Stone Soup Croutons, 4-8-26: Where do You Go 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.

 

I haven't wanted to do these in a while. 

I was enjoying writing other things for a while. 

 

I wondered if this was a worthwhile exercise. 

 

I figured I would see by starting to do Crouton poems for National Poetry Month. 

 

Jason Wright was our first feature for April. 

 

I enjoyed recapping the show. And then I didn't. 

 

I don't have the energy to do admin work for a Zoom call and take notes for the poem.

 

It was easier live. AT least I had an excuse for not being able to take down everything.

 

Now I don't.  

 

It's such a tedious process. 

 

And did I haven't done something in a while, It's like ripping bones from my body.

 

I did it anyway. Here's what I came up with.

 

Thanks for reading. 

 

 

Where do You Go Now?

 

A sex course is being offered

by a relative whose funeral 

you attended. They say you 

can please your partner

and a mistress you don't have. 

Your father comes back from 

2006 to say you're drunk on 

corrupt city water Even a beer

would give you better perspective,

but you're too good for that, right? 

 

Sometimes people aren't meant 

to hold hands with another. Unless

it's your soulmate and you steal

him from another man who's

about to ship out to Vietnam. 

 

Aghast in your head, he debates

with the ghost of Allen Ginsberg

Dad goes on about Russia 

being worse with every town

 having a communist witch

 

who go by the stars for an 

ever-fluxing fair press. Now 

Doomsday's a basement dweller

after breaking down on highway,

waiting to drive out again.  

 

 

Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Nike Truth, Jackie Chou, Ariel Fiore, Jan Rowe, Richard Spisak, Christina Liu, Jacklyn Bookshester, Bil Lewis, Jacob R. Moses, Timothy Gager, Robert Fleming, Ethan Mackler, James Van Looy and special feature Jason Wright.