THE OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUDS
It ain’t a sport, Sport.
We had a good crowd at open mic.
Will was there with a new piece
comparing his lover to a summer’s day,
tho’ he claims her more temperate
and we begged Emily to read
the one about stopping for death,
but you know how she is about crowds
and Uncle Walt celebrated and sang himself,
looking more the Old Testament prophet
with each passing day
while Langston blew us all away
by speaking of rivers;
ancient, dusky rivers.
But the evening’s winner—
for what good is poetry
without winners and losers—
took to the podium just after T. S. did
(he was wearing those flannel trousers again!)
to read the evening’s final poem.
She used a stage name
and spoke with no notes, the poem
ripped directly from a tortured heart
and no one cared
if the metaphors were mixed
or her symbolism simplistic
for it’s the performance not the words
and the good ones always know when
to pause dramatically and when to soar
in an earnest voice sounding
just like all the other earnest voices
of others left desolate, but wiser now, too.
Joseph Neely
Please note the self-deprecating and accurately descriptive title of this poem. I am having fun and only half-serious, so don’t get too bent out of shape if you’re a performance poet or devotee of that artform. Still, I can imagine responses ranging from “OK, Boomer” to “How dare you?” I do think that performance poetry and written word poetry are different animals and should be enjoyed and judged separately. Am I wrong?
My book, SLOW RIVERS (ISBN 979-8-218-43822-7), can be ordered through your local bookstore or online via bookshop.org, where one can specify a particular bookstore to benefit from the purchase. You will also find Slow Rivers on Amazon, and I am grateful to those who buy it there, but does Jeff Bezos really need the money?
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Joseph Neely, all rights to original material reserved.
