Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Stone Soup Croutons, 9-11-17, Trailblaze



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. Dammit, dammit dammit, I'm late! I hate when that happens.

Monday night we had James Van Looy feature. It was a great night. Too bad I forgot my notebook when I left, so I had no notes to transcribe for Tuesday. Luckily James had taken it with him and got it to me last night. It's amazing I got it at all given the police action that took place last night.

I edited the poem this morning, so here it is. It's more of  a mixed bag than usual, so thanks to David Agee for giving me an anchor by way of reading a William J. Smith. poem.


Trailblaze

I'll be dead someday,
but I'll have the dishes done before.

This is not prophecy,
more ultimatum from
my current overlords.

The ghost of James Madison
tells me to cheer up.
Compared to 1812,
things don't look so bad.

And even then 1830 is still
a trail of tears away,
the streams with the highest
water to blood ratio
they would ever see again,

a time when fruit dealers
lobbed pineapples like grenades
instead of placing
grenades like pineapples
in babies' hands.

Tonight we are all James Madison
in the mental hospital,
mocking Napoleon over
the Louisiana purchase.

Is it harder to mourn
a Trump supporter
or your beloved pet
who peed in the same area
of your rug every week
each leaving their own footprint?

At everyone's end, the universe
starts again, angels and animals
debating when entropy began.


And still no one picked the number one slot! Cowards!

Special thanks to Chris Fitzgerald, Lee Varon, Bil Lewis, Gawaine Ross, David Agee, Carol Weston, Michael Igoe, Martha Boss, Nancy Messom, Julia Carlson, Erik Nelson and James Van Looy.



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