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First Gig
By Matt Iverson
Genre: Poetry Level: High School 10-12
Year: 2001 Category: UAA/ADN Creative Writing Contest

Hey, man!
What's this, a cafe, man?
I never read at a cafe, man.
That's what they did back in the day.
Now picture: performance poets at play
while patrons pine away
and ponder the portraits these poet-types paint while drinking tea and coffee
and nibbling on biscotti, or pretentious cake.
Hey, this could be my big break,
where my poet-wings take flight, and my poems and I fly right out of sight
(not that anyone knows where we're going as it is).
Now, remind me again, how those long-gone dudes did their gigs.
Oh, that's right: bongos, berets, booze, babes, books, bums, bass players...babes.
Man, that life can't be beat! --or is it?
All right, all right.
Sit tight, order a drink;
just give a moment to think
about where I was
and about what was my point.
--What was my point?
Something about this joint, this night... there we are! taking flight like a bird;
well, now's the time, right, Charlie?
So now it's my time to blow down a chorus?
Now it's my time to hear the music like voluminous cumulus clouds
and guess their shape?
But I don't have my horn.
I'm like a highway child without a Cadillac, or a doctor fixing a heart attack by
taking a nap
and sending flowers to the deceased.
But now is my chance, I'm being released;
so from now on, my flowers are colored like music, and I'm riffing on life.


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