Word of Mouth
Get caught up in the unrestrained passion during Open Mic Poetry Night every Monday at The Buzz, where the poems jolt the coffee-drinking crowd
Ryan Starkweather Emerald
Another poet takes the stand to serenade The Buzz audience with her reading. The EMU coffeehouse—and the breezeway just outside—turns into a high-energy venue every Monday night.
By Sara Jarrett
Oregon Daily Emerald
In a folkish, rappish, rythmic
beat, The Announcer speaks into
the microphone. He’s new. He’s
fresh. He’s a poet. It’s poetry.
He sings. He shares his soul.
His words are spit into the crowd
of pencil holding, coffee sipping
fiends.
Fiends for self enlightenment.
Self destruction. Self.
Poetry night at the Buzz — 9 p.m.
Open — Encouraging — Raging
— Healing.
The espresso machine drowns
out the voices of the meek. They
have to scream to overcome the
wrath of the doublelattecappuchi
noamericanocafeaulait maker.
But hold it in until we get outside.
And we will go outside.
Outside to scream. Scream it out
— soon. A cigarette break is com
ing. The climax is coming. And af
ter it’s over, the poets will roll back
into their shelter, shaded from the
harsh weather outside. They will
nestle back into their plastic chairs
and listen to each others’ voices.
The voices from inside—yearning
to be heard. Breaking, tearing,
pleading to be heard.
Suppress the urge for now,
however, to be heard too loud.
Whisper into the abyss of self
righteous students who pretend
to listen but are really composing
their own prose inside their own
heads. The mild side must speak.
Soak it all in.
First On The List steps into the
spotlight. His black trenchcoat kiss
es the floor as he sits in a chair that’s
too low. Blond hair sweeps from his
crown—glistening in the manufac
tured light seeping from a manufac
tured bulb. But his voice is quiet as
he talks about playing shrink to a
friend and getting out of bed to face
one more day.
Reporter’s
NOTEBOOK
He re
tires to a
table in
front.
The
stage is
consumed
by The
Smart Ass who feels sorry for the
kids these days who try to com
mit suicide but get it wrong by
cutting horizontally instead of
vertically.
The Smart Ass doesn’t stop
there. “Give me an issue. I’ll give
you a tissue. I’ll wipe my ass with
it,” he says in a different poem.
The Announcer again.
This time to the beat of “Tom’s
Diner” by Suzanne Vega. Sing along
everybody—or not. You all suck.
Change it up. The art moves
from esoteric rhetoric to funda
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mental lines that rhyme every
time. Every single time. “Pain is
love,” says The Christian who lat
er thanks Jesus for dying on the
cross for all of “our” sins.
Back to what was.
Mountain Dweller turned grad
uate student reads a poem from a
journal he kept during his hermit
phase. Then it’s back to love. He’s
in love.
“This one is for the girl at New
Frontier Market; I have a crush on
her,” Mountain Dweller reveals to
the audience. He pleads for all the
girls to listen — “I want your
opinion.” Listen to the words.
They do.
“Love knows all of our rules
aren’t even guidelines,” the poem
reads. Should I give it to her or
not? Give it to her. Of course, the
girls agree.
“OK, but if I get beat up I’ll come
back and read you the beat -up
poem,” Mountain Dweller says.
No way. The poem is too sweet.
The Sparkler reads next. Her
purple glitter shirt dances on the
walls as she reads an “Ode to
Denny’s.” She’s fast. It’s over. Her
memory wafts through the cafe.
Choppy, blocky, punchy, pulpy
— The Pierced is next.
“The noise keeps on growing
from the tick tock in my head,”
she says.
It’s 10 p.m. now. An hour of re
straint has passed. It’s time to suc
cumb to the calling of the outside.
It’s time. Time for the bitter cold
of the February night. Time to
scream. Time to smoke.
The Pierced screams too.
Outside, she stands on a chair
in front of a black-clad, wide
eyed, anticipating crowd.
“I have very little that’s my
own. Just the scars, and the holes
and the words that I write,” she
says to the exuberant audience that
cheers wildly for every participant
in the open-air jam session.
It becomes a popcorn, piece
meal, jump in, jump out, waltz of
words.
“I will no longer let myself be
censored. Who will shout out
with me, and together we will
grow louder and louder and loud
er until all you can hear will be
poetry?” yells The Pierced.
Set to a perfect backdrop of Eu
gene rain, these poets let it all out.
The Preacher guides the opera
tion. He’s older. He’s bald. He has
a goatee. He says he wants to rant
a real man, so he reads from “My
Life is My Sundance,” by Leonard
Peltier, a Native American who
has spent the last 24 years of his
life in prison despite the fact that
the government has admitted on
numerous occasions that they do
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not know who is responsible for
the murders of two FBI agents he
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“I am everyone,” The Preacher
reads from the book. “Everyone
who ever suffered for being human,
being free, being indigenous.”
The Preacher appears many
times.
“Last week I read my first love
poem in my fife,” he discloses lat
er on in the night. “Then we
broke up, fought all week and
then got back together. ”
His Hard Headed Woman
stands behind the crowd, listen
ing to his declarations. Her smile
reeks of adoration.
Back and forth like a tennis
match fought with grammar, the
poets play on.
Rain drips and wind billows
through stark, white bones shel
tered only by the fragile flesh we
all share.
Share.
Share words. Share praise.
Share yourself.
The Preacher encourages his
following to use the words of each
other “because good artists steal,”
he says.
The mantra is well received.
Screams echo, as they do every
Monday night at The Buzz.
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