Kickoff to the East Coast Tour

I stood outside 345 Eldert Street. Someone opened the door for me, falsely believing I lived there. “This was it.” I thought to myself. Months had passed with me keeping my persona a mystery. Now here I was willing to give it up for the mere chance of meeting some of the internet’s poets. How would they react? Could I perhaps blend in anonymously like I did when I came into the building? Only time would tell.

First floor, second floor I made my way up. Due to my exceptional hearing I detected the loft by echolocation. Yeah, I know it’s more of a bat thing but I decided to use it. Upon entering the loft I saw Spencer Madsen, Steve Roggenbuck, and Poncho Peligroso sitting on a couch. A couple of seconds passed by once I went through that doorway. No going back now. I’d have to think of something.

“Are you Beach Sloth?” they collectively asked.

“BLEEOOOOOOOO” which means “Yes” in sloth. I answered. Damn it. They figured it out. Guess I shouldn’t have underestimated the detection abilities of these prime pieces of poetic personas. Slowly they got up and hugged me.

Once we began talking they explained how they asked every male who came into the loft if they were Beach Sloth. I probably could have fibbed but I’m an honest sloth, blogging for an honest day’s relevancy. Besides if I was going to support these people I might as well introduce myself in real life. With that out of the way they could treat me less as a blogging sloth and more as an in real life sloth. Steve commented on how I was particularly energetic for a sloth. I explained how New York based sloth had to make some concessions for the prevailing pace.

Eleven readers came out for the event. People decided to put their stock in Roggenbuck. The readers all had their particular styles and locales. Some of the readers were world travelers (like Greg Santos) who traveled from the far-off land of Connecticut to make it to the big Bushwick city. Greg started off the reading in style and I was thrilled to meet him in person. The “hulk voice” for his hulk-based poem was pretty sweet as well and a tad bit unexpected.

Johnny Vulpine drove from New Hampshire. Those of your unfamiliar with geography, that’s far. That’s really far from New York City. I’m really thrilled I got to meet him. His poetry happens to be relatively short though he’s pretty damn tall. Whenever people tried to speak over him we glared menacingly at them. Don’t worry Johnny we got your back we’d say or rather silently look. Plus he read a text message.

Philosophy came up with Andrew Worthington. His poetry summarized philosophers into fun-sized candy bars. As sloths are big into philosophy (in order to justify our laziness) I liked it. The jokes came pretty quickly. Side note: Andrew’s moustache oh my goodness gracious.

Spencer Madsen read from “A Million Bears”. Among the pieces he read were random tweets (which are crowd pleasers) and ‘cat poem’. The crowd went wild, though that would by no means be the last time that happened. Due to the aura Spencer gave off he managed to network quite effectively and found something of a kindred spirit in Guillaume Morissette.

Who is Guillaume Morissette? He’s some French Canadian guy who is pretty cool. I know this because I asked him a question and he answered correctly. The question was “Since you speak French why don’t you write your poems in French?” to which he replied “Because French is stupid”. That’s the right answer in this “Freedom Fries” kind of world. He read some of his poems recently collected on his self-titled e-book.

Mike Bushnell is a crazy bastard. No kidding. I mean, you see a guy with face paint wearing a suit in early August, you know he’s crazy. When he passes around Marshmallows, crackers, and devil’s food it confirms it. Shouting really loudly while jumping on furniture might confirm it. Was it fun? Seeing Mike Bushnell work his bizarre magic represented the Hadron Supercollider of poetry readings.

Coming all the way from New Jersey (where the next poetry reading will be happening) Jess Dutchman encouraged us to drink rum while we watched our children. Unfortunately there was no “Jim watch” for this presentation. She managed to be quite loud and instilled some order in the drunken, debauched crowd of Brooklyn miscreants.

A motorcycle (specifically Michael Michael Motorcycle) came next. He kept up the high energy associated with his name. Since he didn’t actually throw things at people, he didn’t quite make the crazy bastard Mike Bushnell league, but nonetheless impressive.

Ras Mashramani started with her sexually-charged poetry. People appeared shocked, surprised. I’m familiar with her work. Seeing her unleash it on an unsuspecting audience gave me a whole new appreciation for it. While she didn’t hear the crowd murmurs, the crowd sounded vaguely aroused by the charged nature of it.

Where would this be without the headliners? Steve Roggenbuck owned the night. Enthusiasm was clearly caught by all those around him. Most of the room had heard of Steve or Poncho (often both) and having him pass out his real copies of his poetry gave him a wild-eyed professorial vibe to him. Since he’ll be speaking at Duke later this year he might want to try the crazy professor lifestyle.

Poncho removed his shirt before reading, explaining earnestly how it was going to get ‘hot in here’. Or he does that for all his readings, I’m not sure. The audience certainly was wowed by his championship level yo-yoing. His reading involved a huge amount of body language. Since he did film most of the evening he would be particularly attuned to it.

Like all good poetry readings, it ended with a great deal of new friends being made. It also ended with a Justin Bieber song, as Steve Roggenbuck is heavily invested it Bieber’s brand (and vice-versa). Though initially I was worried about my translation from blog life to real life, I’m glad I was able to solidify my friendship with all of these fantastic people. Was it a kickoff? You bet your sweet Tumblr it was.