Stone Soup Croutons, 8-21-17, Red Alert

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.

Last night we had another open mic and workshop. It's a good way to pass the time until the fall schedule gets finalized. The open mic was short and sweet, and last night was a first in that unlike most weeks, a line from a open micpoem actually helped me create a title before I started writing the poem (thanks, Davy Ran, and have a safe light this morning). It's probably no surprise that the tragic events in Charlottesville (and Boston this past weekend) helped fuel the piece.


Red Alert

To walk towards the light
is the new safety hazard.
There may be a flame behind it.

Better to come from the mouth
of a thick-skinned dragon
than a Tiki torch,

or a reunion band's pyrotechnics
power ballading their way
through athazagoraphobia.

All the past's ghosts are invited
to take the ghost train.
The myth is that it can't hit you.

Some bugs only grow bigger
in the light, scurry faster,
a roach to squish you back.

Robert E. Lee is not a senile ghost.
He knows his side lost
and that's the problem.

Sadly, M.D. Seltzer left before they could read.

Really? Page 2 and they STILL put their names at the bottom?

Special thanks to Davy Ran, Bil Lewis, Julia Carlson, Deb Priestly, Lee Varon, David Miller, Michael Igoe, Gawaine Ross, Martha Boss, Erik Nelson and James Van Looy.