September 3, 2012

Third night in a row downtown, and this time it was Caleb’s Poetry Cabaret at the Altamont. It was sensational fun, with a wide variety of poets performing. I arrived to find that I was a “featured poet,” a little embarrassed (and a little satisfied) to be singled out from the crowd like that. Read poems from The Glacier’s Daughters. It was good to hear them again. I appreciated that all kinds of poetry were represented, but it is still the case that performance poetry–slam poetry as it was called, rather nostalgically, last night– depends for its effect not on itself but on the supposed authority of the performer. Our featured slam poet did undistinguished poetry about being gay, which was received with enthusiasm because it was assumed he had suffered all the anti-gay indignities, enjoyed all the gay delights, mentioned in the poem. I think of this because it’s the sort of thing I obsess about, the long struggle between moment and eternity, between fad and culture. A lot of surrealism. Balance of the races. Girls in lovely dresses. No one but me like me. Two guys from the drunken, laconic, Kerouac-Hunter S Thompson-Bob Dylan-late-arriving and instruction-missing- hipster camp, whom I thought I would loathe, but who turned out to be clever and entertaining. All styles, in any case. It was good to see the K's at the front table. The rain had stopped by the time we took our pictures and headed home, and the city gleamed with slick streets and a misty, fading moon. The night gleam of the city made me think I was hungry.

Everything is dull with mist now. Kevin let fly a few bars and then, as I might in fact do, subsided back into amphibian sleep.

Was told to lie about the bike wreck, telling people someone ran into me, rather than to admit no one was within half a mile and my own brakes did me in.