Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Stone Soup Croutons, 3-20-17, Tapping Out


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. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here.

Just getting back from vacation, it was good to have Kirk Etherton hosting the open mic last night. I ended up kicking back a little and piecing together a poem that was more than a little influenced by yesterday's hearing. Given that Kirk's requested theme was on nature and the seasons, I think a little of that got in here too. Here's what I came up with.


Tapping Out

Privacy is anything your partner
already knows, pretending they don't

The space between your nose
and the book you're trying to read in secret
is all the government needs
to know what you've learned.

You hiding in a cabin in the woods,
they call wireless access.
If you're near a bird's nest
someone can tweet your locale.
Prairie fires make poor firewalls.

You don't know Wikipedia
to diagnose inevitable.

Dying alone, unloved?
Let our immigration vans
serve as your dating site
another inaccessible woman
whose smile and terror you can see.

You pray for relief so much,
your Facebook profiles
marked you down as Christian.

To escape inside yourself,
you draw a map of world
that leads them right to you.

In the room, your body mass
is being downsized every minute.
Take a deep breath while you're connected
to the President's Tinder.

Whenever you mansplain
it's from a perspective
of not knowing what you really are.
You want someone to connect you.

Your salvation is your tendency
to walk through broken leaves,
disrupting your connection
to the world of Everything's Fine.

Your portrait becomes
a restroom icon,
only a painted kiss
can give you a face.

This is your scorched earth,
your chance to change your email
to something your mother
will never guess.
Total nothingness, if only virtual.


In lieu of a photo of the open mic list (which I forgot to take), here's a photo of Kirk with the fullest of full beards. 


Not captured: Kirk lumberjacking the podium in half.

Special thanks to Kirk Etherton, Chris Fitzgerald, Gawaine Ross, Julia Carlson, Jeff Taylor, Alexa Reed, Deb Priestly Martha Boss, Lee Varon, Leonardo, and James Van Looy. There's a few I missed because I forgot the list. I'll try to correct that later. 

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