Spontaneous Confabulations

SPONTANEOUS CONFABULATIONS By William Moriarty Not your average novel or book of poems, a series o& vignettes I've known Billy Mo more than half my life. The text below is a remembrance or our first encounter."I don't know if one is a born poet or evolves over time. For me it was both. Unlocking the memory vault from those chaotic days, it was on Mount Royal Ave., near "The Tav" where I first met William "Billy Mo" Moriarty. The year was 1976. The American Bicentennial was in full swing and we were freshmen. It was a crisp early autumn evening; I was a greenhorn poet going to my first group reading at the urging of my poetry instructor, Joseph "Papa Joe" Cardarelli. Performance art was all the rage, so I decided to use some props as visual aids, carrying my beat-up suitcase filled with weird objects. Coming from the opposite direction of Mount Royal Ave. I saw "Billy Mo," who was also carrying a beat-up suitcase.We climbed the monumental steps of the MICA main building together, and simultaneously inquired, "What's in your suitcase?" Replying together, "Just some stuff." My props included: a large rubber fish, a crucifix, a bible, a rosary, and dirty underwear (mine). Billy Mo had some weird things too. Billy Mo read next. He opened his suitcase and began pulling out paper plates with hand-painted comic faces on them. A mother, a boy, a father, an uncle, among others. He wore each of the paper plate masks and mimicked the characters. The crowd went nuts! It was hilarious as he switched masks and ad-libbed the characters. I believe we were among the first "prop poets," mixing comedy, tragedy and theater, creating a new poetry form. It wasn't until years later, when we saw prop comics like Carrot Top and Howie Mandel. We were definitely ahead of our time. From that night, we became brothers in a world of possibilities." went on to work as a team in poetry and theater and simultaneously co- writing songs when Bill became lead singer for Baltimore's first punk band, Da . We played hard and fast for five years until he moved to California and raised a daughter. He never stopped writing or painting and this book Spontaneous Confabulations is proof that William Moriarty is an involuntary genius. A man of many reasons.Tom DiVentiApathy Press Poets