Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Stone Soup Croutons, 11-6-17, Host Holy



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 we had one of the last four open mics we'll ever have at the Out of The Blue's Central Square location. I figured out one of our last features for the end of the month, and I have the poem up early. Given that this week's theme for Oddball Magazine is Trump, I'm surprised I didn't come up with another Trump piece. It's okay. I'll make up for that later, I'm sure.

I'm also surprised it's such a clearly apparent self-referential piece (more than usual at any rate), as evident in the title. Thanks to Mignon Ariel King for inspiring the title for reasons only she and I will understand.


Host Holy

Addressing an audience
is like hang gliding
with your parents watching,

about to slip on a name
as easily as a wet stone
on a mountain side.

Of all the stages of peace
the final one isn't
the inevitable return of chaos.

It's the sass of not caring,
a smile and wave
to your dentist,

your best impression
of a china doll
captures your indifference

over another failure
to captivate those
who wait to mutter,

apathy's activist army
slung signs saying
Save Our Self-Interests,

convinced you'll win
when there's nothing
worth conquering.

You will relapse again
hoping you can reach
the unheard high

of everyone's applause
cell phones unfused
to happy hands,

a children's crusade
scaling fortress walls
binding booster seats.




Special thanks to Bil Lewis, Chris Fitzgerald, Krystal, Martha Boss, Michael Igoe, Lee Varon and James Van Looy. 


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