By Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer 
Gina Rey Forest - File
WESTERN BUREAU:
AN EXCHANGE of steamy stanzas between poets Glen Laughton and Gina Rey Forest ended last Thursday's staging of 'Words In Fusion' at the Lime Cay Restaurant on Chelsea Avenue, New Kingston.
True to the event's name, there was a meeting of different streams of the word at the fortnightly event, with comedy from Pull Up, a reading from Colin Channer's Waiting In Vain, poetry from Nick Hem and Spirit, and song from the Airplay Band preceding the closing duo.
Spirit contributed Returner, History, The Girl Next Door and African Freedom Song to the night's proceedings, which started promptly at 8:30 p.m., while Nick Hem used an emphatic 'tick e tick tick' to reject the practise of older men having sex with young girls.
GUEST VOCALIST
Diamara was a guest vocalist with Airplay, closing her eyes and getting into Saving All My Love For You, the
audience sprinkled around the open-air venue showing warm appreciation. She shifted gears and went hip-hopping with Can't Take My Eyes Off You, the rustle of wind in the shrubbery at Lime Cay adding extra background to the music of drums, a percussionist and two keyboards from Airplay.
You Loved Me featured a solo from one of the keyboard players and there were calls for more from Diamara, who heeded the voices.
Glen Laughton started the extended fusion of two voices on a sensuous theme that ended the night with One Dance, in which he captured arousal with "my stem grows to the stature of trees" and the meeting of man and woman with "we have created the Big Bang".
"I like that one," Gina Rey Forest said. "So the only one thing I can say to it is mmmm...." And she went into Just Like That, which went celestial with "to the moon I am going" and played on words with "it is the second coming".
Laughton said amen to Forest's offering and did Smoke This, which proposed "I was just thinking/when you quit smoking/can I be your next addiction?". "Light me up/set me on fire/I will be your one desire," he urged, the poet defining himself as "the healthy embodiment of the Marlboro Man".
SWEET, STICKY SIDE
It was a matter of going from cigarettes to another guilty pleasure in the key of 'c', as Gina Rey went on the sweet, sticky side, requesting "let me gaze upon your chocolate stick/as I backward arch my neck". Laughton kept to the theme with Black Chocolate' which looked at it in its crumbly form as cake - and left Gina Rey Forest speechless, as she put it. Not 'poemless', though, as she did Flashbacks, a mental reel of remembered pleasure, and Laughton also delved into the quirks of the brain with Pornographic, which informed a woman that "in the darkroom of my mind you are developing nasty habits".
Gina Rey ended the exchange - and that night's edition of 'Words In Fusion' - with Daddy's Home, a new piece, which concluded "Daddy's home - and he and Mommy are feasting".
