QUITE UNLIKE A ROLLING STONE

 Sometimes, as many of us no doubt realize, a poetry reading can be lousy, boring, monotonic, and even exasperating.  

Especially if you're stoned.  More so if you're drunk.  

Oddly, however, those of us who dare to sit quietly in a room as someone pours his (or her) heart into what he (or she) finds so important that simply expressing it in solitude simply cannot complete the circle whereby a poet communicates to an audience, sometimes endure mumbles, monotone, obtuseness and symbolism so private it's challenging to decode on the fly--simply because that someone is either essential to us or prominent.  

In my case one sticky night long ago, there was nothing else to do.  

I won't name the poet.  He seemed to be a nice man.  I didn't quite "get" his poetry at the time, and yet, he also seemed to be getting quite a bit of local acclaim, something I found to be somewhat undeserving.  But who am I?  At the time, and somewhat even today, I'm simply another poet, someone who, while I've published a number of poems in reliable and respected reviews and journals, I'm no great shakes.  

I ran with a rough crowd back then too.  We were ornery punk rockers, disruptive, irreverent, oftentimes and purposely obnoxious--especially in challenging institutions: art, culture, music, even literature.  Why not?  I was 30, living with a sort of misbegotten childhood in my history.  I was making up for lost time. 

Actually, I have no defense.  That's my defense: My defense is no defense.  This tactic seems to be quite popular here in 2022 sedition and politics.  

The room inside the eternally pompous building called The Institute Of Humanities And Culture, a nice antique home in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas, was muggy.  Like a wish to become an aquarium, a wish almost ready to become true.  

The kingfish arrived before us, leaned on the podium--and began to drone.  Had he droned any louder, he could have come off as a sort of kamikaze attack.  Even if some of his friends treated him as if he was Bob Dylan.

I don't really get the droning.  I've seen this before.  Is droning a gesture?  Is it designed to cue the audience into the concept that the poems being droned are exceptionally private, delicate beasts that deserve near-whispers, groans, and mumbles?  Is the meant to resemble human thought in itself?  

I'll never figure out droning a poem in polite company.  

As I'd been drinking before I'd even entered the room, it would have been impossible to "catch the drift" involved in gesturing what a drone means.  I highly doubt I could have contemplated much of anything delicate.  My sensitivity had been shut off.  This is what alcohol often does: flatten the affect, allow the instincts to rise through the screen of inhibition.  

Rather than laugh, as the formidable poet droned into infinity, I decided on a gesture of my own: Every time he'd begin a new poem, I'd get up, scooch through the aisle and pour myself some more red wine.  

Seemed funny at the time.  

I'd get up as if on cue.  Some tittered.  A couple sighed in consternation.  I was violating something.  Perhaps reverence itself was at stake.  Sure.  I was impolite, impolitic.  But this was ridiculous.  Lifting up a poor purveyor of spoken poetry seemed inimical to the art.  Could it have been that an audience member sat highly disappointed that his or her prejudices regarding poets had been verified after really trying to get with the program of supporting spoken literature?  

Yawn.  With each glass of wine, I got a little looser in the head.  Worse, I'd taken a powerful antihistamine before I'd come to the reading.  Soon, I began to feel sick.  So I got up and left--in the middle of a poem.  

Like the so-called "conservatives" in the US House here in 2022, I was "sending a message".  As that'd teach anyone anything.  

Outside, in the fresh, garden-scented air of the big city, I decided to walk home.  I lived only a couple of miles away.  That would probably clear my head a little.  I was sure of it.  

I did fine for the first quarter of a mile.  Then I slowed.  Ahead of me, in the incandescent half-light of a shopping center sat "the mission": a set of large granite globes construction workers obviously planned to erect onto pedestals as part of the redesign project then in action on the center.  There they stood--giant granite billiard balls on a flat, oblong rectangle reminiscent of a pool table.  

Oh boy.  Time for a pool game.  

I was drunk.  And the antihistamine was not mixing well with the red wine.  Nevertheless, I pushed at great effort one of the large granite boulders across the lot.  It made a large clack against another.  Yeah!  A pool shark has escaped a lousy drone of a poetry reading. 

I pushed another, and another.  Enthusiastically, I pushed a third one especially hard--and not only did it hit the curb--which served as a bumper--it leap over the curb, down a steep grassy incline, and rolled down the street.  

Thank God no cars were coming up that hill.  

This is when I ran.  I wanted to scram--fast.  But as I neared the bottom of the hill where the large granite globe stood, I heard a crackling bark as a man through a megaphone commanded me to stop.  I'd been caught.  

When I turned around, a truckload of yellow-helmeted construction workers were angrily waiting for me.  

"You're gonna have to push that boulder back up the hill, man." 

Right.  And one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I tried.  Honest.  But I couldn't budge it.  One worker leapt off the bed of the pickup to help me.  We even counted 3, 2, 1--then pushed.  

The boulder, with us groaning, moved slowly up the hill.  My pushing partner was really concentrating on muscling the thing up the hill--which was steep.  

That's when I turned and ran.  In fact, I ran all the way back to my apartment.  I've never felt so exhilarated. Best fun ever.  Even if I was a chicken.  Then I called all my friends.  

The next day, a friend and I returned to the pool game.  Yes, the boulder was still there.  All one ton of it.  

Today, the boulders, which stood on their pedestals for quite some time.  The shopping center, a luxury spot with high-end retailers and eateries, changed its style again.  Poetry's changed too.  I don't hear much about that poet who droned that night.  But every time I hear Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone", I think about playing pool and listening to the blues droning on some faraway AM station way out in the country.  

Earlier, in passing, I mentioned politics.  Today, with powerful economic coercion, forces outside the political process actively push reactionaries as if reaction--which does not act, but only moves when pushed by an active force--is a big granite pool ball.  

Sometimes, like those boulders, life in all sorts of relations, including politics, just clicks.  Otherwise, if you're passive, well, you just drone.  There are many drones in the world of spoken word--and just as many droners--and in politics.  And kamikazes; plenty of those in both too.  And the fact that, even though some click, the art of not clicking seems to be quite sublime but also common. Perhaps the click never lasts.  But the non-click or the anti-click?  

That lasts forever.