Open Mic Night at the Spoken Word Cafe in Chicago is Back!

The Beat. The Rhythm. The Groove. It can make or break a rhyme. Electronic drums will never beat a live drum. When I stepped into the Spoken Word Café, I heard a drumbeat and my heart pulsed to the sound. I love live music. I love good poetry. And I'm obsessed with hot chocolate. At the Spoken Word Café, located at 4655 South King Drive, I could get all three.

Poetry

"Poetry has a stereotypical era of a lil' soft guy," the host of the Saturday Night

Soul Espresso Café, Khari B., better known as the Disco Poet, states. "My album is called WordSound: THIS AIN'T NO PUNK ASSED POETRY!!!"

I thoroughly understand why he gave his album that title. I've been to more than enough poetry sets to realize that suddenly men get more sensitive and women get more horny when they decide to recite a poem. The sole proprietor of the Spoken Word Café and the creator of Saturday night's Open Mic night, Jimalita Tillman, performed a poem about this bad habit when the show started. A man who would never get any play on the streets from a certain female could write a love poem and suddenly, she'd find him so interesting. A woman that a guy never thought twice about could write a poem about her clit and guys start fantasizing. Sure enough, there were some guys who played right into the stereotype with poems about how great women are and one woman, with an armsling on, recited a poem praising rough sex.

But Disco Poet, along with a few others that night, including bestselling novelist Y. Blak Moore, author of Triple Take, kicked that stereotype right in the ass.

"I love poetry. At first I thought [poetry] was a bunch of people thinking they were enlightened and (in a singsong voice) everybody talked like this and all of their words moved up," jokes Oscar "Juice", the bass guitar player of Bemaji and the House of Twang.