Coffee House Complaint

This is not a big deal, and something that most people could really care less about, but here goes: I was studying at my normal coffee house when the “Poetry Slam” people showed up

1. They bilked $3 out of everyone who wanted to stay (I didn’t mind paying - they are good for a laugh, and occasionally there is some actual talent);
2. The jackass hosting the whole thing wouldn’t shut up, and kept making all these stupid inside jokes that no one laughed at. Unfortunately the lack of crowd response didn’t deter the tool from talking endlessly;
3. Two of the competitors (who scored highly from the obviously biased “judges”) were terrible. They just got up and cussed loudly about losing their girlfriends and being alone in the world…came off reeeealllly whiny and pathetic;
4. There was one guy who was actually really talented, he read four poems before the “official scoring” began, and then kicked off the whole thing with a great one that he did almost purely from memory; he got the second lowest score of 7 competitors and didn’t make it to the second round…this was enough to finally make me leave.

Why have I brought this up here you may ask? The one reason that the best “poet” didn’t make it was because his work had religious themes in a couple places. He described his drug addiction and time in prison, and mentioned “redemption” and that the endless pursuit of physical pleasure destroys the soul. The crowd reaction for that poem was much more tepid than an earlier one in which he had simply blasted the prison system.

I have not attended church in years, and so this isn’t some kind of effort to find someone discriminating against me. I’m simply bothered by these white suburbanites who consider themselves to be “revolutionaries” (you all know who I mean – the guys with black eyeliner, wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, with 8 million bumper-stickers on their Volvo’s, complaining about the “system”). They constantly talk about “tolerance” and “acceptance”, yet I could look around the room and watch them all roll their eyes when a recovering drug-addict mentioned religion.

Now that I’ve gone on that tirade, here is my point: when you all set up some kind of event that is supposed to showcase talented performance-oriented poets, don’t be so close-minded that you vote off the best of the bunch because he mentions religion. Get over yourselves for five minutes and recognize legitimate talent, even if you don’t completely agree with the message.