Why poetry readings reeeally bug me. Prepare yourself.

Poetry readings usually start with someone reading their poem. They get nervous, blush a bit, maybe shuffle their feet and get modest all of a sudden. And the poem will then be something either incredibly heartfelt, emotional, and morbid, or something like this:

"I was playing with a ball and bat

When I saw a black cat

I couldn't see through the fog

So I fell in a bog

It was cold in the bog

I started to jog

I saw a monster in there

It had funny hair

Then I found Tim

And then we saw Jim

Then I asked Tim the time

Out of the bog we did climb"

And then the whole poetry group will clap and cheer and eat stale cookies provided by some old lady who dug them out of the back of her pantry. They'll shower the reader with all sorts of compliments, adulations, throw themselves on their knees, kiss the reader's boots, bestow upon them all sorts of tributes, etc., etc.

Anyways, the discussion comes next. And of course, each member has to contribute a comment about how deep and histrionic and passionate the reader is. The conversation gets started, each member spurred on by the sugar rush from horrible, concrete cookies and their extensive lack of hobbies, unless you count locking yourself in a gloomy, musty closet for hours and vomiting onto a page (*from the archives of Ms. Rear) a hobby. The members of the poetry group contribute their opinions of what the deeper meaning behind "I couldn't see through the fog/So I fell in a bog" could be. Could "bog" be a reference to intense, clouding emotional discomfort? Indecision on the reader's place in life? Shock from a traumatic experience? Or maybe the reader simply discovered an unknown world beneath our feet, a world never explored before, a world so filled with paranormal creatures and dangerous, malignant fauna that no creature, be it man or beast, has ever explored past three feet into the cloudy marshlike climate. 

The reader mentions that he/she wrote the poem while eating several pounds of Dim Sum. The group is ecstatic! They work themselves into a frenzy, piling speculation upon conjecture upon hypothesis upon presumption upon surmission! Dim Sum vapors may increase writer's creative, intellectual, or imaginative capacity! Now they quickly thrash out who'll carpool with whom and head over to the nearest Chinese restaurant, packed together as tightly as rice in a stuffed grape leaf in their vehicle, as though a giant is about to pick up the outsized, "artistically" graffitied van and take a bite.

It is now past my bedtime. 

Goodnight.

-To Be Continued.............................(muahahahahehehehahahacoughcoughcoughhackwheeze)