by Hazelsky Wren, @pencakespost

Melodramatic. Articulate. Purple.

These are the three words visitors to Welton’s Coffee Shop in Portland, Oregon, used most often to describe frequent Open Mic Poetry Slam participant: Thanos.

Thanos slowly became a crowd favorite at the Thursday night Open Mic Poetry Slams with lines such as:

“I wiped out half, thinking it’d bring peace—
Instead, my Tinder matches decreased.”

Each poetic conclusion would receive a flurry of snaps in appreciation. At Poetry Slams, snapping is appropriate instead of clapping. This is where the problem began, and why Thanos was ultimately banned.

“I would lose more and more of my customer base each time Thanos snapped,” Welton’s Coffee Shop owner Jasper Finch said. “I had no choice except to ban him, you know?”

Thanos promptly filed a lawsuit against his once favorite coffee shop. “It hurts. Your love for a place stretches to infinity but they treat you as cold as stone.”

Jasper Finch expressed confidence: “I hired a great lawyer. A real daredevil. Matt Murdock, you may have heard of him.”

Every sleep deprived law student has heard of Matt Murdock. Lawyer Matt Murdock sued a chemical conglomerate when he was just a child, and won. Thanos will have to build a solid legal team to win this case.

“People think this lawsuit is just beginning. It’s not. We’re in the end game now,” Thanos said.

According to court documents, the head of Thanos’s legal team is an amateur lawyer named Dr. Victor von Doom. Ironically, the two met as frequent attendees to Welton’s Coffee Shop’s Open Mic Poetry Slams. Dr. Doom paused his brutal scheme for world domination to build a solid legal case for Thanos.

Portland residents are unfazed by the legal news. “It’s not the weirdest thing to come out of a Portland coffee shop,” Straw Mauser said, a Downtown Portland resident.

The end result of this legal case will be a shift in Portland’s downtown coffee shop arts scene, no matter the outcome. Stay tuned as developments are published. Publications may be delayed because our News Room’s editor and two journalists were turned into dust.