Goths hosted Ustream. Johnny Vulpine invited us into his humble home. I hadn’t spoken to Johnny Vulpine much excluding wanting ice cream I saw him eat once. That ice cream looked amazing. Days later I still wish I had that delicious ice cream cone.
Johnny Vulpine partied in front of us. Years have passed since I’ve been involved in the Goth culture. I wondered if it had changed since I had been involved with it nearly a decade ago. My most recent interaction with Goths was during another Presidential administration. How much really had changed in Goth culture since George W. Bush left office? Watching the reading I found out.
The delivery of Johnny’s poetry was halting. I liked it. He didn’t make anything fancy. You had only the pure language to understand. Haikus happened to be his mode of expressing himself. At the end of each one he had to state “That’s it” with his disarming charm. Since I watched it already tired from a weekend of hugging people I matched up well with Johnny’s energy level.
Two people (Amber French and Shayla Riggs) wrote material in a humorous vein. Every poem was absurd and silly. “If I were a cat I would lovingly leave poop in your shoes every morning”. That ended up being my favorite and most representative of this small series.
Joe Randall read his poetry. I’ve never read him before. “Spears fly into our simple heads.” That line sort of jumped, or flew, at me. Most of his lines were rather dark. Among the other items involved hellfire and doom. Most of my day had seen little to no sunlight due to rainstorms. Thus, Joe’s work felt appropriate.
Ellen was my favorite. Her delivery worked well. Plus, she had knowledge about ustream and interacted with us, mere ustreamers. Despite the background of drunken revelry she stayed focused, on point. She invited us to add her as a friend on Facebook expanding the massive online poetry community. At some point I hope we have enough people for a village, for a town, and eventually principality.
Out of the light came Shayla once again. She delivered a great poem and expressed joy. After she left we had this amazing reader. He wore silver chains since he appeared to be a ‘Poetry Gangster’ revered up in New Hampshire. Though he had the longest poem he managed to keep a certain flow. It sounded like a rap in terms of the quickness of the lines. Each one flowed into the other.
People performed a piece with a guitar. I felt happy. Suddenly all my time in college didn’t feel wasted. One held a guitar. The other held a Ukulele. No other ustream ever had married poetry to music. I do both on here. I’m glad others have found this wonderful marriage of the two forms. Hopefully this will become a common feature of all ustream poetry readings.
“This is what every day is like at Barnard.” is what Spencer Madsen said. Due to Spencer’s location in New York, only he and I actually laughed. All the girls in the building came together and began singing. Only a ukulele and guitar accompanied them. I’m not familiar with what they sang. I do know that they have perhaps more familiarity with singing than I have (I got kicked out of chorus for not singing enough).
Poetry is unstructured. I liked this reading for that reason. By having a loose configuration they made it unexpected and exciting. Truly this was fantastic.