Freestyle Poetry Ain't About Being Good, It's About Being Honest

• Posted by Dez Fontaine May 12 Filed in Arts & Culture #poetry  #freestyle  #Performance  #Authenticity  #creative expression  52 views
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  I used to think freestyle poetry was for people who had their whole life figured out. Like you had to have some deep philosophical truth waiting to explode out of your mouth, fully formed and revolutionary. Turns out I was completely wrong about that.

  Last month I went to this open mic spot in the warehouse district, right, and this kid got up there probably seventeen years old, maybe less. Dude was nervous as hell, hands shaking, and he just started talking about his mom's car breaking down and how he helped her fix it with YouTube tutorials. That's it. That's the whole poem. But somehow in three minutes of him stumbling through that story, finding the rhythm in between the stammers, he made everyone in that room feel something real. It wasn't polished. It wasn't trying to sound like poetry. It WAS poetry because it was just truth happening in real time.

  That's when I finally got it. Freestyle poetry is just the opposite of everything we're taught to do. We're all walking around rehearsing our lines, filtering ourselves through what we think people want to hear. Freestyle is the moment you stop doing that. It's messy and imperfect and sometimes you say the wrong word and have to backtrack, but that's where the actual magic lives. In the cracks between the perfect version you planned and the real version that comes out.

  I started writing some myself, nothing crazy, just riffing on random stuff. A conversation I overheard about rent going up. The way my friend laughs at his own jokes. The color of the sky when you're too tired to sleep but can't keep your eyes open. Turns out when you're not trying to sound profound, profundity shows up on its own.

  The thing about freestyle is it's completely democratic. You don't need a record deal or followers or anyone's permission. Just your words and the guts to say them out loud. Every person's got a poem in them, something worth saying. Most people just never try because they're waiting for it to be good enough first. But the good part only comes after you've already started.

  What's stopping you from saying the thing you've been keeping locked up?