I remembered last night with brutal clarity why I stopped writing. On a stage at an open mic night stood writer after writer, each speaking to a generally supportive yet ambivalent crowd. A number of things leapt out at me as they recited their wares.

One, their poems were carbon copies of each other. Their images were pure stock footage; waves in the ocean, moonlight shimmering through a window.

Two, they were blunt. They were straight ahead no-nonsense.

Three, they were infused with a pop sensibility; earnest, naive and shockingly bland. Perfect for the angst-ridden masses.

Four, they were read with a hip-hop, rhythmic bounce. The first one who read paused at certain words, drawing them out before continuing on. I had heard that style before -many, many times. Then every poem afterwards sounded the same, the way white men and women do when trying to sound black. It wasn’t as if this was happening in a white filled vacuum. There were a number of black men and women in the crowd. At one point, a man read a poem and of course it was in the same style as all the others. Yet his flow (it wasn’t a reading so much as a flow, its all about the flow now, the flow of information from one node to another, from my fingers to your eyes) did not sound authentic. It sounded like a white man trying to sound black. The difference was the man uttering the words was black. Things just didn’t seem right.

Then it hit me: I had deemed the entire scene suspect. I didn’t believe anything that was said. Each poem was a high-minded attempt at greatness and each a was an utter failure. Their common mistake was that they did not go with the flow, they didn’t follow the current’s path. They regurgitated that which was there.

The reason I stopped writing is because I started to criticize my work the same way that I had criticized those who had taken the stage that night.

Fairly or unfairly I made that characterization. As in Hollywood, once one is type cast, one can find it very tough to break out of that mold.