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 an award nominated book out now collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.
An unexpected all open mic this past Wednesday. I didn't really want that for National Poetry Month, but things happen. We made the best of it (as we always do), and there were even some new faces added to the mix. The poem was written and "finished" Wednesday night. It's just the nature of the week that it's not up as early as possible. I have so much more to do and nothing clever to say about this one. Well, I would like to say I'm glad I found it's shape early on. Last week I felt like I was cheating, given that I knew John Roche would do his Joe poems. Hope this Joe-less piece is worth your time. Thanks for reading.
A Night at the Happy Home Only in Name
The hot night you want
won't write itself into being.
No shrew will be tamed by you
has already seduced our children.
Silly hopes are solely for those
on rebound from constant circus.
Might as well turn to poetry.
The night has a woodpecker's
chance in redwoods to be quiet.
Bodies droop boneless over chairs
like Michelangelo's judged skin.
Restless fingers in common room
poke piano keys like mosquitoes
lashing at any hand that would
feed them. Even the hardest apple
can lash from the tree to strike
an outsider. This can lead one
to friendship if you're lucky,
or they become ghosts in rage's fog.
The daily of your mind crumbled
into a wastepaper basket estate,
stuck like a toadsucker in a frog pond.
Go and bite old bark out of spite
or cross the great divide between
hurt and heal, blow the dust off
the library's only tome of poems,
open the pages, cause others to wince
as if from a fart. It's old pages nibble
at your fingers like a baby puppy.
Stanzas with swears are highlighted
in disbelief, as if tattling on a tryst
in the boiler room. A loose paper
falls out with the awful poem
you might have written yourself.
An oasis of relief, first signs you
are not alone, only next. The blueprint
to cure stays on you, a colored stain
you can't miss, the mark of the
poetry bug, tick that gives blood back.
poetry bug, tick that gives blood back.
 |
| Ethan had to go first. Bil I counted twice for...reasons. |
Special thanks to Ethan Mackler, Bil Lewis, Coleen Houlihan, Carol Weston, Steve Azzaro, Chris Fitzgerald, Nancy Dodson, Jan Rowe, C.C. Arshagra, Margaret Nairn Wesel, E.S., Joe Kidd and James Van Looy.
1 comment:
It is good to have in some way, become part of this work //oo\\
Post a Comment