Poetry Slam In Austin

If you knew me even a little bit you would know that I am a giant smart aleck. I've always enjoyed starting fights, riling people up, doing just about anything to get some kind of electricity started. It's not always a great quality to have. Or habit, whatever it is that troublemaking wants to be called.

So when I called for a poetry slam some weeks ago, it was more with the intention of getting some juices going inside my own Mother who sometimes suffers from Parkinson's. I hardly expected any response. Thought maybe myself and Paula would show up, read some poetry with the folks, and my Mom might or might not get a chance to get some sensory experiences going through her neurons that would otherwise not happen.

Parkinsons is a little understood disease. Cutting off the neurons as it appears to do, it also leaves itself open to oddball treatments, and I'm not exactly convinced that simpler, more direct approaches don't have some effect. Doing things that appeal to a person's spirit and at the same time involving the sensory circuitry that we process colors, feelings, sounds, etc - all this may be more powerful than we would otherwise give it credit for.

Plus, what better medium for a troublemaker to do his work than a poetry slam ?

It was an innocent intention

Or so I claimed. The last thing I would have expected was for people to show up.

But show up they did, and we had a great time.

We have a long history of smart aleck poetry in our family, starting with my brothers and I when we were kids. You kind of felt sorry for unsuspecting guests when we were growing up, there was no telling what kind of whacko ill-intended theater that might get sprung on them.  Troublemaking takes practice, and we got pretty good at it.

Sophie might have been the most obvious enthusiast, she read a lot of her own Shel Siverstein book. If you haven't heard any Shel Silverstein, (I hadn't) he's pretty hilarious.

Mom read quite a bit from a funny book of poems that took the perspective of god doing rather human things and commenting on what he thought about it. This was the cleverest part of the day.

Then of course there were David and I, biggest goofballs in the crowd, who each got tripped up on our own emotions at various points. The biggest part of being a clown of course is the cover-up, so if you aren't careful some of that underlying stuff slips out. 

"Whatever that was about...." claimed David, after it was all over. Seemed to have nothing to do with what he was reading, just kinda happened.

My girlfriend Paula, right, and Mary  held the West couch for a time,  Paula reading from Neruda.

We all seemed to like Mom's book, so we made her keep reading more of it.

Walter and Mary sing in Dad's choir.

Walter actually read some poems in old english from Chaucer, and one other guy which I did not write down. It was fun to hear him read it in the older pronounciation. Faithful beast stood by, ever intent.

David's girlfriend Priscilla and her daughter AnnaBelle showed up in the second half. AnnaBelle read the poem that had given her the name, hence the big grin.

Dad was as quiet and reserved as he always is in such settings, but he did come out of his shell just enough to read some of Sophie's book.

All in all it was a great day. After we finished we sat down to a nice meal.

Walter and Mary dashed out immediately, they are in the middle of a seasonal return of the purple martins. It's pretty exciting for them, they had 40 pairs last year, apparently they expect as many as 80 this year.