Stone Soup Croutons, 9-12-16, Scrapture

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 (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, the poem doesn't go up because it's good; it goes up because it's Tuesday morning. I've done fifty of them now, and you can access them all here.

Last night Stone Soup was visited by the Boston Poetry Workshop. Zachary Bos and Robert Morris did a tremendous job. So did the open mic. The words and images I captured were so random I kept telling myself even at the beginning of the night, Chad, you're going to have a hell of a time with this one. I kept on wanting to call this one "Mess," but my better instincts prevailed prevailed for the most part. All over the place? Yes, but hey, I even got to rib David Whyte, so all is good.



Scrapture

The children now in God's country
ask for only simple gifts.
Next to that light everything else
is fruitcake anyway.

Summer dresses suffice
in spite of which gender,
even shrinkable cotton.

There is no clutter in Heaven.
It can't be hoarding if all is welcome,
no other to be insignificant.

Everyone is loved.
You do not need to say this twice.
You do not need to say this twice.

Yourself knows yourself
knows true self-awareness too well.
Silverfish knows jellyfish
knows catfish who knows
where this is going.

Neither fish nor silvered,
ropey grey sideburns
stop sidetracking

We need a second gunman
to conspire our way through
all this enlightenment.

Too many say we're the same.
Too many same old saying
nobody is different.
All one until one bumps another.

All are equal until one remembers math.
Ignore white lies until it's revealed
all the lies are white.

No Craigslist call for a captain until
the capsizing, no one to blame but the boat
creaking angrily in tune
to everyone's tantrumed stomps.

This ark is leagues from Paris.
It begs for a battle commander
or a shore it can batter toward.

There are two kids named Noah.
Only one has been listening at all
to know if God spoke at all.
Both take the host.
One thinks the host is you. 

There could be a book about this
if we all didn't want it to  be about us.

Grandparents are tired of
a trademarked paradise fence,
wanting to believe in greater purpose
than shipping forgiveness as fruitcake.

We need a round robin habeaus corpus.
No one wants to go first.

Sad shout out to Sara Afshar, who wasn't able to feature due to her important work.

Special thanks to Lee Varon, Alex Worthy, Chris Fitzgerald, Nancy Messom, Neal K. Dexter Roberts, Erik Nelson, Janet Cormier, Zen, Martha Boss, Navah The Buddaphliii, Amy, Reece Cotton Deborah Priestly, and James Van Looy.