Friday, September 08, 2023

Stone Soup Croutons, 9-6-23: Who Bought a Zoo?


Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions selected 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 collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.

Stone Soup came back on Wednesday, and Jeff Taylor was there to feature. The break was neccessary, but it was a good to start September with a reading. 
 
We talked more about a certain R. Crumb character than I would have thought normal. It was crazy fun, and that particular character makes an extended appearance in this week's poem. The other animal references helped (thanks again, Jon Wesick).
 
Sometimes the thinking behind a poem doesn't go that deep.
 
Be with us next wee for Derek Roberts' feature. Thanks for reading. 


Who Bought a Zoo?

Fritz the Cat resurfaced
at an art gallery decades
after faking his death, 
not worried about being
seen. If he could fool 
his creator into thinking 
they finished the job, he 
could avoid cameras on every
street and keep his fur cool.
He says Hola to the capybara
and fist bumps the bonobo,
labels them as downtrodden
because of their less simple
names, though he stayed mostly 
with the young chickens up
front, answering all their 
questions and a few unasked,
Too honest to make excuses.
he still swears off ostriches.
Never again, he says while
rubbing the back of his neck.
Overall, he never swore off 
women, only exes. By the end,
his hand holding what he claims
is his first glass of wine in years,
he recounts what he did for this
stretch of his eternal summer 
break with Ron Desantis and
a few disgruntled pythons. 
Revolution, he says, is easy
to understand. The world is
it's own prison and everyone's
a brick. We do our time, become
our own wall but as society
crumbles, so do we. And when 
we fall, we can throw ourselves
at anything we want before 
they ever try to fix us again.

[Open mic list coming later.]
 
Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Bil Lewis, Nancy Dodson, Jackie Chou, Mark States, Bryan Franco,  Robert Fleming and special feature Jeff Taylor. 

1 comment:

Robert Fleming said...

love "the world is its own prison"
this poem could be published in madswirl https://madswirl.com/category/blog/