writers with sharpies

Stopped in at Writers with Drinks, a reading series that, as it happens, involves a regrettable amount of just the kind of spoken word I really don't understand or appreciate.

My attention span petered out during the last poet's performance— somewhere near the tenth complete line of expletives, delivered in that grinding trochaic rhythm of all spoken word readings (SPOken BROken RHYMing TIMing EFFing ANgry POets).

Fortunately, I had a Sharpie in my bag and tons of poems in mind. The night started looking, well, much sharper.

Emily Dickinson
It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness—

(Look! Poe is in the audience)

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Jack Gilbert
We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe.

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Walt Whitman
I too am not a bit tamed—
I too am untranslatable.

(It is most useful to have gamey accomplices!)
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James Dickey
Live like the dead
In their flying feeling.
Loom as a ghost
When life pours through it.

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Emily Dickinson, refrain
It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness—

(My hand looks a bit like a fakey, Halloween hand. Alas.)
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Denise Levertov
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of poetry.

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Dorothy Parker
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

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[Please note the Elvis skull.]

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Emily Dickinson, surreal
It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness—

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Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shall forget you presently, my dear.
So make the most of this, your little day.

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The Writers with Sharpies Grotto: This is where it all happens.
(Okay, it's the bathroom of the Radio Habana.)