Like I Have Time For This?

For those of you who have followed along with the sad tale of the Pissed-Off Poets in the Pikes Peak Region, let me give you the details of last night’s Special Meeting.

So, to kick things off, we need a little bit o’ this:

Yeah, okay, I know. He wasn’t really there. But he coulda been, is all I’m sayin’.

So, President Fruitcake insisted on presiding over the meeting since he was the President after all. And the first thing he did was to recognize Vice President Passive Aggressive, one of his cronies, who immediately made a motion to adjourn the Special Meeting until April. With a motion on the floor, and ominously waving pieces of paper in his hand which were (apparently) his proxies he’d gathered during the past week of furious emailing, he admonished the membership once again with poorly-organized legalese that the membership was a bunch of idiots who didn’t know the first thing about holding a special meeting and that he alone, the fabulously talented yet much misunderstood president of all things acrimonious, could get the organization back on track to its original plan of doing whatever it was that he deemed important.

After going on in that manner for about a minute, he was interrupted by a somewhat quiet, new member to the organization who just happened to be a practicing attorney who’d recently decided to try writing poetry and who also just happened to have with him a somewhat large black leather-bound book that just happened to contain all the statutes that one might want to use as a guideline when conducting such a special meeting. This new member put a stop to the tirade President Fruitcake had gotten into and reminded him there was a motion on the floor to adjourn and that it was time to vote on that motion.

So they voted, and the score came out:

12 votes in favor of VP Passive Aggressive’s motion to adjourn…

and 18 votes to continue the meeting as planned.

(All proxies on both sides were included in the vote.)

Our new member, the fledgling poet holding the little black book of statutes, then reminded everyone of the next order of business, which was to nominate people for a new board of directors. He was rudely interrupted by President Fruitcake, who was beginning to get a bit red in the face. President Fruitcake demanded to know WHO THIS MAN WAS and demanded proof that this man was a dues-paying member.

Proof was provided, as requested, and our Lone Hero, our future John Grisham of poetry, then proceeded to try to bring the proceedings back to the next order of business, which, if you’ll remember, was to nominate people for a new board of directors….

But he was rudely interrupted once again by President Fruitcake, who challenged him on a legal point.

And our new member, our Lone Hero, our future John Grisham of the poetry world, simply pulled out that Little Black Book of Statues and read from it and set the President straight again.

It went on like this for some time. And at some point, before they even got to the next order of business, another vote of the legality of something or other was called for by the President and Vice President and the vote came out again as 12 votes in support of President Fruitcake’s agenda and 18 votes against him.

And what happened next, you ask?

Well, President Fruitcake, redder than ever, shouted at the top of his lungs that HE QUIT! HE RESIGNED AS PRESIDENT! HE WAS THROUGH WITH POETRY WEST FOREVER AND EVER. And then he stomped over to the door, turned back once more and screamed his resignation one more time, and then he left.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Vice President Passive Aggressive stood up and walked calmly over to the door, saying that he was leaving the meeting, but not leaving the organization, and then he left.

And then, the people that were left, got down to business. They made their nominations for a new board, a new president, a new vice president, etc. They discussed what to do next. And the very few remaining people that had come in support of President Fruitcake quietly slipped away one by one. And by the end of the meeting they say that you could already feel the rift closing. We lost some members, it may be true. But Poetry West will go on.

The next morning, Vice President Passive Aggressive sent out an email to everyone in the organization, announcing his resignation, and basically called everyone a bunch of jerks, and then (my favorite part) urged Poetry West to come up with a policy on mass histrionic emailing.

It took every ounce of my self-restraint to NOT email him back and tell him: You do realize that you sent out a mass histrionic email calling for an end to mass histrionic emails?

Also in email this morning: Former President Fruitcake demanded his 2008 dues (a whopping $25) be returned to him immediately. We’ll be sending him a certified letter that assures him he’ll get his 25 bucks just as soon as he returns the mailbox keys and all other property of Poetry West that he terrorized the membership into handing over to him.

And as for the rest of us? The ones left standing to pick up the pieces? Well, we’re sort of doing this today:

Imagine those silouettes to be a bunch of sweet little old ladies, along with a smattering of younger poets, including one Future John Grisham of the Poetry World.

Feel free to join in our little happy dance.

And then, go write some poetry, dammit.