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.
What an open mic Wednesday. Started out with good numbers, and it just kept on growing. Some old friends read on Zoom for the first time. Some joined us for the first time ever. For all the love on the mic, I still end up writing dystopia poems. What does it say that dystopia poems are easier for me to write when on deadline? It was great hearing all the poems again to get this down. Thanks for reading.
Space Fillers
Taped Coney Island train ad
hunts for new war masters
to occupy the beach.
Technology limits us
to call for snipers
in anonymity.
Must be alabaster enough
to walk in-between
all infections
with a voice to keep
crisis and opportunity
marching in lockstep,
Be willing to keep
healing women out
of own safe space.
Less distraction when
trying to target a breeze
coming through your house.
Have ability to splice
truth and fiction with
bullets, leave both lying
for hippies to sort
in one of their circles
or cats to gnaw on.
Are you willing to cheat
at jump rope, even if
you're the only one playing,
or step into a park of
a city's forgotten people
and cry out, who's next?
In a post-carnage silence
we don't need New York
to write a new tragedy.
Virus needs to go viral
quicker than a cat video.
We always pick winning side.
Don't need open windows
to smell rampant fire
on this bandwagon.
Save colonialism! Ignore
women fumbling for song
of twenty-first century.
Dance floors just hold
the patter right before
the truth bomb drops.
Is it a bomb that kills
using the truth, or
does it just kill truth?
No time for personal
questions. Endings
don't end by themselves.
Stand up and crouch down.
We will not be caged
in our homegrown prisons.
Pretend survival pack
is the daughter you used
to carry everywhere,
this coffin a guest bed
of the last person who offered
to take you in, who you refused.
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| My hair looks weirder in low light these days. Thank God no one cares. |
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| Jamilla didn't read, but I put her name down anyway. Other names I forgot. Sorry. |
Special thanks to Patricia Carragon, Ed Gault, John Lane, David Miller, Bil Lewis, Jamilia Bailey, Toni Bee, Erik Tate, Carol Weston, Erik Nelson, James Van Looy, Colin Killick, Jason Wright, E.S.. C.C. Arshagra, Susanna and Lee Varon.
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