Poets Speak Loud!, December 28

A mid-Holidays bitch & moan session, as always at McGeary’s back room, with our cranky host Mary Panza, & no feature, & just whatever poets wandered in.

& the first up was a new face & voice, Brian Whittle, with a poem in rhyme, with a chorus like a song lyric, cynical & funny about a middle-aged white guy. I followed with an ancient collaborative piece, a profane version of “The 12-Days of Xmas.” Joe Krausman was next with another seasonal piece, “New Year’s Ever” on resolutions, a piece on flying “Taking Off” & one about going to Hollywood as a script writer “Movie Mania.”

Women were definitely in the minority this night & Tess Lecuyer was the first with “Elvis Among the Forsythia,” then a piece about donuts & dancing “Work Day Burlesque.” Last month’s featured poet, Jamie Weeks, was back for the open mic to with “Something She Learned in 2015” (you’ll have to ask her), & a piece in rhyme she had just written “Words to Ophelia.”

Another new poet, Wally, read from his notebooks a piece titled “Language” then an untitled one on religion & money; later he gave me a copy of one of those one-sheet folded broadsides, this titled “Sub Verse: The Universe of What Could Be…” Karen Fabiane read “Never Does” for the first time, & another older poem “If at Dawn.” Julie Lomoe said her piece, titled “The Xmas Goat & the T'aint” was inspired by an article by Red Smith in the Times-Union, & it had us in hysterics.

Robb Smith included his harmonica in a rambling political piece on the Republican candidates. Ian Macks read from a new notebook 2 poems on relationships, “Islands” & “Reflected.” Nick Bisanz announced that his new CD with his band The Last Conspirators “Hold That Thought Forever” was now out & available for sale, then closed out the night a tribute to the just-dead Motorhead front man Lemmy Kilmister, “Dancing on your Grave.”

So that was it for 2015 but Poets Speak Loud! will be back in 2016 on the last Monday, as always, at McGeary’s at Sheridan Square in Albany, about 7:30, certainly not before.