Earlier today, Monday August 17, 2026, the Dirty Gerund lost an incredible musician, artist, poet, band member, community maker, friend: Jorge “Tasteless Jack” Ramirez.

Jorge was our houseband’s lead guitarist since 2023, and Worcester’s most prolific Artists-Supporting-Artists cross-genera hype man. The most genuine embodiment of really listening and not just waiting your turn to perform. He was also the creator of the Tasty Tunes showcase series that started at Hotel Vernon before moving to Huskys Pub, and then continuing at both on differing days/seasons.

It’s hard to write this. Hard because I don’t know that a poetry events blog can capture the depth and breath of what the second largest city in New England is feeling right now. Tasteless Jack was everything, to everyone here and all the way to the west coast. Every indie artist circle knew him. He was there in your hardest moments for a shoulder, there in your best moments to celebrate you as your biggest fan. He was the kind of guy to walk into anywhere for the first time, notice who was quietly a little left out, and in seconds make them feel like a damn celebrity. Jorge befriended musicians to comedians to poets to dancers to random people hanging out in the back of an open mic not really sure what was going on.

He was one of the damn greats. Everyone is god damn devastated.

Tonight, a variety of performers read Jorge’s poetry and played his songs, or spoke about him and how he had influenced their own lives and creative persuits. Some shared new original works about him. Some met his spirit for the first time through tonight’s Gerund. Everyone got to expierence for a couple hours just how incredible he was by way of how much love filled the stage.

Jorge drank the worst beer available at Ralph’s and we all drank it in his honor tonight. There’s a joke here I can’t quite piece together about being tasteless. He always showed up late and we will forever be looking up when someone strolls in mid show half expecting that big goofy giggle, a fist bump from one hand, a burger in the other, and that awful IPA nearby.

Thank you to all who came out to celebrate Tasteless Jack tonight. Please join us next week and every week after to continue to honor this space he cherished so much. We’re going to fucking miss him, and the more poems we can fill the parking lot with the more he has to listen to from us out there in the great whatever 

I am at a loss for words, so here’s a poem he wrote a few years back for the Gerund:

Open Door

You all see an open mic…

But I see an open door.

Knock knock jokes ARE encouraged here
But i didn’t need to knock
To be let in.
This was
A door that didn’t open with a gun in my face.
There was no disgruntled paranoid old man
Afraid of me,
With an auditing gaze of preconceptions,
Only paranoid disgruntled Artists
ready to perform for temporary strangers.
There was no
Blood on the doorpost
To warn us of the vulnerability
We would
And could
succumb to here.

This door uses bacon grease
To oil it’s hinges,
1800s WOOSta factory steel
Melted down into a door knob,
A knob Wet from
cold narangansett condensation,
But really, That knobs just there for show,
Cuz this door is always left ajar.
We are the black cats that always come home
After a nightly stroll of hunting squirrels.

The door seems small
Only because
It’s at the foot of a
neon lighthouse, one that
Guides many a ship back up
From Davey Jones locker,
Like her majesty Madame Rhubarb.
Our hearts,
Our livers,
and our lungs
Lie ship wrecked on
Black stones and crystal ponds,
But wooden tables,
That used to spool barbed wire,
Now act as life preservers.
Mischief making
Mythological malcontent meteorologists,
We cast storms
From our mouths to taste catharsis
On our lips with our tongues.
We chew on the clouds
To salivate over
A kiss goodnight we’ll never have.
We pick lightning from our teeth
In between rips from a vape,
And we exhale more than just
A piece of ourselves
And close our eyes
To hear the Thunder
Asking us to
PLEASE COME BACK.

So we do.
We come back
For one day of the week,
But this isn’t a day for the weak.
We will always be here, fearless,
With our jugulars exposed.
Loyal to art and love,
We orbit each other like
Booze drenched crayon colored boomerangs.
We shake each others hands like maracas
To the rhythm of kinship,
delicious dumplings
Are a Eucharist
That rival the body of Christ,
Cuz they taste amazing
even when they’re a little cold.
We harmonize the things
We have in common.
The games we play,
The latest anime or movie we saw,
The music we listen to,
But also,
We find Melodies
In The dreams we are afraid
To say we have,
We listen for dissonance
As we Recount
The friends we lost to addiction
Friends we lost to depression,
To accidents
Friends we lost to time itself
whose glimmer
Never faded from our sky.

Hey now, you’re a rockstar.
Wishes made on shooting stars.
A wish made at 11:11 at the bar,
We are A line to a poem
I wrote
On the way to my car.
Trajectories constellated
Like Mufasas face in the sky,
We will see other faces up there
from time to time.
Their names will become supernovas
That will explode above our heads for eternity.
Spotlights will always peek out from the crack
Onto an Asphalt red carpet
for you,
Chain link curtains will rise and
You might hear
A Lizard scream,
shedding their new skin…
But they will always have the same favorite tree,
And the same favorite color of the rainbow,
And as we walk among
A comfortable consistency of characters….
We will start to feel like we’re home….

Knock knock
who’s there?
orange
orange who?
orange you glad to be here?

I’m glad I stepped inside,
Cuz I was just looking for an open mic….

But I found an open door….

Be sure to search Spotify and YouTube for Tasteless Jack to enjoy his work.

Forever in the right place at the right time with us