I went, I heard I left. It’s funny, I get there, pay a hidden fee of $5 which my girlfriend, Jessika, so conveniently forgot to mention until we were getting in the car, and sit down. It’s fine. I don’t expect much as I have never been to a poetry reading that grabs me by the balls as to say, “Hey, you are interested in this.”.

First thing the MC says, “We’ve got 18, well, 14 people reading tonight…”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a long reading. If it was one dude, reading from a book, I might be into that. Eh, scratch that. Since I don’t read, I don’t really care. Ignorant, I know, but it was my upbringing. I’ll tell you some other time in detail, I don’t feel like it now.

First: Not too bad. Some were short, some were longer, all were relatively followable. It took me a minute to get into it, the whole poetry thing. Like a running start to become moderately interesting.

Second: Pretty, gave up on poetry, and read three very linear, easy to follow works.

Third: Quite dreadful. Everyone was supposed to have 5 minutes. This guy and his dozen full pages, knowing he had to read fast to get all the “important” content out in time, did his best Micro Machine guy impression and made his work suffer. I don’t know. Some run on sentence about God and existence.

Fourth: Weird. Long haired veteran to poetry read three or four works that made less than little to no sense. He had a very soft voice, too, which made it harder to pay attention.

Fifth: Kristy. Our friend. Read a story that was well written, quickly read, and intelligible. Win. That’s all it takes.

Sixth: Seriously?! A joke. Here’s what happened in numbered order to make it more dramatic.
1. Dude has twenty or so index cards with assorted phrases on them.
2. He read the cards one at a time.
3. Places each card on the table side by side
4. Finishes last card.
5. Picks up one card at random.
6. Reads card.
7. Repeat steps 1-7 again.
Honestly. You thought it was going somewhere, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

Seventh: MC. It was good. A slight bit of oddity and stragity. Not a word? Honestly? You’re going to call me out on it? Story about woodchucks and zombies. Enjoyable, humorous, witty, and entertaining.

Break: Leave.

It’s not that we couldn’t take it, it’s just that we thought of a few things that we would rather do. It was like a, “Woops, I shouldn’t be here.”. Was it over our heads? Maybe. Are we stupid? Absolutely not. Was that poetry acceptable? Half. At best.