Happy Birthday, Big Poppa Ben

 

 

Happy Birthday, Big Poppa Ben

 

 

Happy Belated Birthday, Big Poppa Ben

 

 

Happy Birthday, Big Poppa Ben

 

Happy Birthday, Big Poppa Ben

 

As always, click here to read the poem. 

Happy Birthday Big Poppa Ben

Read the whole poem here.
 

Happy Birthday Big Poppa Ben

Stone Soup and Oddball both miss you.

Happy Birthday, Big Poppa Ben

View the text of the poem here.

Stone Soup Croutons, 2-20-17, Midview

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard 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.

Monday night, I hosted an open mic specifically ribbing President Trump, history's biggest sore winner. Wouldn't you know it! Not a Trump inspired line in this week's piece.

I was tired, a little in pain (long story), and I was juggling the largest open mic we've had since last year (including some people back after being away for a while). What follows is a veritable Smörgåsbord of lines that may not fully connect with each other--or connect even less than usual.

This is the most heavily edited Crouton piece since November. I couldn't get my act together Tuesday morning to type out the piece, so I sat with it for a while and tried to make it more fragmented than when I first jotted it down.

I refuse to call the poem "Smörgåsbord."


Midview

Grand plan,  never fall in love,
keeps bullet from brain.

Daddy's home, no one notices.
Love contract, doesn't mean works.

Big Poppa Ben Comes to Oddball

Big Poppa Ben finally comes to us as a 3TV segment, courtesy of his farewell micro-feature at Stone Soup. Read about Boston's Spectacle Island today in Oddball Magazine.

Stone Soup Croutons, 8-22-16, Playtime

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, the poem doesn't go up because it's good; it goes up because it's Tuesday morning. I've done fifty of them now, and you can read them here.

Not only did we have Mik Augustin's feature, we also bid farewell to the man known as Big Poppa Ben, who has graced our open mic many times over the past year. A slightly sad but happy night. So it's a surprise the poem came out so dark. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.


Playtime

The ongoing dilemma
either to serve others faithfully
or ride the Paris caravan
until you're left with your hand out

in the clothes your mother dressed you in
when she confided to her yogi
that she couldn't see bringing you to term,
which to her meant middle school.

Stone Soup Croutons, 1-11-16, Pick-Up

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title afterwards. Even if I mention your name below, you might not even recognize how you influenced me.

Last night was a simple open mic followed by an workshop session led by the man we've come to know as Big Poppa Ben. I'm not ready to start recording Stone Soup, so I had less to do last night than I normally do. I twas nice to concentrate on the poets.

I was trying to pull more of a narrative rather than have this "character" I've been writing about just sit around feeling depressed, which is what I feel most the poems have been as of late. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's good to at least try to change.


Pick-Up

Every word out of your mouth
compiled form you to-do list
spilled over in anger
during  bar crawls.

Tonight's promised
pick-up of medicine
for not-your-wife
is left on the rocks
post-crawl beach comb.

January 11: Big Poppa Ben Invites You to His Workshop at Stone Soup Poetry

I hope some of my fellow poets will join us tonight for some good ol' fashioned work shopping, which people coming to Stone Soup have been asking about since I first had to give up the one I used to do before Stone Soup started. The man who I'll call Ben for short talked to me a short while ago about wanting to start up another workshop, and I figured this is a good way to gauge the audience and see where we go from here. So this workshop is happening tonight after the open mic with Big Poppa Ben leading the group. Email stonesouppoetry@yahoo.com if you can't print enough copies of a poem you have. (10-15, let's say, just to be sure). I'll be on the sidelines, but I'll step in as a workshop lead if we end up having a football team's worth of participants. See you all tonight!