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.
Yesterday was the first Stone Soup Poetry Slam. I'm glad I made myself go, though there we had other It was amazing and overwhelming as usual. I spent most of the night walking around, taking pictures, helping where I could and getting dinner for Didi Delgado. It was too much at first to concentrate on the open mic, so ultimately I focused on the first round of the twelve(!) slammers. I surrounded the themes of racism in many of the entries around an incident that happened while waiting for a train on New Year's Day. It's mismatched and weird, but I wanted to get back to writing these. Thanks for the influence.
All Hands
Even as the medium gives up
on the cards in front of him
and says God hates you
it's nothing surprising.
It's time for a cleansing.
It starts with a toothbrush.
It has to start somewhere.
At a nearby table, a boy with traits
of Jack Frost and Eminem
loudly orates Orwell
to attack Black Lives Matter.
Your repeat to yourself:
Narcissists are at war with themselves.
Narcissists have always been
at war with themselves.
A world of Percocet and lilacs
was never a realistic dream.
Your sphere of cynicism
defies conventional geometry.
For your healing time you get
the smallest hourglass,
your changing room has everyone
poking the curtain.
Meanwhile, blonde Marshall Frost
tests the cold waters
to see if he can get away
with saying the N-word loudly.
He says it louder each salvo
until someone with cruel intention
at another table
asks if the boy's being robbed.
Love is here forever.
It can also not be here now,
the price of hopping hiply,
impossible to not rock a boat
as a hole is banging out
loudly on the shared deck.
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| We need official stationary, don't you think? |
Special thanks to Noemi, Evan Curtis, Big Poppa Ben, Alex Hicks, Wallace , Jonathan J. Joseph, Gladys Teresa Hidalgo, Grace Ej, Tim Hall, Dexter Garcia and Jason Wright.
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