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.
For all her reservations about doing a remote feature, Deta Galloway was arguably our best thus far. She started right off the gate for nearly forty five minutes with no one looking at the clock, myself included. It was a joy to listen to this feature two days later and take it all in again.
The one glaring downside is that the poem I have this week can never live up to either the feature or the open mic that followed. There's a freedom in that, I suppose. Thanks for reading.
Marching Orders
Righteousness is a dry river
in need of a repleting storm.
Freedom becomes a journey sans
destination, our remaining right
to sing up against a wall.
How fitting. We're called to rise
when we are ill, lift ourselves
up to a mirror first, eyes shot,
tongue bagged ahead of body.
At war with self, first casualty.
We hold shamanistic summoning
in neglected home libraries,
click spoons as makeshift castanets,
yearn fore days before the need
to relearn how to climb trees.
Outside, unprotected, they welcome
the death of reason, let one bad egg
ruin the batch, no matter how much
you want to beat them in the street.
Vote for Biden is vote for Biden, so far.
A mother's love goes only so far.
The beggars are embarrassed for
the spectacle. We don't stand a false
Cuban's chance on the sidewalks,
or even a Kanye's chance in the polls.
What about a dream's chance
to be caught by rich benefactors?
Not even Reaganomics can get us in
the streets. Every outstretched hand
a crabs claw to drag you under rock.
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| The list barely reflects the order of who read. I kept missing people! Sorry. |
Special thanks to Patricia Carragon, Mary Jennings. John Wesick, John Stickney, Bil Lewis, Erik Nelson, Angelo D'Amato, Ed Gault, Erik Tate, Nancy Dodson, Carol Weston, Philip Curtis, Black Byrd, James Van Looy, Toni Bee, Jane Spokenword, Joshua Corwin and Deta Galloway.
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