Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked 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'm very thankful for this past Wednesday's gathering. I'm also excited for next week's 49th anniversary reading on Friday May 1st. We're getting more people I haven't seen or heard from in ages to read on Zoom. I hope we get double those numbers next week. I'm working to make that happen. The people who have come are giving me hope. I've been wondering if I should keep Zoom going in some capacity even after the current crisis has passed.
I've been writing my usual weekly challenges while doing thirty poems for National Poetry Writing Month. I'm sure I'm burning out, but the work I hear on the open mic helps make this easier.
It's another pandemic poem today. The pandemic themed pieces from Patricia Carragon, Jason Wright and James Van Looy helped to shape this. To do anything differently would have meant ignoring all that work.
The 49th open mic announcement has gotten quite a response, so I'm excited to see what the overall vibe will be that night. For now, enjoy this sampling. Thanks for reading.
Basket Cases, Sans Picnic
Let's wonder if a robot overlord
will be undone because
they don't know what color
to choose for their face.
Do they keep everything as
tangential as dry erase marker,
old data discarded, camoed
when among the debris,
their now and then discarded,
left to walk alone like a poet
without their notes, unable
to prove what they were or are.
Lost poets enjamb themselves
on street corners and between
roads to ply their trade, insert
their aftermath, no prologue
to point to, a beheading before
a crown, the liberation without
a cure. Paint yourself black.
Impose your funeral colors
before they try to brighten
you up in death. Enough of
this uneven fight, flightless
birds versus banana peels.
Neither bid for a peaceful truce,
tumultuous as a country crooner
and his drawn out muse, dragging
chalk, drawing lines where
they've passed. wishing for
drones to float around the backs
of their own heads. The art of
our voices becomes splatterhouse
paint, our end-of-world game faces
on. Learn how to feel guilty
while gorging on hoarded
delights during this pandemic,
cradle remaining manias, these
last odd children, hope covered ears
will stop the stones. Bartender,
give us more weight. The empire
is broken. We just might outlive it.
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| Me obsessing over the overbearing phallic nature of Thomas Gagnon's hat. |
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| Writing names of people I haven't seen in so long. |
Special thanks to Patricia Carragon, Stephan Anstey, Leonard Germinara, Erik Nelson, Bil Lewis, C.C. Arshagra, Thomas Gagnon, Jason Wright, Ed Gault, Black Byrd and James Van Looy.
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