National Open Mic Month

There seems to be a National Month for just about every human activity these days. I haven't yet come across National Pick Your Nose Month but no doubt someone will announce it one day. Meantime I'm announcing National Open Mic Month with this poem which I shall probably read at The Old Ship open mic in Richmond-upon-Thames this evening!

National 
Open Mic Month

It’s National Open Mic Month -
Stand up and let us hear it
For the slammers and the ranters
Who rhyme till you can’t bear it,
For the sensitive young chanters
Of songs to loves they’ve lost
And reciters of long mantras
to the gods in whom they trust.

Let’s have a real big hand
For the brave and the confused,
The writers in the sand
Whose poems are infused
With the politics of now
And the fantasies of might be
And their theories of how
The world could change, and nightly

Let’s praise the hosts and M C’s
Who make room upon their stages
For the thousand poets writing
Who don’t earn any wages.
Let’s have a silence, thinking
Of bars and halls and pubs
Where punters gather drinking 
expensive beer in clubs

Entertained by stand-up poets’ arts
Of every race and creed
Who open up their mouths and hearts
And generously pay to read:
Let's stay each long-drawn evening
And watch the poets bleed
And let's admit we too have
Our own obsessive need.

© Janice Windle