Stone Soup Croutons, 10-25-18, Treats for Tricksters

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.

Last night, we had our open mic, which isn't the end of our week, as we have the Stonecoast Review release party this weekend. The Halloween was strong last night. I tried to capture that. Might go back to this later, but for now it's all I got. Thanks for reading.


Treats for Tricksters

Masterman and Birdman
make love so jazz can soothe
their stomachs. It's their
one night in plain sight.

They keep their war paint light.
It's not their night to keep
anyone at bay, just hang
like workers pre-graveyard shift,

steal glances without reprisals
like candy from pillow cases.
They give their true names,
hope they'll hear them spoken back.

Once a year, Masterman and
Birdman cheat death by mob,
hope revenants can't remember
the ones that got away.

Special Thanks to Lo Galluccio, Chris Fitzgerald, Michael Igoe, Jan Rowe, Nancy Messom, Martha Boss, Barbara Ann Creich, Bil Lewis, Deb Priestly and James Van Looy.