2003-02-16 - 8:07 p.m.

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Poetry Reading

"Beats me Beats beat me beat on beating in beats and rests
in my breast silence is the loudest sound a person knows
the hum of life stops and you stop and it stops.
Silence.
I listen to the crowing of wicked souls wickedly howling
the pains of urges fighting their way out of hearts
tearing down the walls tears flow as tears rip and tear everyone
torn apart from the sorrows or troubles or squabbles or pains.
Silence. In the hearts. In their heads. Except for the music
pounding on their pounding heart pounding out the blood
pounding in their ears throwing music to the fire as it squeals
and shouts and pouts and struts in the form of the singer
or the guitar or the drum of the drums or the beats
beating me by beats and rests in my breast
Silence."
-Read today at the Poetry Reading held downtown. Today.

I ignited some poetry. Fired it up, shook it, woke it up and set it ablaze. The mic felt like a handle on things, which was what I needed because really, I'm pretty upset most of the time. There's plenty to add more to the pile when I do find some ease in distress. But I grabbed the handle, alone in a room full of people ready to hear it, ready to hear the next thing to either wow them or turn them off or turn them on or do something. Do something. Just do something to help someone see something. Anything. It's such a general idea but most ideas are. They're just ideas, not thoughts or schemes or plans. It was a good idea to be there and be ready and I was just there, ready or not. Just ready enough to do what I came to do.
When I was called to come up, I was greeted by some kind words, words I didn't tell anyone to say. I never tried to make friends there, just meet some new minds, see some new insights. I was happy to have made someone happy to see me read something, maybe something new, maybe something...you get the idea.
And with one poem allowed only, I had to check my stack and trim to slim. I had one piece that wiggled its way from a 7 stack. I decided it was untouched and no one had heard it before anyway. I had read all else I had with me at the Koffee Kamp (K's and all. Campiness is so campy). I needed a fresh breath of new territory. And I came to do something.

And I read that.

The manic pace set on by the previous readers was too fast. People were walking up to a microphone set up to a fender combo in the middle of a bank turned into some weird museum of local art and blurting out things and noises so that they can sit down. It was a mockery. They had true talent hidden in the blurbs of some great jumbled mess. Some weird concoction of a neccesity to present this glorious display of artistic discourse and a necessity to hurry through whatever they were doing the moment they were in front of a microphone. I felt betrayed that they had this amazing gift to give me and they flashed it breifly before hastily shoving it away, unable to enjoy anything as well as take it in and understand it. Like some kind of mental striptease.
I felt the tension mount in the room after kind words were said and I had to cross the room and do something. We decided to do a second run through of the list because we had some time. That's why everyone was hurrying. The urge to beat the clock to whatever you had better afterwards. People were sitting with their coats on, dangling keys and fidgeting with papers. Although exagerrated as it may appear, in a place that had that much open space and that much natural echo and reverb and to put this activity into a 20 sqaure foot seating area, it was like people were trying to drown out the speaker with fidgets. To ease this tension, I read very slowly, beating out every beat to myself on my ribs. I knocked like I was looking to see if my heart was home and if it wanted to come out to play or not. It's not like it did or not, it's only a metaphor. Duh.
When I got home, I watched Reservoir Dogs and Summer of Sam with Stevo, finding out in the middle of one of the movies that my friend Pete up here got into a car crash the other night, after he came here to visit. He was hit by a huge ass truck going at least 70 on his driver's side. In the passenger door. The door was pushed halfway through the driver side backseat. A backseat that was still warm from when my ass was in it 15 minutes before that.

Am I supposed to be alive now?

BMC

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