Stone Soup Croutons, 7-17-17, A Chore Wheel for One

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.

Thanks to Russell Bennetts and Zachary Bos for an excellent feature last night. Here's the poem that came from such a wonderful cross section of voices.


A Chore Wheel for One

You lover's chemistry set
is dusty with your lack  of education.

The beakers almost drape like the pants
you've never shaped back down into.

Your ballads may as well be to the world,
which you also can't embrace.

You make love like homeowners on laundry day
not sure what you'd ever do if it was not your turn

and ever stopped raining while you stayed home
and pondered if the butterfly effect

could be transferred between species
so the mice in the grates at your job

could set the building on fire, make you jobless
finally forcing you into the wild,

howling with the hippies you used to scorn
until they welcome you home.

Features are back at Stone Soup. I love it.

Special thanks to Raymond M., Julie F., Stephanie Kaylor, Meia Geddes, David Miller, Deb Priestly, Nancy Messom, Martha Boss, Russell Bennetts, Zachary Bos and James Van Looy.