flat night

hosted the baruch latino reading last night, except there was very little latino about it. i held up my bargain– brought myself and three hispanic poets. only to find that there was almost NO latino audience. all of the crowd was courtesy of the cataclysm, a hip-hop group from hunter college.

my hosting did not go well. i was not synching with the college crowd, not even a lil bit. my first open micer almst took 15 minutes all by himself as he got permission from someone else to use music, beatboxed (quite well, i must say) till the music started, couldn’t use the mic, then had to get the music re-cued, told the story behind the rap, restarted, killed the music and then finished his piece.

and here i am, trying to keep a smile on my face. the open mic was not that bad, however, and i was interspersing my invited guests with the open mic. the energy was flowing pretty good, anacaona hit the mIc and started with this:

“i just want to say ‘sorry,’ my poem has a lot of spanish and…”

at that point, fish and i just yelled at her.

‘never apologize for your language!’

man, that shit really boiled me. more for the fact that people were saying ‘ok, we understand’ as if it to give her permission… permission? then, mo’fos were tuning her out.

that lead to the biggest rant i have ever spit on the mic.

man, i have got to contain that energy and throw it into a poem because i was telling these little fools that there narrow-mindness is the same bullshit the gov’t wants to lay on us… and they loved it.

after that, the thrill was gone and i was happy to hand over the end of the show to the cataclysm and break out. as i was leaving, they put on a great hip-hop set. not poetry, hip-hop.

it is said “all men with honor are kings but not all kings are men with honor”

and that same applies to all these MCs who try to drop a verse and think they are fucking saul williams. in nyc, this is a very uphill battle.

so off we go, fish & i, to the martinez gallery to check out rog, lynne & ed kick some pieces. ya know, chill with friends, hear real poetry, get re-inspired. then we get a flat and have to wait two hours for a two truck to show because for some unknown reason the brand new tire fish’s dad put on the car refused to come out. we were taking turns being pissed off and then the tow truck came and he tried to charge us $80 to go to 116th street… when we are at 14th & broadway!

“what do you mean we are going to 116th street”

‘that’s where our mechanic is at’

“what if we go to 38th street”

‘we could do that’

“then what will you charge us?”

‘the same’

“what?”

‘our mechanic is really good, though’

“we dont need a mechanic, we need a tire fix!”

long story short, we got a cheaper tow, got to the tire fix, saw the guy pop out the tire 1.2.3 and then headed uptown. when i got dropped off, i realized i had left my acentos book with all out promo material and a group of my poems!