My friend “Rebel Ruthi” Limper talked me into going to the Toys for Tots planning meeting, a meeting for the biker toy run that commenced with a guy named Animal yelling into a microphone, “Awright everybody, shut the fuck up!”
Later in the week Santo called to make sure I was coming. He said the poetry would probably reflect bikers’ interests: “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” He also said that it would be much louder than your average poetry slam because bikers tended to be loud. This had been a problem at the Toys for Tots meeting. Animal’s mike “wasn’t loud enough for all the assholes in the back who kept talking,” Santo said. “We’re not going to make that mistake, you’ll definitely be able to hear us.”
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Ted Aliotta, who used to play in Aliotta, Haynes and Jeremiah, also a biker and poet, was serving as emcee. A band he jams with sometimes, Cowboys in Denial, played intermittently throughout the evening. He was dressed for the part of ringmaster in a black cutaway and leather pants. Aliotta was the first poet to perform. He recited something about the wind in the hair, having a free feeling, or something. The crowd seemed only mildly interested. Brutal was the word. Aliotta had all but lost them when he began his poem “Asshole”: “Kissing your two lips,” it went, “you farted in my face / I swallowed my embarrassment….But when you refused to kiss me…said I smelled like shit…” He had the audience’s attention now. Another poem, “Farts,” also generated plenty of laughter, especially the part about the asshole that could hit a high C. Aliotta squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched up his buttocks beneath those tight leather pants when he sang the C note.
His next poem, “Written for the Girls at the Green Mill,” went over better.
And make her give me head.
Usually I light up a smoke.
