Saturday, April 4, 2009

This is where you should be this weekend, son

To promote National Poetry Month Scott Woods is going to read poetry for 24 hours straight.

This is no easy task. He's reserved the first and last hours for his own outstanding poetry and the other 22 hours will be filled in by an hour's set of 22 other great poets.

Why does he do this?

Because he's crazy hardcore Scott Woods.

So if you go to Kafe Kerouac chances are you will see this.



Why is he sitting? You try standing up there, reading poetry for an hour. He's doing it for 24!

If you're good you may see this.



And if you're really good, and if the stars are aligned right, you may get to see some of this.



One way or another, there's going to be some hot action on stage.

Last week I took my son to his first poetry reading at Kickstart, where they sell coffee and scooters. They won a customer by being so cool when he wandered around behind the counter.

Scott wrote this poem that night and read it. I was touched.

Neil doesn't speak, but he does.
He rides a third rail no one else saw
when they came in.

He rides it like a tricycle.
It would electrocute anyone else.
We all still want to ride.

He speaks; we just
don't know the language.
It is a playing card in the spokes

of a bike I used to have,
but lost, but found,
but never ride anymore.

So Neil stole my bike,
but really: he rides it
better than I ever did

Kafe Kerouac is at 2250 North High Street, just north of Lane Avenue. The marathon starts at eight tonight.

2 comments:

dlkereluk said...

I was reading this in my newsfeed, and was going "WTH" until I thought about it for a bit and connected Scott Woods and the subject of the poem to previous work that you did in another online journalling system.

Holly said...

What a lovely poem! I'm touched and I don't even know Neil except from you talking about him.