Will I always wonder?

Competed at Slam Free or Die last night. It was the last qualifier for the semis, which in turn lead to the finals, which in turn determine the team that Manchester will send to the National Poetry Slam in August. I like the poets here, so I was actually quite interested in making the team. Not so interested that I didn't be my contrary self - I have a couple of poems that would have worked the judges a little more directly, but that's not my game. I'm not cut out for slam because I still want to stretch all the boundaries instead of playing them to my advantage.

In any event, I went first. For those of you not familiar with slams, pole position is not a good thing to have. As the audience and judges warm up over the course of the evening, scores tend to rise - an effect called score creep. When we're only slamming for two rounds, and only five of eight poets will go on to the second round, you don't want to be the guy/gal who doesn't benefit from score creep. However, I ran with "ADD TV" because the sacrifice poet was fairly ADD in her own performance - I'm still not sure how much of it was actually planned - and was in fourth place at the end of the round.

In the second round, I performed "Sign of the Turtle" and, due to another poet going over time, pulled into overall third place. Only the top two would advance to the semis. But hark, my ears detect a clamour! The second place poet can't attend the semis, so I get to advance! Oh frabjous day! Oh wait. You're telling me that instead of a month from now, when the next slam would normally take place, the semis are on April 17? When I'll be in Texas at the Poetry at Round Top Festival? OK, fourth place poet, back-patting time!

Will I always wonder what might have been? Would I have given in and performed crowd-pleasers in the semis, and perhaps even at the finals, attempting to get on this team? Unlikely. I really like the Manchester poets and would love to work with them. But I'll just have to arrange that on the side. In the meantime, you get an entire draft of something I've been tweaking - found it in an old journal and am making changes to it for potential performance.