Erotic Poetry Night

In case you hadn't heard, the National Poetry Slam is being held in Austin as we speek. The kind folks at Poetry Slam Inc. will be bringing together some of the finest american poets for a battle royal. There is a singles division and a team division with competition starting yesterday and finals wrapping up on Sunday.

There are some other poetry related events going on through the end of the week as well. Last night was Erotic Poetry Night at Ruta Maya. Ruta Maya is a coffe house on South Congress near Expose and St. Edwards University. Apparently no stranger to oddball performances, the crowd seemed at ease in the pleasant atmosphere. They were serving some tasty sangria and had Live Oak Heffeweizen on tap. The host was a plump 38DD woman in a lingerie bunny outfit. The three judge panel would rib the poets and then give their roman style evaluation with a giant dildo... "educational prop." It was news to the New York hosts that in Texas it is against the law to sell stimulating devices that are shaped like a penis.

The poets were excellent. The poems ran the gammet from sentual and sincere fantasies through filthy rotten sex to ironic and fantastical fiction. The first white woman to read looked very mod and professional in her parachute capri pants. She surprised everyone with great poem about her date with a scientist who turned out to be a mantis collecting women to have sex with. A few poems later came a raucous poem about Period Fucking. "It's more like a run on sentence," he explains "it goes on a for a few days." That was one of the dirtier poems. One of the last poets was a seemingly unkown jewish boy. He was buff and Sarah was afraid that he was going to fall over from being too topheavy. He had a great style with his voice sounding almost Puerto Rican. He even read a verse in hebrew.

I highly recommend checking out some of the Poetry Slam stuff going on in town this week and in the mean time check out some Def Poetry videos on YouTube. I found this little gem that is possibly the beginning of the skit that became Zapped! on Chapelle Show.