There's no better way to kick off our coverage of the 2006 Slab City Slam Spoken Word Festival than Christopher Lane's poetic call to arms.

The slam competition starts off with a poet working the cold audience, bringing them into a headspace open to poetic thought and performance. This poet will receive no points, advance no further in the state of national competition from this performance, but holy cow, if they've got game the rest of the night is going to rock. Such was the case this year when NorAZ Pooh-bah Christopher Lane stepped to the mic and let 'er rip.

In a space of less than 4 minutes, Christopher made us laugh, pissed all over jingoism of all stripes and made the case for the poet as life-saving force of nature.

And that was just the start for one amazing night of slam poetry in rural Arizona.