Friday, July 03, 2020

SAFE DISTANCE EDITION: Stone Soup Croutons, 7-1-20: The Mob Parade Unmasked


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.

Liza Zayas just keeps on getting better with her features. I'm glad 2020 is shaping to be her year in spite of everything going on. I hope those of you who haven't yet will consider donating to Elevate Thought, a group she's been involved with who have started an emergency fund.

Also, if you have time, check out Liza's Underground Garden archive, which includes the pieces she performed on Wednesday.

I suppose it was inevitable that this poem would reflect the Fourth of July weekend that starts today. Not that I went into this poem trying to make that happen, but the choice of poems on the open mic made it feel like I had no other choice. It's fun to be pulled along. Plus, of course, I have my own thoughts as people seem ready to leap into mask;less celebrations in close quarters 'cause 'murica. I'm so glad when the roster helps me to indulge. Thanks for reading.


The Mob Parade Unmasked

Someone's being sacrificed July 4th.
Most likely anyone interrupting
the new zombie dragon blockbuster.

They look to skies while every gun
stands pointed to feet, drunk enough
to write in God on November ballots,

buy more flags to catch the blood
so it never touches earth, hold hands
out to statues that never reach down,

leave boring teachers dead in a pool
of all that unread ink, planted with
snake oil bleach tonic remedies.

Things will be utopian if enough
believers believe and non-believers
stay home The faithful's tired wives

hope their bones unlock the way
to a conqueror's seat, keep out
daughters who want just too much

before a contracted afterlife. Moms
rage at the girls giggling before
misspelled street corner scripture.

Don't you know you'd have been
burnt at the stake? The threat is as
thoughtcrime as open slavery markets.

No more freedom to be free to call
for suicide lynchings. Other people
are a high tide in perpetual rise.

Get these children back in their
play room, with their socialist
building blocks. The boombodies

are too angry to also be afraid.
Thank you for coming. Your time
is over. It wasn't even now but still

you came. This labyrinth of lies
is All Lives Only, not for others.
Go set off flashbangs in your homes.





 

So many people coming in and out. How to keep track?

Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Bil Lewis, Carol Weston, Nancy Dodson, Angelo D'Amato, Ed Gault, Jane SpokenWord, Erik Tate, Ben Beckwith, Jamilla VanDyke-Bailey, Joshua Corwin, James Van Looy, Philip J. Curtis, E.S. and Liza Zayas.