The Poetry Reading
I know where I want to go,
but I lose me in the line;
examples stretched over stanzas,
puzzles, read aloud to aloof and angular
faces. Delayed encounter with
a barrier of beat-informed courtesy trance.
(Shit, bugs the music right out of me.)
Those pale, elusive faces, tilted like
God’s own wax garden. I keep the cool words
up to the soft-mouthed ambush- *snap*
Then lava flows furious off my tongue;
the audience trapped; the room burning,
burning. No, they didn’t clap. Fuck no,
they didn’t clap. Ol’ Keruoac just
tweaked them in the nose.
