Type Dancing

Poet Michael DeVito, a former Marine, belts one out at the Club Red

CLUB RED

I am still trying
to figure out what
Sesame Street is
all about, playing
on the TV screens
over the bar.
Last time I wandered
in here there were
young college co-eds 
showing their titties
at some X-rated Spring Break.
Now I watch
Conjunction Junction
and figure, hell,
both videos make some
kind of perverted sense
at Open Mike poetry night
at the Club Red.
                                        November, 2003
                                        Okinawa, Japan

Note: During the late ’90s and early ’00s, I was a part of the Eat Write Cafe and Traveling Poets Society on Okinawa. We were a bunch of poets, civilian and military, who met at local bars and held Open Mic nights. Everyone was welcome. The reception was amazing. Sometimes a Marine or Airman sitting at the bar who had come in just to drink would pick up a pen, write something on a napkin and join the fray. And it was like a fight night. Poets who had already read would hang out in the back of the room pacing back and forth, like punch drunk boxers, waiting for another round. And afterwards, we would would sometimes gather at my house on Camp Foster to rant, read and drink until the sun came up.