Stone Soup Croutons, 10-23-17, Sick Day of the Dead

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.

Last night was a double shot of Timothy Gager and surprised guest Yuyutsu Sharma, who was there to launch the new Eternal Snow anthology. Readers, listeners, old friends, new friends. Plus a Halloween vibe that started off the open mic, which helped kick off this poem. Here comes the poem from yesterday.


Sick Day of The Dead

Annabel Lee came back
from the dead, tired of being
a postmortem set piece.

She dreams of open mics
with sepulcher as podium,
and her the only one
who doesn't care if she knows
what poetry really is,

baby shoe shuffling to water,
to fish for what she can't eat,
just for the peace of sitting up.

She wonders if the water
sounds like the trail of tears
she's heard stories about.

Not from the true victims,
whose spirits don't even
cross with hers, but with the guilty
who douse her with their lack of fault.

She ignores them, dreams
of Amsterdam and other nouns
overheard in adult conversation
made better for lack of meaning.

Let her blast off to planet Amsterdam,
anyplace where she is not
perpetual puppet bride.

Special thanks to Bil Lewis, Jamie M., Chris Fitzgerald, Erik Nelson, Julia Carlson, David Agee, Martha Boss, Timothy Gager, Yuyutsu Sharma,and James Van Looy.