Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked from Stone Soup Poetry'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.
I also have a book out now collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.
So grateful for Tony Brown's feature this past Wednesday. A fantastic night with some faces I hadn't seen either for a long time or ever. Tony's set had everything I wanted, including a classic poem from the first chapbook I bought one night at the late Cantab Lounge years ago. A perfect way to kick off the last month of this wretched year.
I started this week's poem as the open mic was happening, only to have to finish after work. Well, I thought, guess this makes it a work poem. Except there's more than a little of my frustrations over this past Thanksgiving. Writing this made me watch the opening "16 Tons" segment from Joe Versus the Volcano. Now I want to watch Joe Versus the Volcano. Thanks for reading.
Thursday Morning
Spin and be own tornado.
If also own gun, thenare morning acts on self
Your cog-like contortions
tuned to muscle memory,
grinding bones away,
less nervous system than a yam.
Sterilized work corner
anticipates inevitable transition.
You could conquer world
if you could only break wind.
Frostbite moonlights on toes
cripples faster than student debt,
makes eyes droop all the way
down to the third shift.
Vendors dressed as magicians
take desk and chair,
grab rib from cage to create
perfect annoying coworker.
Can temporary memorial
go up before someone's gone?
Why is name and date engraved
in comic sans?
From behind, salt is thrown
over on-duty footsteps
They respect social justice,
start your trail of tears,
move five-o'clock body
between family's shame
and the friends you can
never bring home.
Only redemption
left in own hands
left to only clutch
each other.
Special thanks to Bil Lewis, John Stickney, Mary Jennings, C.C. ARshagra, Dee ah Na, John Roche, Carol Weston, Nancy Dodson, Mike McGee, Ethan Mackler, Jeff Taylor, Jan Rowe, James Van Looy and Tony Brown.
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