Stone Soup Croutons, 10-2-17, Free Fall

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions butchered 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. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes on because it's Tuesday morning.

Some new faces during last night's all-open mic. Some returning familiar faces as well (hi, Laurel Lambert). Thanks to James Van Looy for reading from The Mechanical Bride by Marshall McLuhan and Niamh Faherty for her reading of Irish folklore. Those things, along with the events of the last day or so, added to the poem, along with the title.


Freefall

The Church of the Wannabe
makes their temple altar
under the doorway to a party
they weren't invited to,

hoping to hop a ray
of backlight to the huddled hall,
excuse yourself across dimensions
to become desirable

instead of spectator,
a sunburnt pigeon
scamping outside
your City Hall,

pretending to follow
everyone to their next crusade,
dropping a breadcrumb
to pick up a sword.

Society is like City Hall.
You can't fight it because
it is what it is,
cold as an empire's end,

supportive as an artificial
bride, mail order non-erotic
automaton, just nudging enough
to make you stockpile weapons,

wonder if you're preparing
to cast of to eternal youth
of be cast out like
an Island snake.

We make our own myths,
or craft monsters for other heroes
out of our bodies. A coin flip
of time, we will ask

Why
have we done
what we've done
to ourselves?

Thanks to Laurel for starting the open mic.

Special thanks to Chris Fitzgerald, Rob Evans, Charie Hanson, Erik Nelson, Martha Boss, Nancy Messom, Michael Igoe, Laurel Lambert, James Van Looy and Niamh Faherty.