at the slam last night, those of us in attendance, watched eric heroically stand up there and finish his poem after going through every public speakers nightmare-forgetting your lines in front of a packed house.
so this one is for him.eric you inspired all of us.
1st minute, 1st round
by ms spelt
In my bedroom
I keep a picture of
The 1st minute of the 1st round
When a kid from Kentucky, called Cassius
Knocked the Heavy Weight Champion-Sonny Liston- to the canvas
Dancing over his stunned body
The world bore witness to the birth of
Ali.
The Greatest of All Time
Too pretty to be defeated by
The Baddest of the Bad Men
His lightning fast hands called down the thunder
On Liston, Foreman, and Frazier
Several heavy weight belts later
They started to tremble
And Parkinson’s did it’s best to make
A proud man humble
Somewhere just around the corner of all our futures
Lurks that blow we never see coming
Inside all of us dwells a Liston and an Ali
The capacity for brutality and poetry
Slug it out in every human heart daily
Sometimes we dance and sometimes we tremble
Sometimes we are triumphant
and sometimes we want to throw in the towel
Sometimes the crowd hangs on our every word
And sometimes we can’t remember our lines
So on those mornings, when the day has barely begun
When even the sun doesn’t want to rise and shine
When it’s the 1st minute of the 1st round and I’m thinking
It’d be easier to just stay down and admit defeat
I gaze up at 1965 and get to my feet.
And somewhere deep inside me
A voice rings out
“Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.
Rumble, young man.
Rumble”
