Poetry night is
held at a local coffee house and gallery. Medina’s has become the
underground so-called in place for young and aspiring poets to gather.
John Pettijohn, a
friend of mine, was waving for me to come over. John is perhaps one of
the most interesting characters I have met. He is a disabled Vietnam
veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder. We exchanged pleasantries
and he offered to buy me coffee and a pastry. John had just won a
large settlement from the government for his PTSD. He had recently
returned from Italy where he had just married his long-term girlfriend
Mara.
“How have you
been doing?” I asked, sensing a distinct agitation in his demeanor.
“Well, I got
married, and two weeks later the bitch left me,” was his reply.
“She got a divorce. Can you believe that? And yesterday I was
arrested at the VA Hospital for using profanity in public. Goddamn,
can you believe that?”
I looked at him and
tried to bring down his intensity by focusing directly a field of calm
cooling energy. This seemed to be one of the only ways I could deal
with his high-strung nature.
Paul Medina, the
owner of the coffee house, set up the PA and began to call the poets
in numerical order. One after one they would get up and read. It soon
began to be a competition by the young poets as to who could be more
abstract and more politically incorrect, and more outraged. The same
key words used to shock and provoke emotion were used repeatedly.
Let
me see if I might sum them up in one short mini-poem.
The phallus of
government
Represented by Christ
Lifted its morbid penis
To God
While the homosexual mother
Raped her sisters
By licking the anus of the cosmos
Need I go on? No, I
think not. But this is a short condensed version of each poet’s
attempt to startle and provoke by using taboo topics and profane
imagery.
“God, I love this
country,” I thought, as John Pettijohn approached the stage.
I glanced at my
ex-boyfriend Patrick and he was thinking the same things, but he,
however, was doing a much better job at trying to look moved by the
young poets’ emotional diarrhea. “This should get interesting,”
I thought, as John Pettijohn tried to adjust the microphone.
John Pettijohn is a
short stocky guy with a Robert DiNiro-type demeanor. His hair was
slicked back and he had a three-day growth of beard consuming most of
his face, almost encompassing his feel-my-pain eyes.
He began by telling
the audience the story of how he had been arrested for using profanity
in public at the VA Hospital. Then he moved on to an anti-government
stance, and gradually worked his way up into a passionate frenzy of
colloquialisms. He eventually knocked over the microphone stand and
completed his statements without the aid of amplification.
After his profanity
fest, he became quiet and demure and stared blankly at the astonished
faces in the crowd.
“Listen,” he
said, “can you hear that? It’s the sound of an ex-vet’s dog tags
ringing like the bell of freedom as he exits the stage.” He then
walked through the crowd with pride and conviction and wiping a small
tear from the corner of his eye with his red, white, and blue
handkerchief. All one could hear were his hollow footsteps keeping
time with the clinking of the dog tags on his bare chest.
As I watched him
walk through the crowd I thought: “This guy is either the most deep
and intense poet or the best actor I have ever seen.” I could not
determine which was which. I glanced around and wondered if anyone
else in the room had understood what he was trying to say with all of
his theatrics.
He was pointing out
the irony of the legal system. We live in a country where a man can be
arrested for profanity in public one day and be revered for profanity
in public the following day. The answer to this is simple. The basic
words my mother used to say often: “There is a time and place for
everything.”