The Word Is Out

Jerome "Face" Stevens looks like a man consumed by rage one time too many, like he felt it so often he got frozen inside it.

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Bacon, 21, is adored and nurtured by the community the way a young talent should be. He wears crystals around his neck and a fedora on his head. He plays guitar and studies graphic design and teaches creative writing to young students. He comes to Mocha Hut a lot, to perform and to see his girlfriend, who manages the place. One of his verses goes like this:

"What I'm looking for? A wireless signal
So, if you have the hook-up let me grab my pencil
I looked at my friends and turned to my neighbor
My computer made a beep that sound like a pager
A name hit the screen, so ya'll know I had to check-it
Then I found out that it was password protected . . . "

Face, two decades older, is respected the way a poet with a hard-knock life and an undeniable talent should be. He carries a canvas bag of his notebooks and wears a folded bandanna around his head. His business card declares him a "gentleman of leisure," but he calls himself a warrior, and when he's asked how he makes a living, he says it's in manual labor. He comes into Mocha Hut sometimes, sits and looks restless, then leaves. One of his verses goes like this:

"Beware like your ghosts of Euro-centricity, Jesus the Christ!
For he comes and steals your woman
Comes in the night!"

Face and Bacon, miles apart in style, manner and substance, both moved from Southeast Washington to the U Street area for the poetry.

"The poetry," Face says. "And that's why I'm here now."

"This is not karaoke," explains Charlotte Fox, organizer of the D.C. Poetry Festival, an annual celebration of the U Street poetry scene, this year set for Friday at Carter Barron Amphitheatre. "It's not about you coming and singing a song and pretending. Can you write something that's profound and provocative and consciousness-raising? It's about consciousness raising."

And, she says, it's about therapy. Saying publicly the things they can't say elsewhere. Revealing secrets and fears and wounds and wishes to an audience that has come to bask in those revelations.

"That's the other part of spoken word," says Carroll, of DC WritersCorps. "It's community dialogue. It's about a validation of your own voice, the efficacy of your own words, the significance of your own voice."

Sometimes, he adds, it's just about being part of the scene -- about getting dressed up, going where everyone else is going and talking to the cute girl across the room who got dressed up and went where everyone else was going.

Maybe they will fall in love, fall apart and come back to tell the tale.

Maybe. Maybe if the spirit moves them and the words come and the mikes stay open . . .

Maybe.

"What's that expression? The jury is still out. I'm still wondering, as U Street develops, will the poetry remain?" Weston Brown asks from a window seat at Busboys. One foot in front of him is the aisle where the open-mike line starts to form, two hours early, every Tuesday night. Five feet to his rear is the shadow of a hulking new condo complex that stretches the length of a full city block. "Will poetry still be on U Street in 10 years?"

There's no telling that.

But for the moment, at least, it's still standing room only.

Ellen McCarthy is a Weekend section staff writer. Her e-mail address is mccarthye@washpost.com.