I'm going to attend UH this Spring, part of the Post Baccalaureate program in Secondary Education... that is, if I can raise the funds. Tuition will cost $3,500. With both kids going to preschool, that's going to be hard money to come by... So I glanced at a list of prospective scholarships, and one that mildly caught my eye was a "Virtual Slam Poetry Contest" on the subject of torture. Now, I have no idea what Slam Poetry is- I've heard a bit about it, like that they have open mike night for slam poetry at Arts at Mark's Garage (?) in Downtown. I have a vision of it being like these high-school to early college age kids wearing baggy pants and heavy hanging BLANG BLANG punctuating the air (KAPOW!) with arcane hand signs, and then pausing for emphasis by grabbing their armpits and leaning precariously backwards... Or else, of thin waif girls and boys dressed all in black, with berets and goatees (the boys, not the girls) and pencil thin cigarettes, playing clever puns, and repeating them, as if the audience somehow missed them, or didn't get them "deeply" enough...
I think I fit in more with the latter...
Anyway, not that I'll be able to do anything for this contest, but it got me to thinking...
I'm supposed to submit a small video file for the contest. I was thinking of using one of those "pills" that contain some kind of spongy shape, like an animal or a musical instrument, you know, the kind that, if you put it in water, it gradually dissolves and expands into the "surprise" shape. Maybe I would construct some sort of "inverting" or "tilting" bed (can't think of the right words- it's 4 am), tie the "pill" to it, and "dunk" the pill periodically into a cup of water- to simulate the newest and hippest torture method of discourse, "water-boarding." Accompanying it would be a recycling soundtrack of Radiohead's Kid A song, can't think of the name, but the one that starts off with what sounds like a music-box tune...
The poem, the actual words, would be from something I wrote a while back, when water-boarding was just beginning to be talked about, and when I was attempting to research Catholicism and the seven sacraments for some stupid story which I have long despaired of writing. The poem was called "Per Aquem en Verbo," which means the Water in the Word. It is a phrase used to explain the significance of the first sacrament, Baptism. I just thought it was such an interesting phrase; I mean, can't you just visualize Prez Double-Yuh saying something like, "My words hold water..."?
Anyway, ideally, the poem was supposed to play on many levels: a critique of water-boarding (and this current administration), but also a subtle (for me, though, "subtlety" pronounces the hard "t" sound) play on the notion of baptism, of reluctant (necessary?) baptism... After all, as conceived by this nation, sometimes overtly, but most often without any real awareness, this war is one between cultures, simplistically between Christian (I extend this to Catholicism) and Muslim nations...
Someday I will post the original poem, though right now, I am thinking of a clearer beginning... Something like:
"You will walk on water someday,"
A promise made casually
Although He never makes casual promises.
"Walk on water,"
He whispering repeats for emphasis
dangling, levitating the miracle of it.
"But first."
[Jesus Christ was (H)imself baptized by a mysterious figure known as John the Baptist. The passage in which this occurs is paradoxical, because although the authority and holiness of Jesus is never questioned, it seems necessary that (H)e, for the purposes of Baptism, be subservient to John the Baptist.]
Well, more on this later.
[Ah, I never made a video file. Forget this virtual slam poetry contest... Been too busy!]
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