“I’m going to start by explaining to y’all how I became a madman,” Poet Slangston Hughes said into the microphone. “This piece is called “Notes on How I Became a Madman.” He pauses for effect before beginning. “It started with a woman.”
Hughes continued to describe his hopes to one day have a daughter at the Open Mic night at Busboys and Poets on Sept 10.
Every Tuesday night at 14th and V Street, guests with tickets are ushered into the Langston Room for an entertaining Open Mic show. At 9 p.m., spoken word rookies and professionals alike share the stage and express their art and emotion through poetry and music.
The Sept. 10 host, Pages Matam, introduced himself as a self-proclaimed “bowtie enthusiast” and “gummy bear elitist” before calling up performers from the audience.
The first artist to perform was Adele Hampton, a woman who rhymed about a homeless man named Walter who slept across the street from the office building where she worked. Through Walter’s story, Hampton explained the polar spectrums of wealth and poverty that can be found in the District, as well as social injustices that occurred between the two.
Later, Pages Matam performed a lighter piece entitled “Important Things to Know Before Dating an African, or You Must Cook Rice” that had everyone in the Langston Room snapping their fingers and laughing out loud.
Busboys and Poets’ Open Mic Night is about “spreading energy and activism through the arts,” Matam said. And as described on their menu, it is “a place to take a deliberate pause and feed your mind, body and soul” and a “space where art, culture, and politics intentionally collide.”
Busboys and Poets hosts Open Mic Night every Tuesday from 9-11 p.m.
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