Sometime after Forbes Field was torn down in 1971, two white-lettered haikus were spray-painted on its remnants. The poems were written in celebration of the late Roberto Clemente on the outfield wall of the former home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. But the only clue left of the poet's identity was the mark of DJ Renegade.    

What type of person would do this? Aren't the vandal and the poet black and white? Red and green?

Last Wednesday, that "outlaw poet," as described by creative writing professor Terrance Hayes, wasn't far from the scene of the crime. DJ Renegade, formally known as Joel Dias Porter, gave light to what an "outlaw poet" is, as he came to Baker Hall to open the English department's 2004-2005 Adamson Visiting Writers Series.

Porter didn't just read poetry; he performed it, sweating jazz, rap, Pittsburgh, his father, and his CapeVerdean descent. The audience watched his black beard wrap around his gap-toothed grin, in his black backwards Steelers cap, black T-shirt, and black jeans, all articles worn and faded. Is he homeless, a street prophet, or a DJ like his pseudonym betrays?

He isn't a DJ now, but he was. For 12 years, Porter manned turntables in WashingtonD.C. In 1991 he hung up his headphones and took to the streets. Literally. He went homeless and learned poetry.

For the Adamson series, Porter opened with Robert Hayden's "Frederick Douglas," performing it in the character of a Southern Baptist minister. Even his speech patterns changed; he added an "uh" to the end of every line, like this-uh. His voice was deep and scraped the depths of James Earl Jones.

"You don't need that Lexus, that plasma screen," he said, embodying the minister character.

Next came "Saturday Poem," in which he describes himself and Gaston Neal as "the hippest cats in the Hill District and poets besides." 

In his "El Magnifique," Porter began with the words of Roberto Clemente and moved into his own: "The words hit my chest like the fat end of a bat," he said with a wavering voice and the sniffles. He wiped his eyes and transitioned quickly into "Sunday Poem," which drew a laugh from the crowd.

"Now, I'm a blind man crossing the freeway," he said, describing an argument he had with a love interest during a Steelers game.

His poems flowed from topic to topic in a stream of consciousness; the topic of each poem was a bridge to the next. From love poems he flowed into poems of Cape Verde, his heritage on his mother's side, which were in their own way also love poems. Porter moved into a series of poems set in Pittsburgh's South Side, where he grew up. He began with "Silent Night," which describes visiting his father in jail. 

"I have daddy issues," Porter explained.

Porter's DJ style came out in poems like "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash." Borrowing lines from Walt Whitman, T.S. Elliot, Longfellow, and Grandmaster Flash, Porter bounced his head and hands like Muhammad Ali. His words followed a rhythm as if his band, which he normally performs with, was behind him.

Porter closed his set with a group of jazz poems, about which he talked at length, explaining jazz improvisation theory, the musical structure of the style, and how his poems paralleled that style. For example, his last and signature poem, "Subterranean Night-Colored Magus," is 32 lines long because jazz is 32 bars long.

His jazz poems also riff on the idea of jazz and blues, and are spattered with the word "blue." Porter got a second laugh with this line from "Subterranean": "(Miles), he's so black, he's almost blue."

Porter showed the English department and "anybody else hip enough to dig the scene" what an outlaw poet is. It is a contradiction. It is someone who has friends with "scarred hands, which have pushed both pens and needles," who can talk firsthand about homelessness, but who can also write "Love can make you melancholy as a muted trumpet" and "Love can leave you strangled with a blue ribbon tangled in your beard."