I was banned from the Art Bar Reading Series just for telling the host to go fuck himself?

This is how I got the news that I've been banned from the Art Bar Reading Series. Nobody had the guts to even call me after my history with the place. A history which, by the way, is longer than that of most members of the Art Bar Committee.

Stephen Humphrey wrote:

   “The issue of whether you can use a guitar to recite poems is a moot point from the moment you dropped the F-bomb on one of our hosts. Rudy told the rest of us you swore at him and your account confirms this.
    Whether or not singing songs should be part of the Art Bar open stage is open to debate and personally I can accept a reasoned critique of Art Bar open stage rules as fair comment, but verbal abuse of Art Bar team members is not acceptable.
   Yelling "Go fuck yourself" is not the language of debate and I don't see how it serves poetry.
   There's no point arguing that "fuck yourself" and other profane expressions are part of poetry. You weren't reciting Ginsbberg's "Howl". You were using words to intimidate someone volunteering his time to run a reading series.
    You weren't defending personal experssion. You were acting belligerently and spreading ugly vibes.
    What this is leading up to, Christian, is you're out of the computer. We don't want you at the Art Bar Open Stage.
    Consider this official notice. You're permanently off the list.
   However, it sounds like you won't be around the Art Bar anyway, since no public apology is forthcoming.
   I'm regret that it's come to this. You did a lot of good for the local lit scene in the 90s, but with your current attitude is doing no good, least of all to poetry.
    Whatever is going on I hope you work it out, but you can't do it in public at the Art Bar. That's not fair to anyone.
    And that, I'm afraid, is that.”

My Response:

   I told Rudy to go fuck himself after he effectively called me an asshole by implying that I was deliberately breaking the rules. I have never seen a host in all of Art Bar Reading series history get up and single an open stager out like that. He was clearly in the wrong. If a person does something positive and gets singled out through the power of microphone as an example of something negative, that person should be allowed a "go fuck yourself". It was certainly not an attempt to intimidate Rudy as you claim. It was an act of self defence. The only reason me saying "go fuck yourself" to Rudy sounded ugly was because since the audience has never seen a poet get up and play guitar at the Art Bar Reading Series, as far as they knew Rudy was actually quoting real rules by saying "Don't anyone come here and do what he did." If people in the audience knew otherwise they would have been more sympathetic to a "fuck you" in response to Rudy's narrow mindedness.
    I would argue that what I did was not verbally abusive. I swore at him. Verbal abuse is a verbal attack on a person for the purpose of hurting them. I reacted to being handed a shit sandwich.
    Interesting that I didn't cry and decide to ban the fifty or so people who swore at me over the years that I hosted the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy. Sounds like you guys are taking yourselves way too seriously if being sworn at is an issue.
    I don't know what you mean by my "current attitude". I have not changed my willingness to stand up for what I believe in. If anything I've toned the way I express protest down in recent years. If I'd been holding a beer in the 90s and someone like Rudy had handed me that kind of bullshit they would have been wearing it, and deservedly so. What has certainly changed is the Art Bar Reading Series. There was never any reason to tell either Alan Briesmaster or Pierre L'Abbe to go fuck themselves. They never mistreated open stagers, and I would bet you that if I had said it to them they would not have been so petty as to ban me.
    Frankly, I am shocked by the committee's small mindedness about this. Holy crap! Banning someone over something like this? Was this unanimous?
    I would suggest this is not about the swearing at all, but rather a simple way for you guys to get rid of the problem of someone criticizing the Art Bar Reading Series. You guys had a weird reaction to that review I wrote last year and pretended the issue was that it wasn't a poem. But really if I'd gotten up and read a three minute long essay on bees I don't think there would have been any complaints.
    You guys should really take a good long look at yourselves as a collective. You know damn well that nobody else on the committee has as conservative an interpretation of poetry as Rudy does. I hope you are awake to this and the injustice that is done to poetry by allowing him to make the type of declaration that he made last Tuesday. Okay, so you guys have banned me. You are morons for making such a decision, but you've made it. Don't go to sleep on this. If Rudy is not going to apologize to me he should at least apologize to the audience the next time he hosts for his misrepresentation of the rules. He told me that he turned away two people with guitars that night when they asked if they could perform. The three minute time limit will turn away most poet songwriters anyway. He should also apologize to Alan Briesmaster and Pierre L'Abbe for implying that they showed an impure definition of a "poetry only" series.
    I urge you to let something positive come out of all this. Don't let Rudy turn poets away just because they express their poetry in song form.

Oh How the Art Bar Reading Series has Fallen!

   I just had a very bad experience at the Art Bar Reading Series.
   On the night of September 6 I went there with my guitar like I have many times. Like I did at least fifty times on the open stage before I was invited to do a feature fifteen years ago. In this case I was doing it for the first time in a year because I ride a bike and it's a hassle to carry a guitar to poetry readings except on special occasions.
   The special occasion on this night was that I was not going to be back for a while since I was starting school again next week and so I announced on the open stage that I was going to finish my visits with a song. I did a three minute presentation of a poem in song form.
   Afterwards the host for this night, Rudy Fearon is his name, came up to the mike and said basically "I want to make it clear that we don't want people to come with guitars and play on the open stage like Christian just did."
   I said "You don't think song lyrics are poetry?"
   He didn't quite answer my question, but rather reaffirmed that what I did was "against the rules" and that it I have a tendency to break the rules and that such behaviour was not welcome.
   I felt both insulted for myself and on behalf of poetry, which before the printing press was mostly all sung. I responded by saying "Go fuck yourself!"
   He made some threat about barring me from the Art Bar Reading Series.
   I have seen features even recently bring musical instruments into their performance. Robert Priest usually brings his guitar and does at least one song. Plenty of people sing acapela on the open stage, Aton Crouton has brought a track to rap to, and Allen Sutterfield, the founder of the Art Bar Reading Series performed with musical accompaniment a few months ago when he featured there. As I said before, I used to bring my guitar every week when the Art Bar Reading Series was at Csardas and the Imperial Pub. I got the opposite of complaints from the hosts about it, and when I was invited to do a feature by Pierre Labbé I'm sure he knew I would bring my guitar that night as well. The night of my feature I performed one fifteen minute song and one five minute song with my guitar. I was also accompanied by my band-mate Brian Haddon on the recorder.
   Have the rules changed? Are there even clear cut rules about this? I'm confused.
   If everyone in charge is in agreement that guitars are not welcome then I can simply accept that I don't want to be around such a restrictive definition of poetry imposed on people who perform for free.
   If on the other hand this is just about Rudy, and he's misrepresented the rules, then I need to get a public apology from him, into the microphone. Because really, the audience also needs an apology for this.