Friday, October 12, 2018

Stone Soup Croutons, 10-11-18, Ezra Pound to Donald Trump



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 before I crashed, I got to host our weekly open mic. We got to read in the Chapel of St. John The Evangelist again. Odd environment to produce a Trump-centric poem, but there you go.

Funny. I never got into Ezra Pound much. Years ago, I went through a phase where I sought out any kind of dissident literature just to educate myself on a wide range of political thought. I thought about seeking out a collection of Pound's pro facist dispatches (they were available on eBay at one point). Now I have a feeling they wouldn't be too different from what I've seen online over the last few years.

And that was another intro longer than the poem. Thanks for reading.


Ezra Pound to Donald Trump

Do not defer from defection
even as you fortify your home.

You wouldn't be the first frustrated American,
and a mob is just a pack of dogs
waiting to join any hunt.

The faint vapors of the nearby weak, 
lily petals waiting for drawn black blood.

Kill your enemies before
the planet kills you first,
your monster brain outliving
all new ideas.

Let them play their lowly fife
while you bang them like a drum.
Your other hand free  trumpets forward
the trampling parade.


My failed attempt to give James Van Looy's head a halo effect.

Chris Fitzgerald started with his poem on Pound. He's not a fan either.

Special thanks to Chris Fitzgerald, Michael Igoe, Martha Boss, Shannon O'Connor and James Van Looy.

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