Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Abebe Payne, in performance at one of the meetings of the Poetry Society. - Contributed

Departing from its accustomed format of having a guest poet end its monthly fellowship, on Tuesday night the Poetry Society of Jamaica's August 2006 gathering went all open mic.

Still, the reaction to Payne on his first piece ensured that he was requested to end the presentations in the amphitheatre at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Arthur Wint Drive, St. Andrew.

The first time around, using the double meanings of words to link rhymes together, Payne spoke of a situation where there are "lips on rear ends, just to make ends meet," noted: "the big man always keep the foot soldier at his feet" and there were cheers when he spoke of someone being "more happy than a virgin whitey on Spring Break in Ochie."

And in closing off the evening before a gathering which grew from a handful to more than a 'bodyful', as the evening's host, Tomlin Ellis, put it, Payne wryly said: "babymother never had the pleasure of her own dolly/even to the time yu swell yu belly." On the male side of things, growing up meant "the spliff replace the thumb."

Payne was not the night's sole 'returnee', as Alex Lee, a student from Harvard, examined the state of black people in a situation where "blue contacts peer through Gucci shades" and noted that hip hoppers like Lil Kim "don't give two craps about Africans," ending with "stop dividing by colour and come together as black."

On her second time at the microphone, coming before Payne, Lee did a shorter piece, saying "the media betrays black, by the way they portray black."

Nursery rhymes

Chavaughn started off the night's offerings by examining Fear, Kamika's Tough Love delved into the mind of an abused and loving it woman with "at least Charles beat me to show he love me" and several nursery rhymes were turned on their heads to a guitarist's support to ask: "who is going to die for the dying children/who live in a morgue of despair?" Sage and Lynch of LSX asked What Are Friends For? while Barry spoke to bones being taken back to Africa with "my bones will go where my body will not be."

After Sheldon Grant's Broken Home, Kerry Jo took an extended look at alcoholism in a grandfather who was a "collector of trinkets, the only person I knew finished the Sunday crosswords in one go," then went forward in her life to an Aunt in an alcohol-induced rage. "Liquor, it seems, has always had a love affair with my family," she said.