Photo By Jefferson Jackson Steele

Mic Check

Slamming Through Local Poetry Nights

By Anna Ditkoff

At Five Seasons Ethiopian Restaurant in Mount Vernon the lights were low, candles flickered on the tables, and an impressionistic landscape mural wrapped the room in soft blues and greens. On an intimate little corner stage, Bassman (pictured) told us in his smooth Barry White voice that "Warm Wednesdays are all about the love." And if by love Bassman meant sex, he's absolutely right. Sure, there were a smattering of poems about race, politics, religion, and society's ills, but for the most part the poems were about wanting it, getting it, or sending it back.

The night started off innocently enough with a woman who spouted so much religion that Bassman joked about passing the collection plate, and Rodney, a second-grade teacher with a head full of twists and a critical look at America's current obsessive patriotism. The stage seemed set for a night of social thought when a Warm Wednesday virgin, as first-timers are called, took to the mic. Clad in a white flowing poet shirt and tight jeans slit up past her knees, she shyly explained that her poem was inspired by a poet she met here a few weeks before. Weaving together words of praise and seduction, she dropped the name Native Son, a Warm Wednesday regular. His friends in the audience immediately started hooting and hollering, and he blushed from suit collar to dreadlocks.

It was the best pickup I have ever seen, and it wasn't the night's only one. There were a couple more crush poems; a few odes to "my fair love" that sounded like rhyming phone sex; a performance by Sugarbear, who Bassman dubbed Baltimore's Best Nasty Poet; and an extremely clever send-up of the miseducation of men courtesy of a poet calling herself Autumn. Even Native Son and his partner Dri Fish, whose carefully choreographed poems wove in and out of each other, touched on sex as well as politics.

By the end of the night the room was wall to wall bodies, and people were ready to stop talking and start doing. Pushing the tables against the walls, the poets put down the mic and started to dance.

Things weren't as prurient over at Xando's Monday-night Slamicide, though I did overhear one of the poets describing in detail the sexual problems he was having--or more accurately not having--with his girlfriend. Tucked away in a lower-level side room of the clean and conspicuously bohemian Charles Village coffeehouse, a diverse crowd--black, white, gay, straight, young, and old--sat around the haphazardly laid-out tables ordering drinks to make their $2 minimum purchase. The open-mic poetry itself was hit or miss: Daddy-killed-Mommy tragedy poems, I'm-a slave-for-your-lovin' verses, a response to the International Race Conference, and a clever piece written from the perspective of a third-grader. The featured poet, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, was mesmerizing. He commanded the room with his words, painting beautiful pictures of his native land of Ghana and then gamely offering up an ode to fried chicken.

But when you go to something called Slamicide, you want to see a slam, and the organizers delivered a very structured contest with scoring reminiscent of the Olympics. Still, host GranmaDave, with his wild hair, thick black glasses, paint-splattered pants, and propensity for giving out too much information, kept everything going with a manic enthusiasm. Before I knew it, I was sucked in, rooting for my favorites as they competed for miniscule cash prizes.

I was pulling for Komplex, a tall, striking man in an AIDS-awareness T-shirt whose poem "Heaven in View" blew me away, but he went several seconds over the time limit and that penalty cost him. I was also cheering for Chris, whose poem about his muse--the pudgy middle-aged woman who ran his college's poetry night--was hysterical and oddly touching. But Chris and Komplex were both trounced in the first round by a thin indie-rock-looking kid with a flask in his back pocket.

The second round separated those who really have it from those who had just one good idea. Chris hit it out of the park again with "Next Time I Am a Teenager," and Komplex did a hot and heavy number that charmed the room. Chris earned second place, the indie-rocker took home third, and Komplex took first. In my head, I was waving one of those big foam fingers--we're number one. Whoo-hoo!

The following Monday night, I raced over to Funk's Democratic Coffee Spot, 15 minutes late for the weekly Talk It Up event. Flying into the joint and up the stairs, I found nothing. There were a few people sitting around reading or chatting, but there was no audible poetry going on. So I ordered myself a hummus plate and waited.

And I waited, reading at a pastel-stenciled table dusted with dried rose petals, sipping herbal tea out of a mug covered in airbrushed hearts. Almost an hour later, the people running the show still hadn't arrived. Eventually, a young man in a black baseball cap with a blond ponytail hanging down his back turned to the room and asked if anyone else was here for the open-mic poetry. A table full of young women said they were, so they just started reading their poetry back and forth to one another, discussing their pieces, why they write, how they write, and their lives in general. I couldn't help being charmed.

On the way out, I handed my heart-covered mug back to the man behind the counter, and he asked me about the poetry night. No longer in a rush, I sat down and discussed poetry and tea and watched him write his favorite poem on a piece of scrap paper for me to take home and read: "Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry, and others of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the black earth, but I say it is whatsoever a person loves." --Sappho.