MAP KL POETRY CUP - August

We've got a new slam champ - Thato! Brought some Africano flavour into the event, and was much appreciated by a receptive audience. Any 1Malaysia observer/police would've been happy as the August's edition of the cup had everything that they would've hoped for, and even more on top of that. Malays poets, Chinese poets, Indian poets, African poet, double acts slamming with an avant garde Malay artisan performing alongside an ex-US Military man who used to perform spoken word at the frontlines. Now if that wasn't enough, we had someone with possibly Arabian or Pakistani *or maybe even Sri Lankan* descent reciting haikus.

Now if that wasn't 1Malaysia enough, I don't know what is. Aren't we all proud of our rojakness & melting-pot-of-culture-ness? Truly Asia what? Got African & US some more. Truly Global lah actually. You know, like Mawi World? but less cheesy lah. At least this is what they want us to believe lah. Oklah, I buy it lah. Quite catchy & can be used wittily too. Haha. OK, Back to the slam.

Thato's first round piece was about a girl possibly, and how chasing one made him feel so alive. The second poem *my favourite* is him recollecting his adolescence through recounting the playpen behind his house in his home country where he spent his formative years. I envy this piece. It took you places, places where he wanted to be, where he was meant to be, and doing so in a way that painted his home country in a very familiar way, making it relatable for us who will probably won't find our ways there in our lifetime. There was something so naive, so childlike yet so promising about this piece. It like his at one of the points of his walkabout where he has an epiphany that revealed to him a bit more of who he was & who he is meant to be. His winning piece was a crafty concept poem, toying with the concept of how an incomplete poem is a poem that becomes new every single time he recites it. He freestyles it. Well, at least I hope he did. Neat way to cap it off.

Me? Well, time was short so I couldn't complete the Triplets below, but I still managed 3 poems - 1 sacrificial poem (His-Story) & 2 poems from the Triplets below (You Just Don't See & untitled) during the open mic.

Personally, I would've loved to compete in this slam instead of the previous one. Going up against Thato would've been awesome. Ah well, there is always next time.

And oh, before I forget. The ex-US Military man Matt Sion was sick. I wouldn't say he's the best foreign slam poet I've seen live, but he had probably the best spoken word piece that I've seen live - Silver Lining. His metaphors were just plain sick. One I remembered *wasn't the best, but was the only one I could remember coz this was when I started really paying attention to remember his lines for my brain to munch on* sounded like this - "I sprinkled the ashes of my dead relationships on my cornflakes...". Dayum.

September couldn't come any sooner.

Triplets

Three of the same.

Identical to each other but still unique in themselves at the same time.

What the hell am I talking about? It's just a fancy name I'm giving myself for my poem sets. You see a poetry slam must have 3 poems to last you till the end *if you last that long* that should ideally last 3 minutes long each, any longer and you'll get penalize for every minute you exceed.

So I've come up with sets of 3 poems that lasts 10 minutes in total, so that whenever/wherever I perform I'll be able to cram as much content as I can within a short period of time. Normally at performances you'll be getting 10 minutes max anyway, so this is me trying to instill some sort of discipline to my writing and performances.

So I call them Triplets. A set of 3 poems. At this moment, I'm making all of them fit into a specific theme, regardless whether this theme fits the theme of the event I'm using them for. The idea of having things in series is something I like, so there. I like the whole feeling of them being a set of something. It feels organized and structured and well-thought out. I might just be a freak anyway.

Think it sounds cute. Can call them 3piece, but I lose out on the cute factor.

So Triplets it is.

And I've got my Triplets for the coming 2nd MAP KL Poetry Cup ready. The theme is relationships and the pieces are You Just Don't See, She Said "I Can Live With A Broken Heart" and a third untitled piece at the moment.

And my mind was randomly catching thoughts one night and I got this gem:

"...When we realize that the perfections we know are the imperfections that helps us grow, and the imperfections that we hate are the perfections that we evade..."

I shall use that in a poem. Soon hopefully.