Stone Soup Croutons, 11-8-18, They See "Arm" in Armistice

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.

We  had another open mic last night! Three people and one audience member in The Chapel of St. John The Evangelist. Not a bad ratio of listener to reader. Enough readers to get a short poem in.

I try not to over explain the poem normally, but her I might have to. The recent midterm elections and this Veterans Day weekend fed this poem a little.Of course, we just had a recent shooting in California, which I have to link, otherwise in a few weeks, we won't know which shooting I'm talking about.

Many of my friends are veterans, so this isn't anti-veteran. More an encapsulation of my growing fear of what soldiers are going to be forced  to do in the name of our hijacked country. Not to mention what that will become in a few years time when the deeds are done. Much kudos to James Van Looy's Veterans Day poem, which give me the idea for the title.

So here's a poem with the disclaimer longer than the poem. I'll try and put a stop to that next week. Thanks for reading.


They See "Arm" in Armistice

Today the soldiers
lay down arms
never at ease.

No mutual consent
to lay down arms
when one side's winning.

Craters are just
one more place
to roll bodies in.

One body
one less detractor
to righteous win.

Rows of mass jurors
who never saw
anything.

My attempt to put a fancy filter of James Van Looy reading in the chapel.

Devin Simon didn't read, but he really liked the poetry.

Special thanks to James Van Looy, Lee Varon and Martha Boss.