Karma. Or something.

Wow. You never know where your next profound moment will come from.

That silly post I made about needing a stage name…edzeppelin posted a comment in the thread leading from it that said, well, this:

…in chicago in ’99. you poem you did second night about the artist really changed the way I look at writing.

I have to say something about this, and about that poem and that night.

The first night in ’99, Worcester kicked butt in their first bout. I came out of the night with the 2 (DJ Renegade took the 1), and felt pretty darn good about it.

The next morning, at around 7:30, I received a phone call from home that my oldest friend’s 16 year old daughter (one of a pair of twins) had been killed in a car wreck the night before.

I was shattered, ready to go home — and Skip (my friend) wouldn’t let me; he told me that if Shawna’s death meant anything, it meant that one should seize life while it was in front of you, and not turn aside from destiny. He wanted me to stay and perform.

So I did. I told my teammates that I wasn’t sure how it would be for me that night, but that I wanted to compete. And because they are wonderful people, they agreed.

That night, we faced Green Mill and Champaign-Urbana. We expected to have a tough time, especially with Regie Gibson and Maria McCray and Ken Green and Sheila Donahue on the hometown team. But we thought we might win, and we knew we had the goods to come in second and score highly enough to make semis.

I went up, and did the poem edzeppelin is talking about, a piece called “The Radioactive Artist”. It’s not a poem I slammed with often; it’s a poem about a sculptor (true story) who builds work from the remains and debris left over from building nuclear weapons; despite the risks inherent in such work, he does it because he feels that someone has to make beauty from such horror. It’s a poem about risking everything to make your life worthwhile.

I dedicated the piece to Shawna, and collapsed in my seat when I was done.

The judges were not kind (although I think I did the best performance I’ve ever done of the piece that night). I recall, I think, outcry from the audience, but hey, that’s slam.

Green Mill won; we missed the semis by 1.5 points.

My recent ruminations about “what if” have included some thoughts about that moment, but not many.

I don’t think I’ll have them ever again.

Thank you, sir…