Poetry Reading

#Poetry Reading

Mr. Poetito came to “Connected” for Poetry Reading every Monday. Connected was a place for people with mental issues to self help themselves. He came with a bottle of clear water in hand, and told Lulu, a Chinese middle-aged woman, something about his water drinking history while waiting for others to convene.
“In my family, half of us love spaghetti, half of us love sour dough.” he took a sip from his bottle. “In food, our family has the best combination of the Italian with the French, but in everything else, the difference is as big as that between spaghetti and sourdough，” he elaborated for Lulu. Amazingly to Lulu, Mr. Poetito grew up having never had coffee. To Lulu, both his family background smelt strong coffee, his family name sounded too close to coffee--Kofferman, and he has been able to abstain from drinking it, just think of It?! This was something deserving investigation, Lulu thought to herself. Now Mr.Poetito was 64 years old. The whole world was moving in ten days into the 21 century and he had never tasted coffee in the 20th century. Wasn’t that a regret of the century? No. Mr. Poetito was positively negative on this issue. Mr. Poetito told his latest admirer, that Chinese fair lady that the reason why he had abstained from coffee was that coffee cost too much. Besides, coffee as a beverage to the Europeans was not introduced into Europe until the 18 century. People don’t have to have coffee as a drink. The Chinese, the Japanese, the early British all drink tea, and babies all drink milk. But if you start drinking coffee, you will be hooked to it, and you can’t stop it. And think of it, at least two cups of it, for say, 50 years, how much money that would add up to. So he never started. Fair Lady wondered how he was able not to have coffee in a family with a last name as Kofferman.
He said, “Kofferman does not mean man of coffee. It is a German name, a Jewish German brand.”
“What about tea?” the fair lady asked him.
“ No, never either, never, for all the tea in China.”
“What do you drink?”
“ Me? bottled water, bottled water, at present, it costs $3.75 for a case of 24 bottles. If you get it at the Hot Dog Stand run by that Jewish guy Ralph，it would cost you 1 dollar a bottle. But think of 24 bottles at $3.75 a case plus taxes. The government will soon charge us taxes for drinking water and toilet paper. That is the price you pay for wiping your “Pope’s Nose.” Mr. Poetito was indignant.
“ Taxes, how I hate the very single word of it, not to say the plurals. We are a government of taxes and sexes. You watch my words. Why are you here, by the way, Ms. Fair Lady?”
“ I really don’t know. I thought I would like to hear the English spoken by the Americans and to learn how the English language has evoluted.”
Such was the afternoon tea conversation in a small reading room at the “Connected“-- a self-help center for the mentally disabled. The term is now being universally toned as “diversely challenged” or “culturally disadvantaged”, or “spiritually diversifiablely yoked.” Whatever the names or terms one is thrown at, the encounter of minds, sane or less sane, is what conversation is all about. For the last 6 weeks, the Poetry Reading group is neither attracting nor losing participants. The three persons dedicated enough to be there never missed one reading. Every Monday at 12:30 noon, the reading started with Mr. Poetito played a little mystical tune on the piano. The only difference now was that Fair Lady had brought snacks and when asked to spare 50 cents, she eagerly went through her purse to find 10 pieces of “Mr. Lewis & Clark”. People, now 4 of them, never introduced their names. It seemed that people knew each other. Here, everybody used “You, please” as a common request, and turned heads to the person intended. Mr. Poetito wanted to read to the group members the greatest one liner he judged to be, and he wished to read it the way the old English sounded in the 1400 during Chaucer’s time, when the old man told “amusing dirty stories in Irish accent”, according to Mr. Poetito.
“I can’t read it like this, I need to write the line down and read it aloud.” So he took a piece of paper from his bosom pocket, which had a few small stacks of paper slips separated by different color of pencils. The pocket budged out and balanced back by long sharp pointed pencils. He wrote with great effort that he had to shut out his eyes with each stroke, as if the very alphabet was too old to be dragged out of history. Lady Another and Gentleman Another looked intensely at him, with eyes narrowed in case the old spirits conjured out of the page blew fires. Eventually, and verily, Mr. Poetito finished and holding the slip of paper high against the ceiling light, he first cleared his throat by bellowing his empty tummy and then with his one hand in the air, he blinked his eyes towards the sky and shouted,
“Out of your grave, I will not save.”
“Explosive, explosive, impressively explosive,” Mr. Gentleman Another hammered one of his hand in a tight fist into the palm of another hand, “very Irish indeed, very Irish.” Would you read it again for me, I don’t think I quite get it.” Ms Oriental Fair Lady demanded with excitement, her face turned red, but hard to say from what: the embarrassment of not being able to get it, or the awareness of being impressed.
“Oh Yeah? you want to hear the greatest one liner again? In a sound 400 years older?”
“Oh, yeah, but how you know how it sounds like 400 years ago?” Lady Another asked.
“I don’t wish to burden you with the how’s. People spend all their life tracing the development of accents localitalically authentic. You don’t want to know, verily, you don’t.”
“Oh yeah! But I do, I want to know and I really, truly, sincerely want to know.”
