Where is the love for the open mic venues?? It seems to have abscond as suddenly as it entered our lives.At one point from everyone seeming ubiquitous and now a passing thought. Well I'll say that goes for some and while others of us are so deeply rooted within our love for poetry that we muddle about in public appearances just to get an earful of this delight we crave so much....spoken word. I rarely see any of the would be considered elders of the poetry community out anymore. It use to be a time when I could not count on one hand how many different venues were going on at one time and now that thought seems to be a passing one. The newcomers...well some of them anyway , are barely giving the audience sustenance to fill their stomachs, hearts and minds with. Every other he or she claiming to be the next big poetry thing just leaves me longing for the days of old, nostalgia kicks in and I'm swept back to a time when Friday would come and I would damn near break my neck to make it to Legacy by 9pm just so that I could secure a spot on the list.To be in the place where so many poetic hopefuls would frequent and so many poetic greats got their start. I knew I was going to have a great evening because not only would my soul be filled with poetic sustenance I would have the camaraderie of my fellow poets to keep me company that evening.....Mk, Impakt, Invisible Man, Starlite, Brother Ting, Mocha , Poetry In Motion, Chill, Meru, Copasetic Soul,Cheeroz,Derek Brown, MsInterpretation, Ill skillz, ,Reign, Montague,Sole Element,Epi-c,Spoken,Que and the list goes on of eager intellectuals that you were bound to have a conversation with because you just never knew who was going to be in the house. That's the type of poetic love I long for , that is what I want to see the venues filled with but these days its hard to even get people to acknowledge the presence of each other. Everything is so cliquish and no one wants to come someplace unless "THEY PEEPS" are performing. I really just want all the ignorance to stop and for the poets to try a little harder to give the audience something they can feel and word of mouth will definitely bring the love back. until then I'll continue to be Patiently Waiting(poem plug).
