Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions captured from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. This week, I even added a title! I'm not sure why I was reluctant to use titles in the first place. Maybe it had to do with wanting to maintain the purity of the moment and thinking that adding a title the morning after the poem was written was cheating. If that was my argument to myself, I don't buy it now. Moving forward, I will be titling all my future Crouton pieces. Even if I'm not one-hundred-percent sold on this week's title.
Yesterday, we had Lo Galluccio give a great feature performance to what started as a small audience that quickly grew to a diverse group of people both new and endeared to her work. Her open mic "grab bag" meant that people going up to share their work open mic could pick a random rolled up sheet with song lyrics selected by Lo. You didn't know what you were getting till you got it, and this resulted in some interesting pairings. The ones I remember off the top of my head were Elvis Costello's "Allison" read by Jonathan J. Joseph, The Beatles' "Come Together" read by Toni Bee and James Van Looy perfectly paired with "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen. This gave me even more to work with, and I was thankful for Toni Bee, who was reluctant to go up but then did her grab bag piece then followed up with an amazing free-style piece about her daughter playing basketball. It was fantastic and helped me put a pleasant spin at the end of this week's poem. Here it is. Thanks for reading.
Holding Court
From birth our eyes and hands
search for sticks and stones
or bathroom graffiti
or anything that can
strike others.
We yearn for our
descendants' pillboxes,
their placebo salvations.
We think it's all
we the living deserve.
They say we can shine
but do we even know
what our light is?
On the streets poets catcall
use cocks as pens.
Inside people crowd in
since Ash Wednesday
hoping Jesus this season
isn't too busy to listen.
Even our weddings
half-sated by suitor
half scalded by own scorn.
We tread purpose
but can't articulate want
to keep us more afloat.
Sometimes we feel
the world is a gun.
We don't know how,
but America must
hold the bullet.
We wish we could
stare down the planet
from afar, reach down,
tug Florida for the trigger.
Put a spin off a bad joke:
How do you stop
a world pointed to you
as an act of war?
Throw it like a basketball.
Aim it high,
find a halo for a hoop.
Stand in NYC,
play with the monster
you don't want to become.
Point to the skies.
brag you can make the shot.
 |
| Was a day late in putting up the open mic sheet. |
Special thanks to Deborah Priestly, Johnny Flaherty, Oskar Jeuvens, Surat Lozowick, Martha Boss, Laura Lambert, Jonathan J. Joseph, Jason Wright, Toni Bee, Lee Varon and Lo Galluccio.
No comments:
Post a Comment