December 2025 . . . .

“Open Mic — Part One”

By the time you read this I will have done something (or perhaps not) that I have not done in eighteen years. I will have read a poem of mine at an open mic. I will have made a decision to do something in front of a crowd, which is nothing at all like typing this and proofreading it and placing it into a PDF. And I cannot explain why it is different from these monthly missives, out there for someone, anyone, to see. Perhaps you already know, and can enlighten me. Real curiosity, no snark intended.


If I do it, I hope it will have been entertaining and even funny. I hope people listen and absorb and even go home later and tell someone they know that they saw this thing, it is difficult to describe if you weren’t there, but it was special. And if I don’t do it, I hope it is because there were just so many others who wanted to be brave and stand up and share that I was superfluous. I don’t know. We’ll see. Or, rather, we will have seen.


For those of you who bare your souls publicly and somewhat more frequently than that, this is a non-announcement. Perhaps even a whatever moment. You love your work, you share your love, generously. Or maybe I’m wrong. Does everyone who writes for someone to read feel this level of nerve-bundling, of intentional trepidation? Or some large percentage, better than a baseball batting average?


I get anxious having to go to the grocery store. Or to get a haircut. Or across the street to talk to my neighbor, sitting on the front porch. It shouldn’t be like this, I think to myself, but there are so many other issues I could have that this seems little, petty, to complain about. So I try not to. And I don’t know if this is different.


What exactly are my anxiety factors? Is it being in front of others? People I do not know from Adam’s Off Ox (as Dad used to say)? Ignoring me for the most part, if truth be told. A whole world of people who have their own situations to consider, and so I shouldn’t be anxious if I’m a bit sweaty about reading a poem aloud. Or is it that I am not certain of the quality of my work? That sounds suspiciously like imposter syndrome, which is certainly a thing, but I’m not sure I have it, which may be one of myriad definitions of irony. Is it that niggling feeling that something I want to share might not be fully distilled? Not ready for consumption? Maybe it’s not done yet. I need to sit back some more and just stare at it, hoping for revelation.


Which is the exact opposite of how I tend to begin, with a punchline or human quirk that needs needling. Waking in the middle of the night, grabbing my phone and whispering into a notes-app some of what I hope are relevant keywords, and not just sleepy gibberish, that will reflect the nascent idea for something. Oh, I am an ardent advocate of perspiration, but let us give inspiration credit where credit is due.


Somehow, in a cosmic recipe with no rules, I am able to discern the kernel from the flotsam of thoughts washing past on the tide and if I get enough kernels I can construct verse. I reflect on the instruction given to me many years ago — certainly you are familiar with it — to murder my darlings. Remove that which doesn’t belong except that my ego wants it there. Tell only the truth. And don’t settle for a fragment. Tell the whole truth.


Then I polish like Michelangelo (only not the Michelangelo you’re thinking about, the genius who created the David, but the young man who makes pretty good pizza and calzones in the town where I grew up. He could throw pie dough up in the air about four feet), with a practiced touch, one that has not improved in years. Decades even. I take what remains and set it aside, in a file, in more than one file, to ferment. Okay, then, I tell myself. That’s done. Or not. We’ll see . . . .