Post 3: Clicking Fingers

Every man gets his rizq, and part of my rizq yesterday was my unplanned attendance to a spoken word poetry slam in Parramatta yesterday, and I have to say I did not enjoy much being there.

Maybe it’s just me, I’ve never been into the whole poetry thing, it has to be explained to me, I need to be “in the mood” with other poetry inclined people to see the light.

I mean, some poems, in Arabic or English, can make me pause and can touch me deeply, and even though it’s infrequent, it is profound. But I digress.  

The poetry slam yesterday had three competitors performing, and it may have been the irksome way they changed their pitch and speed to make an impact –which, if done well, can be amazing, but it was unfortunately not done well-, or it may have been the lame clicking fingers instead of clapping that was happening throughout the performance, oh that little lameness was driving me up the wall!  I was not impressed by the whole event.

Not until the end anyway. The winner was a young passionate girl whose performance was so powerful that she walked away crying!

I was not crying…

Also, I say young because I’m in my 30s and everybody is younger than me at this stage.

Following that, a winner from a previous competition was allowed to give three performances which again I did not understand and therefore spent… The Time… TWEETING! in this fashion….

Trying…..

to

copy

the

style of

spoken … woooord!

Yeah, I still don’t get it.

Finally, Ahmed went in for the kill. .

Wearing an Amnesty International hoodie with “I fight for good”, this tall otherwise quiet person (well I’ve never met him, but at first instance he looked quiet), and he gave a most rousing performance in which he narrated his travels and experiences in Istanbul.

Now if you know me, you’ll know I absolutely love Istanbul, and hearing a good poet reflect on the beauty and romance of a city so dear to me, it made me put my twitter away and look in awe as this man through his words drew a picture of a city right in front of my eyes, and illuminated it, and gave its people life, it was profound!

His second performance was a beautiful piece about his grandmother, and it made me miss my own grandmother. His way of describing her henna tattoos from another time was beautiful it almost reached far beyond my thick skin and gave me shivers.

Finally came the reason for his powerful verses. The poor kid is in love! And it seems the kind of love that was not shared back, oh my heart broken for that man! Unrequited love is like caviar, wonderfully rich flavours that came from the guts of a fish. Poor fish! Poor Ahmed