Loose Leaf Notes

That’s what our emcee Cameron announced to the Spoken Word crowd on Saturday.  At 7:30 there were only six readers signed up on a pie plate. “That’s never happened before,” he said.   His plea must have worked   because by the end of the evening the count had changed to eleven readers.

Cameron led us in several moments of speechlessness.  His mother was in the crowd, so he noted that he couldn’t swear because she charges him 25 cents a swear word.  Talking into his cell phone as if it was a microphone, he gave dramatic introductions to each reader and gave me a new spoken word tagline: Quick Quote Colleen.  I think it’s better than Soul Crusher Colleen (coined by Tom Ryan because my book The Jim and Dan Stories made him cry).

Chelsea (pictured in the second photo) read a series of poems related to trees, and first time reader Gary (above)  from New Jersey (originally from Michigan, he would like me to add, seeing as how New Jersey is viewed these days) read a series of poems about the Blue Ridge Mountains.   Mars, introduced by Cameron as The God of War, read what he calls a “table poem,” which means that he made it up on spot and that it was inspired by things on the coffeehouse table. I wish I could read my own writing in my notebook so I could quote a line or two here. Something about a coffee spill and a brownie that hadn’t been paid for yet.

Did you know that Telletubbies (characters from the TV show for preschoolers) only eat pink custard and toast, have televisions in their bellies, live in a bomb shelter and babble incoherently (a long way from the sensible Sesame Street fare)? We learned that from Coriander who read a piece about a lost Telletubby named Bruce.

Carolyn and Nico sang and Skip read the Rudyard Kipling poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings. By the end of the evening Cameron only owed his mom 25 cents.

Note: Read more about Floyd’s third Saturday Spoken Word Open Mic and view more photos  HERE.