Stone Soup Croutons, 8-30-18, Salesman Talks to You Until He Can Find a Rock

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions 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 up because it's Friday morning.

Last night's Stone Soup was quiet. Chalk it up to fatigue from the hot days and the fact that it's the night before the Labor Day weekend. It was still a good night, and I got to see Laurel Lambert's new chapbook, The Sun Exploded In My Mind, which has an intro by Atlantic Monthly writer James Parker! I was still very politically-minded in my writing, but I was able to add a little levity and nonsense this week. Thanks for reading.


A Salesman Talks to You Until He Can Find a Rock

It's not the economy.
It's the stupidity, genius!

Do you have money?
Have you listened to anything I've said?
Answer the second question first!

You're a confidence man who is
outsourcing your confidence.
Let's secure your insecurity.

I'll put your ass in asbestos
for your new house. Don't worry.
You still can't afford it.

They already stole everything
you might have put in there anyway.

But look. Pretty ribbons.
That's what we cut your child into.

The advertised backyard daisies
were really daisy cutters.

Hello father, hello martyr
Here's your acceptably lost
little daughter.

You played the game
you didn't want to play.

Thank you for being far too
devastated to press charges.

It's a wonderful world. You just lease it.

Some poets have all the luck.

Special thanks to Chris Fitzgerald, Laurel Lambert, Jan Rowe, Martha Boss and James Van Looy.