toilet paper, beer, et all.

Granted, no one suffered any serious physical injury. The nature of the violence was emotional, communal, and way too visual -- a spontaneous mass flash of four ungroomed bottoms focused upon the sensibilities of an unprepared audience who had been, only a moment before, reveling in the joys of slam.

But it was violent none the less, and as my unc, John the Eel, put it a day or two later, “Those were some mighty big assholes.”

I’m just tellin’ you how it was, an eyewitness report from the birthplace of Slam, home of unbridled poetic expressions. Don’t bother writing or sending me any of your cock-eyed rebuttals. I won’t answer ‘em. I saw what I saw and I hope I never see it again.

Very truly yours,

Kyle Clifford, nephew to John the Eel [and slime corner resident]