Stone Soup Croutons, 1-28-26: What Old Men Do Now

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.

Brian Mosher featured two weeks ago. Our first feature of 2026. It led to an interesting poem borne of poems of senseless loss and mourning. 

 

Catching up, so I'm posting this quick and thanking Brian for his reading. You should go back and listen. 

 

Thanks for reading.  

 

 

What Old Men Do Now

 

Start screaming to find 
a place on the map
before they wake. 

 

Too old for Hot 

Tamales, old enough to 

remember Cool Kids.

 

Gay men picking out

a woman to avoid 

persecution, remain top. 

 

Stay in motion on ice

and ICE encrusted 

streets unnoticed. 

 

Finally learn that
hammers work better

on doors than horns.

 

Hear bosses calls painting

of vomitous factory 

impressionistic.

 

Fathers wraps child in

warmthless nostalgia,

sends them to school.

 

Moses turns in shame

from Aphrodite's stare

and wordless grief. 

 

Special thanks to Richard Spisak, Jan Rowe, Michael McAfee, Robert Fleming, Bil Lewis, Wayne-Daniel Berard, Jon Wesick, Ethan Mackler, James Van Looy and special feature Brian Mosher.