Aside from a unique gait that often garners a second look, Jay Claywell and Danny Phillips have plenty in common.

They met 10 years ago in a bookstore. One asked the other for a cigarette, a conversation ensued, and light arguments were made. The relationship has carried on like this for a decade, apart from the smoking.

"That's what made it interesting," Mr. Claywell said of their differing opinions, mostly about music.

In the late 1990s, Papermoon Books in Downtown St. Joseph was the epicenter of a revival of spoken-word performances, and the new friends were part of it. Within six months, Mr. Claywell said of the beginning of the revival, audiences overflowed onto the sidewalk, straining to hear the musings of writers inside.

Mr. Phillips' early foray into fiction (he now freelances for music magazines) included a short story that he refers to as a knock-off of "On the Road" by one of his favorite authors, Jack Kerouac, after whom he named his 16-month-old son.

"I tried the writing poetry thing and the short story thing, and it just didn't work out for me," said Mr. Phillips, adding that he "couldn't hang" with the advanced poetic stylings of Mr. Claywell and others in their local literary circle.

Staying true to a major theme in their friendship, Mr. Claywell disagrees.

"The crowds were roaring for this guy," he said of one of the characters in Mr. Phillips' short story. "We'd have to wait a week or two weeks until Danny made something up."

Mr. Claywell jumped into poetry inspired by, among others, Bill Shield, a Vietnam-era Navy SEAL turned writer, and punk rock hero Henry Rollins, who often traded his microphone for a pen. And though his style might have changed over the years, Mr. Claywell refers to it as more "heavy metal" than "Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot."

But the glory days of the public readings in Downtown St. Joseph are gone, they said. Standing in front of an empty storefront at 622 Francis St., where the Papermoon bookstore served as a home away from home, the two admit to sentimental feeling for the old days.

"I'd love to see it happen again," Mr. Claywell said. "It doesn't seem to want to."

"We had our moment in the sun, and it went away," Mr. Phillips added.

Now in their early 30s and married, each with two kids, the friends retain a passion for music, literature and now coffee (replacing the smokes). But they also share a disability: cerebral palsy.

There are many forms of cerebral palsy, but both men are most affected by a lack of balance. Both have had several surgeries to lessen the twist of their lower limbs but have difficulty walking. Mr. Claywell walks with the aid of crutches. Mr. Phillips gets around OK now, but is pretty sure he'll be in a wheelchair at some point in his life.

"At the end of the day, I find myself stumbling a lot," Mr. Phillips said, adding that he's often riddled with pain because of tightening of muscles in his legs and arthritis in his knees and ankles.

Their disability and similar attitudes will bring them together on a stage at Missouri Western State University this fall in a spoken word performance, possibly at the Kemper Recital Hall. The date isn't set.

The idea came to Mr. Claywell, a communications major at Western, after seeing a spoken-word performance by rock star Andrew W.K., on campus. An intern at the Disability Services office at Western, Mr. Claywell is looking to spark some minds.

"We're calling it an evening of artful banter," Mr. Claywell said. "It's going to be Danny and I bouncing ideas off of each other and telling stories. I'll do some reading, Danny might do some reading - I don't know what Danny is going to do."

"Danny doesn't know what Danny is going to do," Mr. Phillips jokingly confirms.

Mr. Claywell hopes to educate through his portion of the performance, drawing on his disability to identify and relate to struggles within everyone.

"We all have it bad to a certain degree," he said. "I don't know what your hang-ups are or what your baggage is, but you've got it. Everyone's got it. The question is, how do you deal with it?"

Jimmy Myers can be reached

at jimmym@npgco.com