Stone Soup Croutons, 7-10-17, Things to Do in Your Never Land

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. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes on because it's Tuesday morning.

Except y'know, when it's not Tuesday.

Thanks so much to Izzy Breezy for performing Monday night. Sadly, doing this series is like when me doing Pilates classes. Even if I only skip one week, I'm so awkward when I come back to it. That's why the poem is so late. Not to mention I wondered if I should even bother when two of Izzy's entourage did better improvisation than I did that night. At any rate, here it is.


Things to Do in Your Never Land

Just say it's Reagan's fault.
No matter the problem
it's probably true.

Or at least blame a man,
the last man who visited
while you were sleepy,

asking what it's all for
when you didn't even
know the time.

Make your humor
blended Groucho
and New Yorker cartoon

turning away from your guest
saying you'll get back
to them never.

Dante's first circle
is a waitlist,
and we are all on it.

Those who are awake
for their life-changing call
are never seen again.

The rest will wait
with whatever devices
pass as life support,

begging never to come
not ready when it does,
as ever.

Apologies to Lee Varon for forgetting to call her on the open mic.

Special thanks to Chris Fitzgerald, Deb Priestly, Markus, Sabrina Bradley Muhammad, Martha Boss, Lisa Muhammad, Izzy Breezy and James Van Looy.