Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked from Stone Soup Poetry'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.
Stone Soup is back! I'm grateful to everyone who "came out" to Wednesday's Zoom call. Sorry for being a rusty host. Sorry for being rusty with this week's crouton. All you need to know is that sometimes I have no idea with a poem is going from the beginning (Ezra Pound references as my starting point? What the hell?), so I end up relying on whatever title I can think of to hold it together.
This is, indeed, one of those times. I'm sure you wouldn't have been able to tell that if I didn't bring it up. Thanks for reading.
Day of the Not-Yet Dead
Ezra Pound dispatches
blacked out like the last
five documented minutes
of JFK Junior's empty urn.
Some people declare
their independence enough
to die in the streets,
Now to your children,
you're your own prodigal,
no one friending you online
to monitor your penance.
Away, they say,
with your lightning-filled
laboratories that spawned
all your generation.
Your body can barely
handle inclement weather
Even the cloudy starlight
gives you sunburn.
So set in your ways,
your same old clothes
are worn down to paper,
shorn by useless skin flute.
Don't go outside.
Your theme music only
segue you over
from crisis to crisis.
Best stay home. Wait
for the Christmas lights
you never took down
to become seasonal again.
Put on your manger
puppet show with Baby
Yoda in the place
of your lost Jesus.
You never learned how
to be brave, afraid
of a horrible death
no one's around to film.
The lighting outside
could restore your heart
if you weren't afraid
of thunder's applause.
You only escape the house
for your job, fearing
becoming homeless
like an old, ugly dog.
It's Halloween. You give
children pennies so they
can buy candy, give them
extra steps to egging you.
The world is not yet
as terrible as you project
it to be, but you can wait,
and it will happen.
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| I love a good turnout. |
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