SAFE DISTANCE EDITION: Stone Soup Croutons, 6-3-20: The Grand Party

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 this past Wednesday. It was late because I was late. Nearly everything has been late this week. My newsletter never even came out when it should have. But that's okay. Because you get to see me in the video of the event enjoying tomato soup with Planters cheese balls thrown in as the best croutons ever. I love my girlfriend. She has the best ideas.

This week's poem isn't quite Black Lives Matter, and it isn't quite pandemic, but it had elements of these themes from the open mic to kind of make its own amalgamated theme.

Time to go catch up with everything else. Thanks for reading.


The Grand Party

Bring your best upside down bible.
Easier than flipping White House.

Truth and honesty make private Pietà
in penultimate corner for non-dancers.

Blue jay stays back, guards feeder,
afraid to lose his favorite prison.

Be own evil twin with matching foil,
a double star, immovable heavenly bodies.

Lay off turning sad angels into food,
if only to keep off extra weight.

It's easier to write "love" than a love poem.
Heart stays baby bird small, lets riots start.

Stare at whole spectrum of fire outside.
Stay neutral while facing moving train.

Single colored rainbows exist! insist parents,
educating you behind glass walls.

Coworkers stay behind hashtags, brag how
they escaped trial and school on technicalities.

Lone trumpeter, uninvited, breathes manchild
breath, prepares to blow us back into cornfield.

Here we are watching Bil Lewis versus his evil twin. Which is which?

There are no late arrivals. Only late hosts.

Special thanks to Patricia Carragon, C.C. Arshagra, Nancy Dodson, Bil Lewis, Carol Weston, James Van Looy, Erik Tate, Ed Gault and Mary Jennings.