Over-Caffeinated Poets
“He Was Speaking in Syllables. Just Syllables. Nothing Else.”
The underground poetry community in Austin, Texas is still recovering after local spoken-word artist “Bean Daddy” imploded the vibe at a popular slam night by chugging nine espressos and speed-reciting 47 haikus about moss, breakups, and discarded AirPods. The performance, clocking in at 1 minute 46 seconds, left three audience members in tears and one person with mild tinnitus.
“It was like watching caffeine eat a thesaurus,” said open mic regular Sasha Plume. “He started calm, but by haiku 12, he was levitating and yelling ‘I AM THE LINE BREAK.'”
Organizers say the evening began normally until Bean Daddy, real name Carl Vinsworth, pulled out a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup labeled “liquid muse” and downed it in one gulp before declaring, “I no longer pause for punctuation!”
Audience members were hit by a barrage of imagery. One remembered: “I think he said, ‘love is a shoelace tied around Mars.’ Or maybe it was ‘Mark’s lunch.’ It was hard to tell.”
A visiting MFA student attempted to intervene by performing a calming sonnet, but Bean Daddy responded by snapping aggressively in a 7/5/7 pattern and yelling, “CONTRAST IS A LIE.”
Security was eventually called after he began tap-dancing in iambic pentameter while tossing out syllable counters made of recycled Nespresso pods. He was last seen running into the night, whispering, “Couplets are cages.”
The venue has since instated a strict two-latte max policy and a syllabic speed limit.
Bean Daddy has since gone viral on PoetryTok, where he is hailed as the “Methed-Up Matsuo Basho.” His merch line includes espresso shots with embedded stanzas and a tote bag that simply reads “LINE BREAK ME DADDY.”
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
