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 afterwards. Even if I mention your name below, you might not even recognize how you influenced me.
Last night was a simple open mic followed by an workshop session led by the man we've come to know as Big Poppa Ben. I'm not ready to start recording Stone Soup, so I had less to do last night than I normally do. I twas nice to concentrate on the poets.
I was trying to pull more of a narrative rather than have this "character" I've been writing about just sit around feeling depressed, which is what I feel most the poems have been as of late. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's good to at least try to change.
Pick-Up
Every word out of your mouth
compiled form you to-do list
spilled over in anger
during bar crawls.
Tonight's promised
pick-up of medicine
for not-your-wife
is left on the rocks
post-crawl beach comb.
Lost children's lists
through a wind tunnel
have better chance
reaching the North Pole
than your memory
of what she needs
to return tonight.
You wish for a Warsaw Pact
to unify your head.
At not-your-home
a twelve year old
waits up while mom sleeps
wonders what name she'll call you
out of irritation.
It's easy to be absent
harder to be missed,
easier to be ignored
than pretend you're not there.
The open mic guitarist
will monologue about your lives
all night until you're convinced
to return home.
Nothing you are or dream
makes you not want to remember
what lips taste like
half-awake to greet you.
It's the last voice
your belligerent inner child
will listen to other than
the remembered arguments
of lost parents
to help him sleep.
 | |
| I couldn't incorporate John Sturm's recitation of MLK's "I have a dream" speech. |
No comments:
Post a Comment