On My Poem Performance AKA Rejection Feels Like A Slap In The Face

Rejection feels like a slap in the face, a slap so hard and so unexpected, it makes you feel cold and abandoned.

It was in the early part of May 1996 when I was looking for a new outlet to perform at. I was getting tired of Chicago open mics and wanted to try an alternative to the otherwise aggressive city scene, so when I spied the listing for the Arlington Poetry Project’s (APP) gathering at the now-defunct Vail St. Café location in Arlington Heights, I jumped at the opportunity to try it.

At last, May 15 arrived. I was excited. A new venue. New people with open minds. New ideas. A pure virgin poetry prairie awash with freshness awaited me…so I thought.

They did readings in rounds, something I was unaccustomed to, but readily accepted this new challenge. I thought to celebrate this new venue, I would layout my little thinking poem “Performance,” or the “Ah Poem” as it is now commonly referred to as.

I recall walking up to the microphone and eyeing it like I always did, as to get a feeling for my surroundings, then quickly scanned the crowd and jokingly suggested to the audience that with the poem I was about to read that they “might want to blind their kids’ eyes.”

Performance

In bed,
sex is determined
on whether or not your partner can open up their mouth and say...
Ahhh....

I launched into the poem with full gusto and even though the audience laughed and clapped, I had this strange impression that what I had read was not all right. In the next round, I read another poem although the crowd warmed up to me, I still did not feel on an even keel. Turns out I was right.

I went out to eat with them later that night I recall, but I didn’t talk to many of those who were there, I think I felt too nervous or embarrassed or maybe a little of both. Later, I was informed by Phil Zurawski, the group’s founder at that time, that many members of the group saw me as an outsider. It was at that moment, I realized and knew, I was the true black sheep of APP.

It was not the first time I had been rejected. It was the same feeling I had when I was turned down for as a date for my high school prom and for my true love affair for poet Rod McKuen. To be rejected for that poem was a real slap in the face to me personally and to my art. Before reading that poem at Vail St., it never caused a stir elsewhere, other than being banned for several years, a year later while reading that poem at the Bucktown Arts Festival in Chicago.

For the record, I have always said that, “Performance” is a thinking poem and not about an act of foreplay. It is a conceptual poem, as simple as taking an image and adding a soundtrack to it, similar to a sound recording, but instead it is a conceptual soundtrack for the mind and soul.

However, to be excluded from others because of what that poem does and without even asking me ever what it was about, was wrong. Yet, I kept chugging down the tracks as I always did, kept arriving and reading at gigs and did my best to get to know others even as their resistance was on high alert.

Over the ensuing months, one by one, the hardcore members began easing up their borders and let me inside. I was thankful for that. For me, sharing the human experience means more to me now than it ever did when I first attempted to join ranks.

It has been nine and a half years since I have been with APP on and off. Thankfully the group's leadership has changed hands for the better with Ed Layer Jr., taking the reins as leader. Even though Ed & I don't always see on the same level, I respect the rules a year later after my breakout year of 2004 from APP.

These days I primarily write strong essays (for this blog) and a poem or two, I still read with the same vigor and treacle when I first began at APP and that's about as much as anyone could ask for.