Last night was ORG: Murder Ballads, a variety show curated by Singer Mali of the band Jaggery, who used the occasion to release their latest EP: Private Violence, five songs inspired by Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Mali had read a poem about poisoning (sort of) I’d recently written and liked it enough that she asked if it could somehow be incorporated into the evening’s festivities. I threw together an 11x17 poster version (sort of a poor man’s broadsheet), had four of them printed in color at Staples, and dropped them off a few hours before the show. There was a whole table of murder-themed art that, by opening time, would be plastered all over the walls of Club Oberon—on the railways, along the hallways, even in the bathrooms.

When I entered Oberon later, as the first attendee in the door, I saw one of the posters tacked up in the hallway leading to the show floor, and that made me happy.

What followed was a spectacular evening of entertainment, during the course of which I was shot three times (not really), hit in the knee with a sledgehammer (yes really), and spattered with cherry JELL-O that was being used as human brains in a burlesque number featuring a styrofoam severed head.

After the show was over and I walked the dim hallway back to the exit, I couldn’t help but notice that while the rest of the murder art was still up, the poster of my poem was missing. The tape that had held it to the wall was still there; the poster, not so much.

If some random showgoer liked the poem so much that he or she stole the poster, that’s terrific. If some random showgoer hated the poem so much that he or she tore down and destroyed the poster, that’s awful—and therefore also terrific.

Either way, at least one person read it, and it provoked a response. A physical action.

I’ll take what I can get.

And hey, since the URL of this site was on the bottom of the poster, perhaps that person is reading this right now. If so, perhaps said person would like to tell me his or her motivation?