Stone Soup Croutons, 4-19-23: New Path

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions selected 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 collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.

 

Karen Friedland featured on Wednesday. It was a unique experience. You don't think of setting much with Zoom, but due to an accident preventing my girlfriend and I from getting home, we at at The Real Deal at in Jamaica Plain before walking over to JP Licks.

Online open mic happened this past Wednesday. Even had a homecoming or two. It was fun, and thanks to Annette Tarpley, I was even able to put in a reference to Jack Powers, which seems appropriate given that Stone Soup's anniversary is less than ten days away.

Though the poem feels apocalyptic, I was able to have fun with a lot of lines. That's what happens when the open mic is on point.

Thanks for reading.

 

New Path

Paint lone road red behind 

you to dissuade followers.

 

Pass by Jack's memorial, last

shotgun shack in Haymarket.

 

He asked it be a monument

to middle class, forgotten first.

 

Keep running past mother 

yelling Bad World at men ditry

 

with coal, who try to give birth

to uranium baby, hopeful at

 

their womb of glowing earth,

playing white blues to nurture

 

growth into little dictator state

to upright capsized boat, keep 

 

spirit of 1492 and 1776 alive.

Take photo of world's last lilies

 

on canvas so you can save nature

as the background on your phone.

 

Scholars say ozone can be saved

by understanding need to shoot sky.

 

Last chance to run self through AI

for a better version with opinions

 

less dangerous than rainy baseball.

Not wanting to die is more deadly

 

than dreaming of little genocides. Put 

ear to soil, all hush to not be noticed.

 

Special thanks to Jackie Chou, Robert Fleming, Annette Tarpley, Jan Rowe, Bil Lewis, Black Byrd, Jon Wesick, Ethan Mackler, James Van Looy, Prudence F., Angelo D'Amato and Carol Weston.