Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked 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.
Thanks for coming to the open mic on Wednesday. This has been keeping me going, in all honesty. I've been thinking about people graduating this year. I recently saw someone's kid online taking part in a socially distanced ceremony. That's probably why this week's entry not is not a COVID-19 piece, but a commencement speech of sorts (something I'll definitely never give). The horrific events and behaviors of others over the last few days were also on my mind, as they are on other people's minds (thanks, Toni Bee), but those will have to be carried over to other poems. Hope this one is different enough to be a breath of fresh air for some. Thanks for reading.
Commencement
I tell you children today,
you are wiser, remember more
than your home country.
This is why you are tried
as adults the very moment
you step outside.
Don't advertise yourself
openly, they tell you.
That's the government's job.
It's mandatory you subscribe
to the hometown paper
that roots for the gentry.
The only normal you are
allowed to go by is based
on what your were never told.
Your life is a garden, tended,
waiting on the hawks to swoop
down on what you've grown.
You'll wish for a patch of
sand, where nothing gets
big enough to be noticed.
Only betrayers sprout
from barren ground,unfurl
towards you, festive weeds.
They'll falsify your own life
on the pages of your flesh,
lie in front of your casket
Those that want you pushed
below the water line
are not your friends.
The boot heel you keep
holding up since junior high
doesn't' know your name.
The little things mean a lot
but keep you in your place.
Ask yourself this:
Can you live in your skin
for a week? You'll do better
than most in prison.
If you're walking in the desert
and there's a turtle in the sand,
leave it. It's a sci-fi reference
meant to distract you online.
If there's a hippopotamus,
please call the police.
Confused already? Just
wake up and walk away
from where you are.
You don't have to be
trapped in a convent to be
willingly unhappy.
The ghosts that haunt you
don't have to be anyone
you know or like.
They need you now
to save society and Earth,
but do it on your time.
They brought it on themselves
to wait until you came on
to wipe the roaches off.
Find holy moments in dead air
while your parents on the phone
suck in disappointment.
Our cruelest rules are unwritten,
only seen when the regime
shines its light on your face.
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| Me shamelessly hawking my new wares. Buy it here. |
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| Jane Spokenword had a pot boiling over and couldn't stay. Also: Carol Watson? |
Special thanks to Patricia Carragon, David Miller, Ed Gault, Bil Lewis, Nancy Dodson, Mary Jennings, Carol Weston, John Lane, Erik Nelson, James Van Looy, Jason Wright, Erik Tate, Krystal McPhaul and Toni Bee.
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