Posted 12:45 PM by Bonnie

The new open mic: Well, things didn't start off with a bang, but that is my fault. Having been so sick last week I wasn't even sure I would do the open mic this month. Then I felt better on Monday and started sending out emails that yes, I would be doing the open mic Tuesday. Some got the emails tuesday and of course, there are people out there, hard to believe, who unlike me do not check their emails every day so probably won't even know until sometime in the distant future, that hey! yes, there was an open mic. Sorry folks! I'll do better for April.

Even though there were only three of us there, which is not unusual for open mics, but for me it is since I do have my regulars. Unfortunately two were out of town, one had to take care of her child, another got stuck at work on a conference call (called me in the middle to let me know) etc etc etc. But! what a very interesting night and out of the night came some new ideas.

Aaron Johnson, whom I tease that he is mine and Keith's adopted son, and Dr. Harris joined me for the night. So, we did a very relaxed reading. What we found was that Aaron and I write a lot a like and about the same subjects! We were amazed to find out how many of our poems were about the exact same idea and written so similarly! What we did differently was instead of just reading the poems we talked about them. Why did you write that one? What were you feeling? Thinking? What inspired it? And this made me think what a great idea to use with the regular open mic. Instead of just having people get up there and read three poems and sit down, let the other people ask questions about the poems and in this way we learn more about each other.

Also, we were discussing various ways of presenting poems and Aaron has agreed to attempt a poem for two or three or more poets. One where each person would feed off the others lines or an arugmentative poem where it would be a debate or whatever he decides, but we thought what fun that would be to try to work out and present as an vignette at one open mic.

Dr. Harris even did a dance from CATS (her art form is dance) and while we were discussing other poets she went through some of the books I carry around and found one by a CT poet, Chad Richards she liked and she read it for us.

Now considering the events of last week, with Keith and I both having that stomach virus Aaron read a poem, he had written, feeling it fit the occassion. I present it for you now....

Diarrhea by Aaron Johnson

I hate having the runs
Sometimes it reminds me of a rainbow:
The yellow, green, red and lime,
Yuck! I just hate it!
The smell of it and especially the sound,
Does it make your butt burn?
Don't you hate when it's time to wipe?
You end up getting crap all over your hand,
And what do you do?
Well, let's just say the smell of it wasn't that great.
Oh, yeah, you got some on your nose!
You go sit down and watch t.v.
And what do you know? It's that time again,
You go running to the toilet, but a little too late,
Did you not wipe good the first time?
Or did you sit in some chocolate pudding?

Well, that's all folks...pics to follow. Hope more of you can make it next month and join in the fun.