“Oh yeah? You simply don’t know what to want , be careful what you want. We on the other hand, have no time. We are living on borrowed minutes and we are already 14 minutes into our countdowns. Let’s forget how and let me read you the greatest one liner that sounds 400 years old.” Mr. Poetito wagged his head from left to right and from right to left. He read it aloud again and waving his hands. Fair Lady still could not get it, and she would not rest the issue.
“Would you enact it in present local English, so I can appreciate the glorious splendor of the line?” Ms. Oriental Fair lady insisted.
“You are tough, you are truly a poem lover, I can see. Well, it runs like this in local English. In the grave, I will not save.”
Fair Lady followed his sound and exclaimed that she know the difference now. “If you replace the vowel of “ei” with “aa” then it sounds like the ancient English, which sounds like the Irish English. For instance if I wish to say Oh the great red flame of fame, I will just shout like this-- oh the great, read flaam of faam? Do I sound like Chaucer??”
“Blerrdy, blerrdy red,” Gentleman Another exclaimed and stomped his feet.
“That is some serious local accent to get used to if I am to understand that ancient Irishy English. I am here only 10 years and trying to investigate how the American speaking English, and the English Americans are speaking is totally different after more than two hundred years of independence from the British. Like in Chinese. We can understand Cantonese, and that is the oldest Chinese, got 9 different tones, instead of the 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese.”
“Well, deep, verily deep. We don’t want to get into that. We are the living local English, county wise and state wise, and coast wise.” Mr. Another commented.
“Do you mean to say colloquial English?” Fair Lady asked with a lot respect to linguistic sensitivities.
“Well, a sort of, being local is being colloquial. without the local, how can you have the average, daily, uniquely distinguished flavor of an English from the British ?
“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.” Fair Lady nodded. “May I read one of my own poem? It is a limerick. I really don’t know the rules of limerick, but I just found one little book of limericks, so I copycat the formula and here I have a retake of the limerick; would you like to listen to it?”
“We would appreciate it if you read us your piece.”
“Ok, ready, here comes my Irish limerick, though I could not replace all the ei’s with aa’s unless I write them down. But I don’t wish to sound 400 years old. I will just read it in local accent and here is my HotDog Praise:

“A little background information first. I used to sell hotdogs at the corner of 4th street, and one day a guy came and he produced a 50 dollar bill and asked me for “Hebrew National”. I understand the “national” and looked at the 50 dollar bill, and somehow I thought he wanted to donate the money to the Hebrew cause. So I just asked if Hebrew National is some kind of Jewish political Party. He said no. It is a brand name for a hotdog.”
“Oh, Oh, my God, if only I have money I would buy Hebrew National, they are the best, they are so good. Oh I wish I had the money.” Mr. Poetito rubbed his hands very fast and intensively as if he tried to start a fire between his palms.
“I will buy you a Hebrew National after this reading,” Fair Lady said, “all rise, and attention please, here comes the Hebrew National, the Praise of the Hotdog.”
Everybody withdrew their breath for a second and she started to read her limerick in her legal alien’s English:
Hebrew National, dogs at their best,
Blessed before processed.
Baptized before dressed,
In red and yellow, ketchup, mustard, oninion and tomato,
Kotcher style butcher,
The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, .
“Bravo, Halleluiah, Jesus Christ, Holy Mary. Shot, darn it, smashing,” the two gentlemen were wild with appreciation and kept their emotion freely expressed for a long minute.
“The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, , is the killer line, a winner punch.” Mr. Poetito blinked his eyes faster and faster, as if the onion smell was sipping out of the hotdog buns.
“Baptized before dressed, just right to the stomach, a good splash, dropping a Franklin in a boiling water tank. But I am not against Baptism and I am Jewish myself.” Gentleman Another commented, at the same time helping himself to some of the cookies Fair Lady brought to entertain the group.
“Science did some study to approve that after certain age of using one language, your brain is wired in such a way that switching to another language is almost impossible. You say you are here only 10 years?”
“In September, yes.”
“Well, beat me. You are certainly pushing our language very far. Who teaches you, you got a tutor?”
“Carl Marx,” said Fair Lady.
“Carl Marx, that German Jewish who wrote the Capital?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“He did? oh yeah, he certainly did a good job to liberate you from the shackles of proper English. You write with heavy accents of Chinglish.”
“Oh, yeah, you are absolutely right.”
“Oppressed but not depressed. That sounds exactly like the mental well being of the hotdog consumers who are snatching a quick bite from a corner hotdog vendor and put on a satisfied smile on his face and put his tie straight and walk full stomached back to his clerical duties. A good slice of hotdog, very tasty, very amusing. Walhalla.” Mr. Poetito raised his legs and kicked his heels and again robbed both his hands very intensively and delightfully.
Gentleman Another looked at the clock and reminded the group that only two minutes were left.
“Maybe another limerick for a teaser to end today’s very entertaining poetry reading?” Ms. Oriental requested. Mr. Poetito turned his head to Fair Lady and smiled his childish smile. Oh yah! Another one, here you go。
Ms. Fair Lady cleared her throat:
Johnny’s Mom loves limerick lyrics,
She always cracks up at the end kicks,
Johnny’s dad sings blues and grass,
He’s the best guitar picker,
But Johnny has the biggest baby pecker.
