As I’m sure you all remember (because honestly, how could you forget), back in December my friend Jeremy, the head honcho over at Gosen Community Effort, had a fundraiser comprised of a 90s dance battle to raise money for those kids who want to attend high school way out yonder in Namibia.  Word To Yo Mama’s High Waisted Jeans won the glory of the champion title, and my ass got a beating on the concrete.  But a good ass beating is sometimes worth it.

Well, it was about time for another one of those fundraisers, and this time Polio swindled me into competing in his damn Yo Mama Haiku battle.  He wooed me with bribes like “it’s an opportunity for self growth” and “you’ll probably win”, along with the daily Kakao’d haiku for good measure.  I gave in, but as each day passed, I really wanted to bail because my nerves were rising. I couldn’t handle anymore nerves on my plate!  Then all the shit that Polio would give me for bailing, coupled with that damned opportunity for self growth, cancelled my escape route.

The fundraiser went down at the new Southern Sons bar, owned by some chingus from Texas, where 8 battlers competed for the best in Yo Mama shit talking. Each pair of us were given a topic ~ stupid, fat, bald, and so on, that we had to write 3 Yo Mama jokes in haiku form for, except for the finals, which consisted of 5 haikus on anything shaming Yo Mama.  For those who don’t know what a haiku is, I don’t know how you graduated 5th grade, but in any event, it follows a syllable format of 5-7-5.

After each battle we went around and hustled the crowd for raffle tickets that attendees purchased, and at the conclusion of each round raffle tickets were counted and winners progressed to the next round. The perk of having all your remaining friends still living in the country in attendance means you find yourself in the finals like so.

I actually cringe when I listen to my voice in these battles, but you gotta put on yo gangsta face when duty calls. This clearly proves that A) I don’t have a good poker face and can’t not laugh at my competition, B) I am so white, and C) this was a good outlet for my vulgar mouth.

Now here I grace you with the awkwardness of a Haiku Battle.  A video of round 1 and the finals, and a photo of round 2 against the guy I thought should have won. HE WAS SO FUNNY! There’s no video of it though because I guess all of my friends were too enamored by my haiku spitting about yo mama’s mustache to capture a video.

“Yo mama so bald, She used all your dad’s back hair, To make her own weave.”

In the end, I came in 2nd place, or as I like to put it, 1st is the worst, 2nd is the best. It turned out to be so much fun and I’m so happy I did it, even if I wasn’t the 2 time fundraising champion.  Also, given that I want to tackle doing stand up at least once in my life, ’twas a nice little segue.

I hope you enjoyed, and peace and yo mama’s mustache grease.