Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Stone Soup Croutons, 4-10-17, Untrue Tidbits and False Facts



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.

Yesterday there was an open mic I barely posted info for in time. I'm thankful that we had so many people show up, especially just after a weekend-plus long festival. This is what I came up with. It's the second week in a row that we have references to cats. I don't know if that will be the one recurring theme for National Poetry Month.


Untrue Tidbits and False Facts

Whitey Bulger was a funny guy,
wearing Do Not Wear The Wildlife
on his shirt, then beating anyone
who bought him a drink
or passed him pretzels.

A popular Southie joke goes like this:
"Nice weather we're having."
Fuck you!
The punchline always gets the same response.
I won't spoil the surprise.

Trump's new idea is building walls
with planned obsolescence,
rebuilding every neocon administration.

English as a fourth language
is a rising market in Holland.
Must know Dutch, German and French.

The man with the largest pencil
wrote the largest poem, haiku
that could only be read
by satellite. He was later
arrested for graffiti
on the Great Wall.

In the history of handheld
electronic football game players
the record for the longest
touchdown run in a single play
is measured in inches, not yards
and has never been bothered
to be recorded.

The first man to reuse
to write poetry for free
was later paid to not write poetry
as part of a new government
division he helped create.

The current administration
wants to allocate all it's arts money
to this important endeavor
in the tradition of 2017's inaugural poet
who refused read the greatest poem
in the world, whose name was
never recorded by the biased media.

In New England, a man with a name
as big as a country had it changed
before he was invaded.
He later married a woman
with a name as long as the Merrimack.

The first electroshock performed
on an alley cat gave it memory loss,
making it forget whose hands
it had already scratched
of those foolish enough to try and pet it.

Arm yourself with this information
the way you would bring a rubber chicken
to swat of a missile silo.
Cross yourself with it's absent wishbone,
bless yourselves as the bombs come down.


Chris said this is his last time reading? We'll have to see.

Special thanks to Martha Boss, Julia Carlson, Bill, Erik Nelson, Deta Galloway, David Agee, and Reece Cotton. 


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