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.
I also have a book out now collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.
To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes up because it's Friday morning.
Great open mic this week. For this week's Croutons poem, I tried (for the first time I think) to stick with the initial idea given to me in the very first poet (Jon Wesick and Samurai) and kept it going until the end, starting off with the word Rōnin, a term for a Samurai without a master. Don't know how successful it is, but it was fun to try. Call it experimentation, which sometimes is just another way of saying, I want an idea that will help me write quickly when I'm stuck.
What can I say? I have a lot of things to do today. Thanks for reading.
Futile Period
Aimless Rōnin try out for baseball,
yearn for something to swing at
or a mode of transportation
millennials won't laugh at.
Their futures as blurred
as palms smothered in tea leaves.
No opportunity to choose death
before living to see obsolescence.
Missed cue to exit time's stage.
No father to escort his cub off.
Feet move as through snow
while wearing clown shoes.
Sans empathy, food falls from fork
Can't bother to eat amidst
yesterday daydreams. All their heroes
have mustaches drawn on faces.
Their minds destroyed in in diners,
children screaming in booth
behind them, tagging at
their paper bags on the floor.
Future little mad genius bastards
toss unwanted food in over
their hidden contraband swords.
Left behind, abandoned warriors
play hooky from writing haiku.
about final failures.
Not a shell fired
still they remain all shell shocked.
The smoke still lingers.
Wisdom of elders
stilled by inner explosions.
Forgot woman's name.
Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Carol Weston, Bil Lewis, Erik Nelson, John Stickney, Rafiana Martinez, Ethan Mackler, Mick Cusimano, Nancy Dodson, Melissa Castillo Planas, Jane Spokenword, Erik Tate, Felipe Victor Martinez, Philip Curtis, Jason Wright, E.S., James Van Looy and Krystal McPhaul.
No father to escort his cub off.
Feet move as through snow
while wearing clown shoes.
Sans empathy, food falls from fork
Can't bother to eat amidst
yesterday daydreams. All their heroes
have mustaches drawn on faces.
Their minds destroyed in in diners,
children screaming in booth
behind them, tagging at
their paper bags on the floor.
Future little mad genius bastards
toss unwanted food in over
their hidden contraband swords.
Left behind, abandoned warriors
play hooky from writing haiku.
about final failures.
Not a shell fired
still they remain all shell shocked.
The smoke still lingers.
Wisdom of elders
stilled by inner explosions.
Forgot woman's name.
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| Sorry you couldn't get on, Black Byrd! |
Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Carol Weston, Bil Lewis, Erik Nelson, John Stickney, Rafiana Martinez, Ethan Mackler, Mick Cusimano, Nancy Dodson, Melissa Castillo Planas, Jane Spokenword, Erik Tate, Felipe Victor Martinez, Philip Curtis, Jason Wright, E.S., James Van Looy and Krystal McPhaul.
1 comment:
Another remarkable job, thank you Chad.
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