Land of the Lost School of Poetry, Painting and Performance

Real quick before I have to go study for my basic life support class...how we nurses look forward to those! Ee gads! Fifteen to two, fifteen to one, five to one, pump and check or no, don't check anymore thank the Lord just keep counting and pray. Pray for what I don't exactly know because when it's your day, it's your day.

I was remembering last Halloween (which is once again, just around the corner how those corners keep turning up faster as time goes by in one's life). The whole town was dressed up, I imagine, as what they actually are or at least, want to be. I decided to just go the way I would like to go, in hijab. We heard whispers around us "She's from the gulf region," and true, it isn't much of a disguise. My husband went as himself.

As we entered the Gulch, we saw that an ex tempore reading was taking place in the old Latent Image. Ye olde gallery where I once spent my teenage years cavorting with demon touched souls and various mishaps of humanity. Half book store, half photo gallery and certainly, the name of if carries a whole lot of weight for me.
It was where Lois Porter traipsed in one day, her face the color of a gravestone and longer than the day she caught me burglarizing houses when I was seven. The crystal ball and Japanese flag.

We went in and took a couple of chairs. Betsy Breault (Easterday) was there looking wonderfully turn of the century and as ephemeral as always. August there too and we get along now that she lives up at the old art deco hotel on the hill in Warren that I never knew was there, no one does, lucky girl. It's real Hotel California.

We heard about a half dozen poets read but nothing much really. The usual suspects if you will in a town that has perhaps the highest per capita number of forgotten poets in the United States. They hold their readings here and there at irregular intervals, trying to get something going but nothing ever does. I get invited to read and never go although I always agree to but never show up. They did stop inviting me but I have little doubt, they all know that I am there when I am. There've only been three readings I've performed at in three years including one on the radio that was a tremendous amount of fun. That night, following the on air reading, I took pom poms to the Central School auditorium and read the Bisbee fight song poem, literally sang the darn thing, gave it everything and brought one woman to tears. Hard act to follow and I don't even try...can't muster that kind of energy anymore, not really.

On Halloween night though, this guy got up there and a great silence ensued. Some were meandering about and having some chips and salsa from the snack table over by the old brick at the Latent Image.

The poet took advantage of the silence and it was all quite dramatic...Betsy in her ancient hat and me in my head scarves and tremendous amounts of kohl.

Then, he started yelping like a run-over puppy. And he kept doing that..the whole poem just a bunch of yelping and whooping.

My husband and I almost exploded. We are on the same page anymore and have been places, talked it all over and now agree that most of it is bullshit. Most of poetry is just bullshit. And then, there's the rest.

How we laughed and then went home leaving all the merry makers to their merry making. We'd had way too much fun already.