Poetry for soul

This week in The Hole I had planned on taking you, the reader, along with me as I exposed the seedy under belly of the artfully dull spoken work coffeehouse poetry scene.

It started last Thursday afternoon when a friend of mine called me. She demanded that I take a break from my usual club hopping, disco dropping routine to escort her to a spoken word performance of The Smackaccinos, who were playing that evening at Tin Cup Alley in Fullerton.

One can imagine my delight once I stepped into Tin Cup Alley to find, along with the usual fare of double mochas and flavored coffees, they also served beer.

I ordered two beers, found a table near the stage, sat down with my friend and waited for the the band to go on.

While waiting I observed my surroundings.

Tin Cup Alley is a stereotypical coffee house with brick walls decorated with local artists' work. The patrons wear mostly black and the guy behind the counter acts like he is doing you a favor by serving you. The stage was in the back of the joint in an open-aired courtyard.

The walls are lined with Chrismas lights and the stars in the sky happily shine down. I anxiously awaited the beginning of the show. Finally, after what semed like too long and three more beers, The Smackaccinos took the stage.

The band is a three-man unit. Newcomer and lyricist Jeff Kinnison fronted the group sharing with the audience what he called "haiku from the soul."

A haiku is an ancient form of Japanese poetry that describes an exact moment in time through a three-line,17 syllable format.

Kinnison held the crowd's attention as he recited haiku after haiku over the smooth background music of percussion and bass. Brian Green of Disco Stranger played an enchanting swing beat while Tom Smith of Meija laid down a dreamy bass line that washed over the listener like a wave of intensity. Kinnison's magical prose surfed that wave with a seamless ease.

The trio exploded into its non-stop set with a jam before quieting down so Kinnison could speak. After reciting his first haiku, the band picked up intensity then jammed for another thirty seconds before quieting down so Kinnison could recite another.

The short, often irreverent poems, ranged in subject matter from commentaries on society to the band's blatant drug use. I counted about twenty-eight haiku before the music stopped. The excited crowd was obviously disappointed when the trio left the stage.

I usually do not go for this type of scene but the band's energy and style quickly won me over. If you, dear reader, ever get a chance to see The Smackaccinos, I highly recommend it.

How can one not love a group that ends its set with the haiku: "Goatee clad, coffee-drinking, poetry-reading dorks, can be laughed at." Now who can argue with that?