Wondermentalist

The Dead Poets’ Slam is held every month at the Wondermentalist Cabaret. Living people read poems they love to a contemporary audience. This audience listens raptly and votes for a winner. In a sense everyone’s a winner - even so, there’s only one prize. The  first Dead Poets’ Slam was won by Kabir, represented by Jackie Juno, with the poem To be a Slave of Intensity

Friend,hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think ….and think …. while you are alive.

What youcall ’salvation’ belongs to the time before death.

If youdon’t break your ropes while you’re alive,

do youthink

ghosts will do it after?

The ideathat the soul will join with the ecsatic

just because the body is rotten -

that is all a fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,

you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

Kabir   (trans. RobertBly)