Stone Soup Croutons, 5-30-16, Art of What

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 later. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, the poem doesn't go up because it's good; it goes up because it's Tuesday morning. Today, it's also the Tuesday after the final celebration of Stone Soup Poetry's forty-fifth anniversary.

C.C. Arshagra closed out the anniversary month, accompanied by the band Funk Physics. A fantastic night I hope to share with you, as video was taken by someone with better equipment than me. If the poem is a little morose, it's because I got a poem that began with lithium and broken relationships. The first poem on the open mic is always sad as of late! I may have to find a way to mix up the order of readers. Something...

Thanks to every one who attended our anniversary readings this month.


Art of What

Killers standing outside my shower
would not be enough to break our tedium.

I want a threesome with you
and the person who incompetently
supplies your lithium,
your ass in assisted living.

You're the hole  in my last available sock.
Socrates would turn a drink down from you.

You're a distraction that remands one
of the importance of laundry and day care.

Larkin  teaches us that every sperm
is fodder, regardless of which ones
grow enough to use tools
or create pornography.

Every love song is secretly
a marching jingle in disguise
prodding you to get up and go to work,

native tongue lost, now
a phantom limb tapping our ear
in Morse, attempting to convey
the validation we've forgotten
for ourselves.

As far as I know, you are
free to believe in the end
as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You always wanted a button
to put your finger on.

You only lacked the patience
to intimidate others.

Hello goodbye fellow life forms.
We don't even get fifteen minutes.

The list was originally 1-5. I think Ross added 6-17 so he could write their name further down and not be the first. He was.

Special Thanks to Gawaine Ross, Yvonne, Martha Boss, Erik Nelson, Surat Lozowick, Chris Fitzgerald, James Van Looy, Tinan Thariath, Bryan Frazier, C.C. Arshagra and Funk Physics.