Mr. Poetito’s jaw fell and he paused in his breath and then burst out laughing.
“Hai Hai Hai, a good stretch of the form and smell real Irish. What are you? Any Irish connection?”
“No. Pure Oriental, a bit of Huns, if you insist. I have curly hair. My teacher Carl Marx said one has to totally forget his own mother tongue so he can learn another one. And he has to use the second language the way he uses his money. If he does not use his money it is paper. Unless he speaks the language, it is not his language. That’s how I speak the American English.”

“Good, good, jig your butt, jig butt, jigbutt, jitbug jitbug.
Mississippi one, Mississippi two, mississippi three Mississippi four, Lord I am five hundred miles away from home.” suddenly, the door swung open and a girlish woman came in, while rapping. Her pants were below her dorm of belly flop and her hair up shooting in two pigtails on top of her head. She was very welcome before the 20 seconds left of the reading. But she insisted that since no other events scheduled, the group might continue for another 15 minutes until they were ousted by other interest group.
“Yes, oh, yeah, let’s do it, let’s have another Brockovsky.” Gentleman Another was excited and he reached out for his thick red covered Brockovsky. He was a dead hard admirer of Mr. Bro, “admired him to death,” as he said. He enjoyed Mr. Bro’s “serious shit-- very vocally expressed holy shit of a poem. His poetic output smells adult stinkiness, fermented by drug, alcohol, cigarette, and whore…”
Fair Lady looked at Gentleman Another with jaw jarred, and eyes bugging out. She could not quite understand why and how Gentleman Another could keep his own skin so cleanly pale and agelessly soft. He looked like a baby fed on formula bottles, nothing of the food of vice has ever contaminated his look.
“May his soul just as cleansed as his face. By reading the dark poems of the great crusaders against the mainstream culture, he may purge his own dark shadow into the winds.” Fair lady murmured.
As new enthusiastic advocate of the poetry reading, Ms. Jitterbug Another, slammed her hands on Mr. Poetito’s lap. As if he was being executed by electro emotion, he jerked his legs and said with great self control,
“No touching Missy. No touching Missy.”
“I am sorry, I am terribly sorry Sir, I didn’t mean to. I don’t like to touch people, they give me lice in the hair. Well, I’d better keep my distance but this is a poetry slam, itsn’t it, your poetry is slamming good and I just could’t help to slam your lines. No offence.”
Mr. Poetito opened his eyes and focused them onto Missy Whatwhoever, “I have got no lice.”
“Yes, no lice, no lice, only fried rice, Jesus Christ, cheese and rice, serve you right. They kind of rhyme…”
Fair lady shouted and put her hands together in a Buddhist greeting. “Serve you rice, serve you rice, your highness.”
The clock struck 1.45pm and everybody looked at the clock hands, the long one first and then the short one after that and sat themselves straight and ready.
Gentleman Another declared that the poetry reading was over and the group was being very self-motivating.
Mr. Poetito was putting all the poetry collections into his brown paper bag. Fair lady offered to give him a kaphf cloth bag with red lettering “ French Kiss” printed slant on the side.
He looked at it and said it looked too expensive and seductive for his contents in the bag to escape theft. “ My brown paper bag is a virtue by choice, the poorer you look the safer your property. Of course no one can steal my idea in my mind. No, that’s not quite true anymore, I mean. Only I keep my ideas inside my mind and never leak them out, then it is safe. Otherwise, stealing from the brain is a very rampant crime not punishable in most of the cases. Someone will say Einstein hit the formula of relativity at the same time that his girl friend hit it too. Who will be able to make out who stole from whom? Be careful of the people who wish to get rich by stealing from others. Poetry is very easily accessible to theft.
“Thanks for the instructional comment, Mr. Poetito.”
“By the way, Marquisette of French said that the Chinese women are terrifically prolific, is that so?” asked Mr. Poetito.
“Yes, child bearing and poetry writing are the result of leisure for women in ancient China. I myself believe that’s what that is meant.”
“I did not know Chinese woman wrote poems beside having more babies than women in the previous Roman empire?” Mr. Poetito kept his inquiry going.
“Shame on you, you told me you started to read Encyclopedia of Britannica when you were 10 years old and you haven’t come to the topic of woman poets in ancient China?” Fair Lady retorted.
“which volume?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read E.B. I only read Mark Twain. and Bernard Shaw.”
“Well. I have been reading books in Berkley library 14 hours a day and I am too tied to remember anything at all now. But don’t assume I did not remember. It will pop up when the spark of enlightenment hit the fuse and re-connect the circus of thoughts. So Long.”
“Wait, Mr. Poetito, won’t you go with me next time to get some hotdog? Here is a few singles, take to get you some bottled water in the Grocery Outlet, they sell 24 bottles at 3.75 a case”.
Mr. Poetito took the 5 dollar bill from Fair Lady and did not even say thank you.
Fairlady waited and no thanks forthcoming. So she packed up her poetry book and left with a last evil look at Mr. Poetito and left without saying Goodbye to any one.