Friday, October 19, 2018

Stone Soup Croutons, 10-18-18, Take the Journey



Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions 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.

I thought we would have had last night's Stone Soup in the smaller chapel upstairs in St. Paul's. Turns out we had a good number of people present. Might have almost been too many people for the smaller space. That's exciting to see happen. I hope we continue to build that momentum.

I would love to say that the downer of a poem was inspired by the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or the Honduran caravan scare coming from Trump, as I have been thinking of both those things quite a bit. Truth be told, I was too tired to even think of  anything beyond taking notes and hosting a great night of poetry. You can attribute signs of that more to the editing process as I'm reading today's news in disgust. Thanks for reading.


Take the Journey

Carry you and your loved ones
on your oar turned makeshift crutch,

their eyes a burnt ember
you've seen on dead dolls.

No one will hinder you more
or pilfer your goodwill blankets

already filled with pestilence
to take all the way to Narragansett

from ambassadors who know how
to slip poison in a morning prayer,

genocide dreams in unread Pound,
songs by Elliot's kooky quartet cabaret.

These hollow men shake hands gingerly,
promises breaking on baby palms.

The way has become well paved
with fence competing with maple

for the scenery. Travel so far
they identify your paddle

as a club. You'll be shot down
by people protecting their boats

who write off Neptune's trident
as a simple salad fork.


One poet put their name twice, another put fortune cookie-type lines. Good times..

Special thanks to Felicity, Angelo D'Amato, Jr., Michael Igoe, Michael McInnis, Lo Galluccio, Chris Fitzgerald, Deb Priestly, Martha Boss, Mignon Ariel King, Bil Lewis, Nancy Messom, and James Van Looy.

1 comment:

Mignon Ariel King said...

It was a really good reading. Good size crowd. I like your poem; special props for the Hollow Men ref.