Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title the next morning. Or a day or so later, in this case.
It's been a few weeks since I've done this. I've had an even harder time multitasking at Stone Soup since starting the regular live streams. Given that one of my crouton poems was just featured by Mass Poetry, I figured I should get back on the horse for Angelica Maria Aguilera's feature and write one this Monday no matter how badly it came out.
The result? Not too bad a job, given that I was more rushed to jot down lines than in previous weeks and was writing on a tinny, flimsy note pad (I left my notebook in my girlfriend's jeep). Also, I took less actual ideas and more words and half-phrases this time, so people might note even recognize that I took from their poems. This may be a new thing. We'll see next week.
Apologies to Dexter Garcia. I could have borrowed from her second open mic piece about the Dominican Republic (at least that's what I believe it was about), but instead I use that line about pizza (you'll see below). Bonus plug, see Dexter in two weeks.
Here's the poem...
Performance Plan
You write an angry update about
your well-playing job
upset not at doing nothing
at your desk, but because
you saw a blue jay fly off
outside your house.
It seemed as if you owned it
and felt it as profound loss,
wanted to call for beheadings
for nature not doing what you want,
a habit taught to you by your boss.
You want to see Elizabeth Bishop
in your non-existent office,
having learned nothing from her
on the art of losing.
You've lost your way in the maze of life.
Like a Trump rally-goer, your turn right
more and more down the path.
Everything flips. Even the mime
on the street corner
is telling a long story
hoping to be heard.
Going home, you pass a seagull in Southie,
brave enough to keep winter's countdown.
You want to schedule a meeting
with this bird, seeing a strength
you think you might have.
You want to propose a partnership
with the gull, needing to think
you both must be nobler birds to be
perched against the cold
neither of you budgie-ing
Then the white feathers
remind you of the white powder
you always wanted to try.
So you acquire some from
that bar near Eighth, or at least
you think you acquire some.
Whatever you ingest,
it makes you nauseous
with confidence, enough
to eat pizza naked
by an open window
because you think you can,
but you can't. You really can't.
It's a crisis of station,
no way to advance yourself
outside of loose leaf tea, meditation,
and other things you forgot
when you discovered sex.
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| Pants provided by Hannah Brown. |
Special thanks to Surat Lozowick, Rachael Eisenberg, Trish, Martha Boss, Erik Nelson, O.C., Hannah Brown, Navah The Buddaphliii, Angelica Maria Aguilera and Dexter Garcia.
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