Dear Gotham: 2.0

Last week I performed in my first ever slam poetry competition. I have been writing poetry for a little less than a year. I've been performing at open mics since about the same time. Last spring I wrote my first slam poem. It was called Dear Gotham and I performed it at the last open mic of Spring Quarter. I posted it here back then but since than I have edited it. And then I performed it at this slam. Well... I didn't make it to the next round so... Ha. Maybe it's not that good. But I thought I'd share the updated version. Also, I have two other slam poems that I wrote specifically for the slam poetry competition that I'll post in the next couple days although I'll warn you ahead of time they are pretty weak.

For a first ever slam poem, I can live with it. (also, any weirdness in spelling, format etc, I'm sorry, it's spoken word poetry, I'm not thinking about how it is read as much as how it is heard.)

I lost my identity the day
I called it Secret
I masked myself,
forgetting what was hidden underneath
Who I was blurring with
who I was pretending to be
Until slowly the facade
became the flesh

Now I fly the streets at night
Suspended by the city’s invisible puppet strings
As I spin my wheels,
my head spinning
I think:
What happened Gotham?
What kind of bleak,
post-apocalyptic society
thought up you?
Your people are dying, Gotham.
Consumed by fire,
consumed by hate,
Costumed by their own gaudy misdeeds
Your streets stink of the poor and down trodden—
Trodden into the dust of your crumbling walls.
Do you embrace the ugly, Gotham?
Do you welcome the misshapen misfits?
Does your modern gothic architecture beckon like liberty’s silhouette from across the sea?

Who is left to clean up, but those who created the mess?
Our ancestors built this city on the bones of the dead—
My ancestors built upon
your dead
And I alone have sanity enough to stop it.

My heart is black like this city.
Black with soot.
Black with broken dreams
This city never had dreams.
It only had the broken
blackened people
who knew better
than to dream.
Count me with the dreamers, Gotham.
Tell the folks back home I pulled this city up by my
spandex.

This city,
where the evil cry out their sonic song
Where the glint of hope in a child’s heart
cannot be seen through the smog.
Where are born the worst scum of the earth—
Sent to disrupt the already
disturbing existence of these wretches.
These wretches that crawl across your dirtied streets,
Slither through your slime
They come out like night crawlers
in the dark,
Looking for dreams
to make nightmares
Their muddy hands thrown up in front of their faces
as dawn approaches

In the dark
the demons come out.
They are locked in little
gilded cages in the light,
But their pen doors are unhitched in the last fleeting rays of sun.

The demons play
upon the temples
of Gotham’s people.
They tap-dance
across craniums
until the pitter-patter
echoing through the skulls
bid a Scarecrow
come and play

We are all afraid, Gotham.
Of bats, of leather-clad cat burglars, of the seething poison
that you spew.
We are afraid of you, Gotham.

I picture you 100 years—
No,
1000 years ago Gotham.
I picture you with gullies
and meadows,
and no smog
so you can see the sun.
What wondrous wildflowers
used to stretch along
the streets
that are now decimated
by Harvey’s dented coin

I know better than to think of you like this.
You were the breeder of pond scum from the beginning
and you will be the breeder of pond scum until the end.

You were built on mysteries
that not even Edward Nashton himself could answer
But riddle me this, Gotham.
Why do I carry on
through all the vacuous desolation?
Bats are not solitary creatures
by nature, you know
Do not fear, citizens of Gotham.
You’re knight
of the dark night is here.

I watch from on high,
my senses buzzing with the thrum of Gotham’s hum.
Not so much a hum
as a roar

At the end of the night
I find myself drunken
with apathy,
Dribbling curse words
down my chin,
Making spit bubbles
out of my shattered
emotions.
The sun rises
and I am reminded of the poor scattered souls,
who made it through
the night,
To live another day
in this city.