Open Mic Night is a spoken word event on the first Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Ada, Oklahoma Public Library. Who might find this notebook in 100 years and toss it aside as garbage? Who might dig up this book in a cave in 50,000 years and build a faith from…

Open Mic Night is a spoken word event on the first Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Ada, Oklahoma Public Library. This Cloak of Darkness by Richard R. Barron “And in this cloak of darkness the world I will embrace…” I listened to the Kansas song The Pinnacle for the first time…

Ada’s First Mondays Open Mic Night celebrated two years of poetry, short stories, journal entries, notes, thoughts, essays, and abundant talent Monday, February 2, 2026 at the Ada Public Library. “Richard will always read something from his journal.” ~Open Mic regular Samuel Baker Cold Night by Richard R. Barron It’s a cold night. Rain. Wind…

Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic event held on the third Sunday of each month at the Lost Street Brewing Company in Durant, Oklahoma. The featured poet for this session was David Thornburgh. I wrote this about someone who once said I was “the one that got away,” but really I was the…

First Monday Open Mic Night has found a new home, the Ada Public Library. The two pieces I read were Ashes to Dust, and Praying to the Thanksgiving Duck, both published on this blog Monday afternoon. The lenses I used for this event were the AF-D 85mm f/1.4 and the Altura Photo 8mm f/3.0 Fisheye.

Our open mic band of poets is searching for a new home. On Monday, October 6, we met as we had the previous month, in Ada’s Wintersmith Park. The Night Always Seems to Win by Richard R. Barron Memories of being a sick child, laying on a couch made up with sheets and blankets, the…

Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic event at Lost Street Brewing Company in Durant, Oklahoma. The event includes a featured poet. September’s featured poet was Molly Sizer.

A last-minute issue moved us to Ada’s Wintersmith Park, but it was a beautiful evening, and it felt like we all read well. Chapter 11: Moral Bankruptcy by Richard R. Barron Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. I need to be more chaotic, so I think, “You can dance on my…

Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic gathering at Lost Street Brewery in Durant, Oklahoma on the third Sunday afternoon of each month. This was the first time I attended, but it has interested me for a while. I am very glad I went. First Monday Spoken Word Open Mic Night organizer Cody Baggerly…

First Monday Open Mic Night at Kind Origin Dispensary remains popular and successful. Summoning the End by Richard R. Barron What exactly am I trying to accomplish, sitting pretentiously on my front deck, sipping my pretentious coffee, writing in my pretentious notebooks with my pretentious pen? Everything around me is more genuine that I am…

First Monday Open Mic Night at Kind Origin Dispensary remains popular and successful. Working titles for this poem include Song, America, Light as a Leaf, and Song for America. The last one is the title of a Kansas song I really like. by Richard R. Barron Do you have a favorite song? A Farewell to…

My sister Nicole and her husband Tracey timed their June vacation road trip to start with an appearance at First Monday Spoken Word Open Mic Night. My good friend and fellow photographer Danielle O’Daniel made the photos of Nicole and me.

Critical Thinking and Our Duty to the Truth by Richard R. Barron (Rewritten from a 2019 blog entry) Did we go to the moon? Do flu shots give you the flu? Was 9/11 an inside job? Are chemtrails poisoning us? I thought about these and questions like these as I reread and reshared a 2016…

Sticky note in my journal, January 5, 1995: “Lead with this at OMN!” … “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief the develops the powers of the mind.” ~Marcel Proust The night before this open mic event, I dreamed that there were both male and female hot dogs. “Buddhism is the one…

Waiting for the Miracle by Richard R. Barron I find myself on the front deck again, taking aim at the blue sky. If I shoot it down, it will fall all around me, and I can wrap myself up in its’ blueness. The sun would look on in black-and-white contempt, though only for a moment….

My notes for the group, from my eclectic mountain of notebooks – ideas you can steal and run with! Create an image with words instead of an image with suffering. My blindness was wasted on you. I can’t make sense of my dreams, which already make perfect sense. Even after she left me, she said…

___________________________ My Ten Commandments by Richard R. Barron This above all: to thine own self be true. Better to remain silents and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt. Light and love, while you still have the chance It’s only 1/8000000000th about you. Stop thinking you have all the answers….

What is sacred to you? The radio is playing chants. I curl beneath my electric blanket on the floor and listen, thinking about the day, my friends, my body and soul, my past and future, illusions and reality, and this very perfect moment. “He who yields to fear or pain or anger is a fugitive…

Unsafe by Richard R. Barron What do you keep from me to spare me? The countless ways to say goodbye? The action that is filled with light and darkness? My selfish little tragedies? The moment of darkness between us? Remorse? Chaos? Vulgarity? Clarity? Rage? A beautiful moment of tenderness that I ruined by merely witnessing…

Many of my readers will recall that I have been writing in a journal for most of my life, since September 1978. As I thought about this, I began to think about breaking it up into various periods, a kind of lifelong chronology of my writing. 1978 really was a different time. No internet. No…

One of my favorite Ada community events, Open Mic Nyte, ceased meeting in May for a variety of reasons. But the gathering came roaring back for a one-time event Thursday on the patio of Hot Shots Coffee House in Ada, drawing many regular artists and readers, and a few new participants. The event was precipitated…

I am saddened to report that Open Mic Nyte, which I have attended since June 2017, has suspended performances. We saw this coming when its long-time home, Mojo’s Coffee, closed in October 2018. The Grandview hosted us for a while, which was unassailably generous, but the space wasn’t quite conducive to our scene. Another factor…