Stone Soup Croutons, 6-26-17, When the World is Already an Ocean

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions butchered 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. Two years strong. Thanks for reading.

Last night was the open mic. It happened. A poem happened. I'm running late and finishing this on the bus. No time to look up shellfish before publishing this.


When the World is Already an Ocean 

Just say no
to the latest manifesto,
the new answer to everything
with a 10,000 word preface
On everyone who is wrong.

Everyone wants to write
their own scripture,
a letter to Corinthians
or Appalachians
turned into law,

their martyr noose a necktie,
the hangman not in service
the giant calves in their honor
made of brass, the gold used up.

There's enough left for a thimble
of a symbol their fingers fondle,
a shell with mollusk
long escaped or evacuated
By God's thrush

As it dreamt of ever moving
sand and sediment
and fish who wish
to adopt them in their backs
when the tide returns,

funny if not for
the salvation.

I went to number 10, and they added more, as if it would give them more time!

Special thanks to Chris Fitzgerald, Martha Boss, Nancy Messom, Julia Carlson, Deb Priestly, Erik Nelson and James Van Looy.