Stone Soup Croutons, 1-18-18, Holy Mess

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 up because it's Friday morning.

Last night, Melissa Castillo-Garsow ushered in Stone Soup's new era at Cambridge's Brew on The Grid. Toni Bee, who helped us find our new home, appropriately kicked off the open mic poetry from a devoted audience who was glad to be back. It was a fantastic night and the perfect way for Stone Soup to begin again.

The Stone Soup Croutons also begins again on a new day. I hope I can keep doing this the morning after. This morning was especially tough, given all the lifting and moving I've been doing for the last two days to get Stone Soup ready. Still, I owe a poem to everyone who showed last night. Hard to find a common thread with so many different styles on display last night. To be honest, I feel the poem does a 180 in the middle of it. All that helped me come up with the title.

Enjoy. It's good to be back.


Holy Mess

And the moment in time
will be marked with a breath
on the nightstand glass,
a tapped beat on the table.

Tick the time, tell yourself
the tarot you picked
could mean loss of life
or the weight of your Christmas ass.

Even the Devil card
could appear Christlike,
shadows determining distance
between life and poetry contests,

the bar's jazz pianist
and the regular,
a prayer and a day dream
behind the wheel,

your morning drink
and a caddisfly home,
what you know and the ocean
full of what you don't.

Prometheus is burnt out again.
He singes the snooze button
on his fingertips, thirsty, wishes
for bowls of water in place of hands.

He'd pull a fire alarm
to escape Olympus,
freestyle a firestorm
under a pantheon sprinkler,

hideaway with his secret BFF
Poseidon, longing to put
each other out at night
after a meal of his entrails.

Hera needs to take out Zeus,
a new holy hierarchy established,
not hidden by a wall of sky,

perhaps Jesus and Karl Marx
as first family, new children
created with the full consent
of their worshipers.

The Brew Crew for the night: Cory, Mercedes and Dominque.

Congratulations to Lee Varon, recipient of the 2017  Jack Powers Stone Soup Savor Poetry Prize. 

Toni knew she was starting off and still put herself at 17?!? Poets!!!

Special thanks to Toni Bee, Michael McAfee, Bil Lewis, David Miller, Melissa Silva, Julia Carlson, Martha Boss, Michael Igoe, Erik Nelson, Carol Weston, DemetraSzakash, Kirk Etherton, Lucy Holstedt, Nancy Messom, Dexter Roberts, Gordon Marshall, Lee Varon, Melissa Castillo-Garsow and James Van Looy.