It rained frogs in North Carolina

on the day I was born in New York City,

and I know you get the connection.

Because we all understand how these

telepathic-heart-wave-emanations

work ... don't we?

-- from "The Lonesome Nerve" by Bill Zischang

Bill Zischang is on stage in full performance-poet regalia. Black shirt, black pants, black shoes, black shades. He's got his hands in it, too -- the blackness, the void -- and he's trying to wrench something out. Blood from a turnip, you might say. He's an audacious brute with his unruly long hair flinging from his hand-wringing and a mouth big enough to frame his booming roar. He's actually trying to make sense of the universe -- and explain it in words.

He's a founding member of Spoken Word of Tulsa, the local association of performance poets, which is sometimes a fledgling flock and sometimes a motley crew, depending on the month. His audience on this night is comprised largely of SWOT members and supporters, listening respectfully, having bought the ticket and definitely taking the ride. His lines about Wal- Mart get a big chuckle. A sedate Williams Companies secretary in the back widens her eyes and sets her drink down perplexed when Zischang asks, "Do you know the name of your personal monkey?"

The SWOT brochure is pure chamber-of-commerce tact. "What is Spoken Word of Tulsa?" it asks, answering itself, "Spoken Word of Tulsa is an inclusive agency for developing an easily accessible and visible presence of performance art in the community and other areas." That's fine for the boardroom; for the bar, though, the SWOT team requires a more human and more precise definition.

"We're a bunch of people with no common sense who keep this going out of simple pig-headed stubbornness," says member and poet Karen Lacy.

Just three years old, SWOT is a shining monument to pig-headed stubbornness and the glories often wrought by such determination to craft. Having sent poets to Poetry Slam nationals each year thus far, this Tulsa group of poet-performers appeared this year at Mayfest for the first time and has now mustered enough gravity to attract other spoken-word teams to Tulsa for a regional slam this week. In a region where spoken-word fliers often attract worshippers mistakenly seeking the spoken Word, SWOT members see Tulsa's iambic growth as poetic justice.

"Spoken-word" is a label for performance poetry coined by news media in Los Angeles. Tulsa native and SWOT leader Nancy Harris was living there when the label was applied to her work and to that of her colleagues.

"We hated that phrase," she said, "but it gave at least some kind of identity to the public. Until then, I just called what I was doing `my stuff.' "

It's still her stuff, only now she's got several CDs to prove its tangibility. Mary McAnally, a Tulsa performance-poet and head of the non-profit Open Door Arts group, has seven books to her credit. Zischang has, well, a room full of rapt faces and arrested souls.

"And that's it, right there. It's about making that human connection," he says. "Spoken-word has the ability to provide a direct emotional connection to an audience. People ask us all the time, `How can you get up in front of people and bare your soul and your feelings like that?' I usually say, `How can you not?' It's a compulsion, a human compulsion to expression. Today, there's so much alienation and isolation in our culture, with TV and the Internet, that people are seeking out this kind of real connection with real human beings."

That may be why spoken-word forms are cropping up throughout the culture, too. Every rapper from Chuck D to Eminem is a spoken-word artist, for all intents and purposes. Listen to the pop-rock band Cake? Singer John McCrea is driven by a performance-poetry engine. Even those Avery Brooks commercials for IBM -- total spoken-word ("Where are the flying cars?!").

It's cropping up around Tulsa, too. SWOT hosts spoken-word performances regularly -- a full calendar of on-going events for all ages is at http://www.swot.org -- and a few other venues have been tinkering with spoken-word bills. The Gypsy Coffee House downtown frequently vibrates with the naive rants of amateur poets.

"And thank goodness those young poets have somewhere to go and try out their stuff," Lacy said.

"That's the thing about live poetry. Like punk or rap, in a sense, it's easier to break down that wall of accessibility," said Carlos Moreno, another SWOT member. "People in the audience could just as easily be on stage. There's not as much of a barrier between them. You don't have to learn an instrument. You just have to learn to speak well."

"Poetry is open to absolutely everyone," Zischang said. "It's the poorest man's art form."

Later, there was Zischang on stage proving that accessibility. He works on soda fountains for a living; he used to drive delivery trucks, a job that allowed him to work out his poems during long hauls on the road. Now after hours he's donning bug masks and shark heads -- his shows usually have about five rudimentary but eye-catching costume changes -- and stepping to a very exposed microphone to unleash his thunderous yawps.

Yes! It is mine. Mine, I tell you!

And if I want to say that it

rained frogs in North Carolina

on the day I was born in New York City,

then I can do that, by God!

Because I have the license of a poet,

and poetry is that one small part

of this reality which I create ...

---

Thomas Conner, World entertainment writer, can be reached at 581-8473 or via e-mail at thomas.conner@tulsaworld.com.