Stone Soup Croutons, 4-4-16, Trip

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 either then or later. It's likely some of the poets I thank at the end won't even be able to figure out which lines were inspired by their work. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, the poem doesn't go up because it's good; it goes up because it's Tuesday morning. This poem doesn't count towards the National Poetry Writing Month 30 poems in 30 days challenge. This is its own odd entity.

Thanks to Miles Hodges for coming to Stone Soup yesterday. It was an action packed night. I got as many people as I could, which included a lot of new voices.


Trip

Talk about a regurgitating jukebox!
A man with hands like baseball mitts
can't choose a good tune
or handle a needle for any high.

So many contradictions, he seems honest,
though  he's tried to learn Spanish
just to fake paintings by Frida Kahlo
and sell them for pennies,

enough for a pay phone
he sprawls by every afternoon
to wait for God's call and instructions.
Sometimes, he's told to follow a woman home
to another man's bed, but that's okay.

No answer. It's a leap year.
God may have forgotten the extra day
and didn't come into work.

He's upset that gravity
never takes a day off,
the looming planets above
remains aloof.

And he's only high enough
to fall into unconsciousness.
His feet of clay do a dreidel spin,
his mind a lone dispatcher
in his body's battlefield
with no radio.

He transmits stories of the dead
but tries to keep them to himself
so he doesn't sound like a terrorist
prowling the afterlife
for his reward.

He still likes to fight for his sanity,
an amateur boxer or newborn child,
needing  management,
someone to keep his head up
and explain the difference
between reflection and shadow.

Apologies to Jeannie Nunes, who I couldn't get to yesterday.

Special Thanks to Sumaiya Zama, Lee Litif, Sheridan Jones, Allister, Surat Lozowick, Angelica Maria Aguilera, Dexter, Martha Boss, Gladys Teresa Hidalgo, Jonathan J. Joseph, Navah The Buddaphliii, Shea, DiDi Delgado, and Miles Hodges.