No onstage pics yet for several reasons - Big Mike could not take any because he was performing with me and had his hands full cutting off my clothes and improvising - side note, I wonder - since he carried me offstage with one hand over my mouth and the other one up my pussy, was it an x-rated performance??? Anyway, not included in the one album I've seen. We also co-hosted, but since the creator of that album hates me, she managed to post pics of Big Mike CO-hosting by himself.
Bowery Poetry Club, Dark Matters, 2-12 (ran over), 150 scheduled poets, and 30 open mic slots. You get a serious 3 minutes - a siren will blare and the mic will shut down seconds later - so you have to hit the audience hard with something that will grab them and that they may even remember. There are also a lot of drunken attendees, the place is packed, the bar is jumping, so if you don't grab their attention, you may be drowned out by noise and activity. Last year, I grabbed them with my performance poem The Perfect Man, which is in the archives. I developed the idea for this year's piece at the 2010 show. Since The Perfect Man was under 3 minutes, I had brought along a very short list of ridiculous surreal resolutions, in case I wanted to fill in the time. I didn't use it due to the tremendously enthusiastic response to the piece - In fact, Gary Glazner came up shortly afterwards and referred to me as THE PERFECT POET of the day.
So I had this brainstorm - write a list of resolutions that starts out in a mundane fashion - i.e become a better poet, etc - and quickly launch into absurdity while Big Mike creeps up to the stage and starts to cut off my clothes. At the time, I imagined that I would wear pants and he would cut off my top and maybe my bra. We started using the concept in a variety of ways - played for laughs, and as a deadly serious dramatic device - Mike threatening me with the scissor, cutting off a piece of my hair, writing on my body, me winding up naked - part of the freshness of the piece is that I never know exactly what he's going to do.
The prose was perfect because it didn't matter where I left off - if I had too much time I could improvise, if it stopped midway, it was unimportant because it's just a list. I hope they don't censor the video in the archives. If I ever get pictures, I'll post them, including a couple from that day. The first photo posted is backstage with Amy Uzi, who performed "Princess" with Big Mike in his slot, and the thired is with Faux Maux, who performed an excerpt from her longer piece, "Nude Artists' Model."
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