David A. Howe Library Poetry Slam: Read the winning poems

I am in my year 1960, the age of advertising 

In addition to my ambition, I am super sizing 

Truckloads of debris

Made into me 

I am my own factory, in it’s cycle polluted

And i am at the top where I cannot be diluted 

Praise me, and promotion

For I am the living commotion 

I project, avoid to reflect, and on the glass screen

There I am, a plastic being.

Giving in to the hands that raise my feet upon the ladder

I look down at them and louden my laughter 

Wrinkle, and green I chug down the limelight 

And will not retreat from my position without fight 

Laquer my likeness to the board out on the highway

So everyone knows that I did it my way 

Cover the landscape, cover the trees

I am what every man sees.

Put my image under the lid of the casket

And fill my pockets from the communion basket

I retire at no rate less than three billion 

Make sure I am both the hero and villain 

But across green acres, and over a track 

There I am looking behind my back

As I am also learning to read

At the age of seventeen 

I am my mother, baking cheap bread

And I am my uncle better off dead.

I sit with my legs crossed seeing myself 

As a toy up on the shelf

I am turned pale, and turn to one too

As my guts give way as they often do

Mother-Me wipes my chin 

Been a long time since she’s heard “how you been?”

I have five grey hairs, and I can count to eight 

And I am the man who stays out late. 

I am the chip off my own block 

And I am the reason I cannot be alone on a walk 

I am the butcher of the south side alley

I am also another victim to be tallied 

I am the detective on an his last break 

I am his reason never to sleep, the unsolvable case 

I am my mother again and again 

Asking where my husband, father, self has been 

In grace I pray to me, myself and I 

And beg to share the last slice of pie 

But i snatch it from me, and eat it right there

For there is no judgment to what is fair. 

I am carnival, and I am the hand of Midas 

And I ask myself “why did you make us?”

I’m a forbidden word and I’m the dagger 

I’m the hipster, the blunt, and ingenue lacking swagger 

I have the recipe, the receipts, and permanent marker

And I’ll cross out whatever makes everyone else smarter 

I am betrothed and betrayed 

The maker, the manor, the maid. 

And I am missing, and I look for me 

In all the places where I ought to be

I’m everyone but still not “there”

So much for the great equalizer being fair. 

Greener pastures, over on the other side 

Stuck on “the dips” I didn’t want to ride 

Fighting against the lightning, the big sting 

Waiting for the telephone to ring. 

For someone to tell me “we finally found you and you’re okay!”

But I’m still waiting for that day. 

I’m the poster on the telephone pole 

That all my kids pass on their way to school 

They try to ignore the big missing sign 

As no one wants that on their mind 

After the first twenty four hours I’m a person missing 

But I’ve been looking for me since the last thanksgiving

Hopeless I’d say, to keep on looking, leaving a light on 

Because once it’s gone, it’s gone. 

So I move on, in a car I named after my other egos 

Let me follow wherever she goes 

Hand to wheel, foot to gas 

Letting every faster person pass 

As I’m taking it slow these days 

Thinking about my every person ways. 

Then I see it a couple years later and 

It’s something written by my own hand 

A big advertisement, be your own you! 

But that’s what no one wants to do 

Its a flaked paint, old and worn 

Probably up before this me was born 

A greedy billionaire I left friendless 

While the rest of me stayed infinite, endless 

I’ll never find me, maybe that’s the final word

I am everyone,but I am not your billboard