SAFE DISTANCE EDITION: Stone Soup Croutons, 7-22-20: The Census Taker

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 afternoon.

It finally happened. We got Alexis Ivy back at Stone Soup (albeit online only). It was great to have her read from her new book Taking the Homeless Census, which you can purchase here. You can also send money to Alexis to support her via Venmo (@ Alexis-Ivy-Poet).

A lot of common threads were found on the open mic. I tried to piece together. I so didn't want to lose any semblance of a thread, I didn't even do stanza breaks. The results are below. I stole the title to this week's poem from the title of Alexis' book. Obvious, really. Thanks for reading.

 
The Census Taker

Another morning, another act
of penance towards imbalance.
Hand out blankets bereft 
of disease. Never enough
sleeping bags to quell even
metaphorical dumpster fire. 
With world's garbage burning,
why have more hot sauce
while crashing on friend's couch?
All insides are already 
a red  robin's piecemeal nest,
a city's map scarred on back.
Friends and family decry life's work
but gather round, wonder which one
 will be absolve before death.
Don't belong on moneyed streets,
where people can walk blindly
with pennies over eyes, free
from iconoclasts bombing 
their humanity. Red death masque 
is being invited to plague house parties
all across America.  The unseen
count their blessings over not 
being counted. Their hunched backs
still hold up Earth. They just don't want
to work closely with others,
do not want Mister America 
to notice them bend down at desks,
have their remaining time euthanized,
fed like bugs to ducks to an illness
targeting those who want to live,
living like parasites, housekeeping lovers
sleeping in empty broom closets,
thankful to trade up from stolen carts.
We are done. We are done. That's all
they want to say. Hearts flutter
like small birds, wondering if life
is clung to like another addiction,
keep on walking, just to know
they're getting high, hoping for a handout
of food and drink from the sidewalk,
tastes of Heaven we're too scared to know.

So excited over the open mic, I didn't even put James Van Looy's down. Sorry, James!

Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Peter Crowley, Dan Provost, Jane Spokenword, Bil Lewis, Nancy Dodson, Erik Tate, Caol Weston, Philip J. Curtis, Len Germinara, Lee Varon, Mark Goldfinger, Shana Hill, James Van Looy and Alexis Ivy.