Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Stone Soup Croutons, 9-19-16, Debris


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.
Read and comment on them before I go catatonic trying to get to poem one-hundred.

Yesterday, Gordon Marshall  presented the Jack Powers Stone Soup Savor Poetry Prize to Jonathan J. Joseph. As if that wasn't enough, Beatriz Alba Del Rio dropped in to show off an original sculpture by the late Jack Powers. It was one of many pieces he constructed from found items in the street, signing the under the moniker "Jack Debris."




This makes the title of this week's piece a little too obvious perhaps. Still, given this award was created to honor Jack's work, I figured for once I would start with the title and work from there, gathering my own found pieces from the open mic. Not sure what I have here, but it's still less stressful when you already know what the title is going to be.


Debris

The entrance way for unwanted evils
is a revolving door, no way to lock it.

The filth and the fury will likely brush you
in the same elevator.

You'll even taste the chemical mix
of their sweat in the central air,

their shabby shoes shuffling mud
and who knows what else on the carpets.

This is no way to let the senses
dull like any other American's.

Your commute of leisure has become
more of a long open mic slot.

Even the senior citizens riding your rails
laugh at you like they're hipsters.

That tomorrow is truly a new day,
is enough to terrify you,

doing interpretative dance
in the center of the subway car

just to be the first to say good morning
to the cubicle mate who hates you.

The city's stars become blocked out
by roofs and ceilings you never noticed before.

The jazz you cook is colder than it used to be.
Your landlord must have turned off something.

The day is still yours. Otherwise
someone else would want it.

At least with new concealment,
you have shelter from the town talk.

You can hide from the storm after a shower.
Crazy can be flushed  out of your morning ritual.


Thanks also to Nancy Mesom for finally helping me pronounce her name correctly.


Special thanks to Beatriz Alba Del Rio, Chris Fitzgerald, Lee Varon, Erik Nelson, Nancy Messom, Julia Carlson, Dexter Roberts, Martha Boss, Deborah Priestly, DiDi Delgado, Gordon Marshall, Jonathan J. Joseph and James Van Looy.


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