Poetry came to me like so
many other aspects of my life, by surprise, at night, delivered by a curly
haired freak that was equally charming, creepy and humorous.
She arrived in the early
90’s when an ethos of punk rebellion and DIY esthetic filled the air of my
small central valley town as the youth steamed and stewed for something more,
but sat clueless as to where to find it. The night of her arrival, I sat on the
lawn of the only coffee house in town at the time, Java Jazz, owned by Harley
Davidson riding, conservative Christian Republican Lesbians in recovery, which
sounds like an oxymoron unless you have ever spent any time in Bakersfield,
where one quickly discovers that the lack of clean oxygen tends to create a
special breed of moron. I had recently experienced what I thought was my first
love and consequent heart break and had simultaneously decided to not leave
town for design school in LA.
It was here that I found
my real true love, guised as a flyer for a poetry reading in the hand of a
boisterous trickster delivered with the words, “You need to get up and follow
me right now.” Normally, I would have responded with a quick and cool
“fuck-off”, but that night as the breeze tucked under my knees, I asked “why?”
and I let the wind propel me down the street, into dark alleys and off the
beaten path to a café that had appeared like an apparition, arriving as quickly
as it would depart 5 months later.
My first poetry reading
consisted of an audience of 15 people crammed into a tiny make shift café. Five
of them were poets, 10 of them queer and three of them girls, one being me. I
had read about poetry readings, dreamed of being on the road with Kerouac and
Ginsberg, but this was my first taste. Smoke filled the room, espresso machine
hissed as boys pretending to be men hunched in the corner in half embrace,
spilling over journals and scraps of paper debating each other’s relevancy. I
stood against the wall, so scared I thought I might disintegrate, so intrigued
I had to be first. Quickly flipping through my journal I found a poem writhing
with anger and sharp tongue, a quip to my stepmother and our relationship that
was done. As I stood in front of my peers I grabbed the mic and (the same as
now) all of my fears disappeared, in her place a fierce warrior woman able to
speak her truth like a rapid firing pistol, riddling the crowd with words so
fast in the end, sometimes, it only brings silence. But this night it didn’t–
it brought slack jaw cheers as I was approached and asked for more, offered
tokes and sips of 40’s brought out from coats.
That night was the
beginning of my most passionate love affair, the one that brings the clearest
truth and the darkest lies, the one that I can always rely on to carry me
through my opaquest nights.
Days and venues changed
and eventually the poets began to converge at a coffeehouse called Chaos, aptly
named for the time, filled with a momentary renaissance of culture in an
otherwise cultureless wasteland – here we laughed, loved and raged poetry,
music and art, until seeking more – most of us went our separate ways.
I had more firsts with
poetry along the way, my first slam, my first bomb, my one way love affair with
Allen Ginsberg’s biography on the mountain tops of Yosemite, my hidden years,
and my most recent return - here with
all of you.
Poetry saved my life - I
brought pen to paper instead of knife to skin. When my demons told me to slice
my soul, hold flames too close, hang tight from ropes until life bled out, it
was poetry that reminded me I could do it all with words and be free to begin
again in the morning.
I want to send shout-outs to those who have helped me along the way:
Big Poppa E – Erik Ott, poet and friend, my long-standing pen pal, mentor and
muse
Johnny D – John William Davies – one of my BFF’s, pen pal extraordinaire,
English professor by day, sultry Goth romantic poet by night
