Stone Soup Croutons, 10-30-17, Turning Treats

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.

Happy Halloween! We had an open mic, a workshop, and a band that followed our event masquerading as Green Day.Thanks to David Agee who read Emily Jaeger's "The Circumstances of My Birth" and this poem. Also thanks to Marcus, who performed "The Hunting Of Pau-Puk Keewis" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It's another weird hodgepodge, people. Enjoy.


Turning Treats

James Madison walks out
disguised as The Phantom,
tears your tickets as you commune
with spirits disguised as films
where actors go out disguised as truth.

In a near-by stream, the beavers
masquerade as God, make believe
they can change history's course
as easily as their river.

White men cosplay as medicine men,
plead poverty for all the wisdom
taking up space in their wallets.
They jump around in the wild,
which treats  them like sugar high children.

The White House puts on it's finest Ellis Island
welcoming all things looking foreign for a night.
Tumors pretend to grow into flowers
to feel better about their work.

Pumpkins paint themselves peach
to end our comparisons
to the President.

Short and Spooky Sweet

Special thanks to Bil Lewis, Chris Fitzgerald, Markus, Mike Igee, Martha Boss, Nancy Messom, David Agee, Erik Nelson and James Van Looy.