Friday, March 28, 2025

Stone Soup Croutons, 3-26-25: Hitting Our Peaksville


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.
 
This week we had our first open mic since Jeff Taylor's passing. We hope you can take time to support his family and listen to some of our words about him. That won't be the last time this happens. 
 
I went into this open mic and this poem a blank slate. There are nods to Jeff at the end thanks to Rich Boucher. And thanks to Mary Jennings for the idea for the "Twilight Zone" inspired title.
 
There's a poem I always wanted to write for Jeff and the Garage Poets crowd from the early days of their online Zoom open mic. I haven't written it yet, but I'm glad I got through this poem. Maybe I can write that elusive poem now.
 
Thanks for reading. 

 
Hitting Our Peaksville

Big child hive mind wishes
us all to the cornfield where
nothing is growing. Find 
serenity at processing plant
There the Tree of Life has
been co-opted for making 
jelly. Spreading it on custom
wafers absolves you of sins
preemptively. Casting call 
open to see who plays Jesus
in the commercials. Crazy 
train now requires dress code 
of a handmaiden. Bodies will
have to be buried before the 
Christmas music starts playing.
Everything's happening is as
family as the Playboys under 
Dad's side of the bed and as 
modern as your Mom catching
catcalls while shopping for 
dinner. This just in: Thistles
from the Tree of Life now being
broken off and sold Everything
must go! Heels are ruby red 
bloody from trying to send us
back home. Science explains
bombs can't appear out of thin
air, but science seems as shaky
as a first day substitute teacher.
We say we won't steal from the
weak, but the press asks us what
we would do if Kitty Dukakis 
stole your ramen noodles. Now 
we have recover from being 
victims and being potential 
perpetrators until friends return
to tell us...we're us, and yet also
something more again, or less. 
 

Special thanks to Mary Jennings, Ron Bremner, Mary Ann Honaker, Rusty Rose, Richard Spisak, Jan Rowe, Shannon O'Connor, Nike Truth, Robert Fleming, Ethan Mackler, James Van Looy and Rich Boucher.

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