October 25: The Stone Soup Open Mic Happens Once Again

Been too busy promoting Saturday's big event. Last week's open mic was very well attended. Hopefully we can keep it going with this week's open mic. Optional workshop before the open mic actually begins. Yes, I'll get there early.

On My Way

Heading to Stone Soup's open mic and workshop.

May 15: Stone Soup Open Mic and Workshop

Tonight we have a  workshop at Stone Soup Poetry. It's last minute notice, but I have faith in you. Send me your poems so I can copy them, or bring 10 copies yourself. The workshop will take place after the open mic.

Stone Soup Croutons, 1-11-16, Pick-Up

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title afterwards. Even if I mention your name below, you might not even recognize how you influenced me.

Last night was a simple open mic followed by an workshop session led by the man we've come to know as Big Poppa Ben. I'm not ready to start recording Stone Soup, so I had less to do last night than I normally do. I twas nice to concentrate on the poets.

I was trying to pull more of a narrative rather than have this "character" I've been writing about just sit around feeling depressed, which is what I feel most the poems have been as of late. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's good to at least try to change.


Pick-Up

Every word out of your mouth
compiled form you to-do list
spilled over in anger
during  bar crawls.

Tonight's promised
pick-up of medicine
for not-your-wife
is left on the rocks
post-crawl beach comb.

Heading Out

Heading out to tonight's workshop at Stone Soup. See you there.

January 11: Big Poppa Ben Invites You to His Workshop at Stone Soup Poetry

I hope some of my fellow poets will join us tonight for some good ol' fashioned work shopping, which people coming to Stone Soup have been asking about since I first had to give up the one I used to do before Stone Soup started. The man who I'll call Ben for short talked to me a short while ago about wanting to start up another workshop, and I figured this is a good way to gauge the audience and see where we go from here. So this workshop is happening tonight after the open mic with Big Poppa Ben leading the group. Email stonesouppoetry@yahoo.com if you can't print enough copies of a poem you have. (10-15, let's say, just to be sure). I'll be on the sidelines, but I'll step in as a workshop lead if we end up having a football team's worth of participants. See you all tonight!

Bonus Stone Soup Workshop Poem, 9-28-15

Yesterday was a last minute Stone Soup workshop. I'm going to talk with Tom Tipton at Out of The Blue about doing something regular, perhaps during every other weekend. Going forward with this idea will depend on finding someone wiling to workshop on weeks I can't do it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Since no one had time to print out copies of a poem to work on, I had us write a new poem based on a mix of two exercises I remembered from my old professor, Alan Feldman. I won't reveal all of the details of the exercise, but it did involve writing about a painting they could choose on a part of the gallery's wall. The painting above is the one I chose for the poem below. I took the last stanza I read to the group yesterday but otherwise kept the poem close to what it was yesterday, editing primarily for clarity.


Pink Elephant Wants A Word With My Old Roommate

Dude, this has got to stop.
We've had a good run, but I can't
do what y ou want, no matter
how expensive or cheap and plentiful
the liquor is going to be.

I look in your eyes now and I hallucinate,
see myself looking at you
looking back at me until my eyes
are traffic signals screaming stop and slow down
in front of a train wreck.

All the while, my imaginary body
somehow catches up with  you,
xylophone with shaken off keys
fallng through city grates,
my once pink skin turning
to the peeled merlot grape
you used to buy in bulk.

I get it. I saw Dumbo too,
but now I dance with feet and toes
a brittle rake on ice.
my march is not your march.

I paint myself in black
so you will laughless,
and white face myself so you notice
my ivory dropped off
with your teeth years ago.



Special thanks to workshop participants Lee Varon, Joyce Jellison, Chris Fitzgerald, Jonathan J. Joseph, Martha Boss and James Van Looy.

Stone Soup Croutons, 9-28-15, Fish on a Bicycle Pulpit

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title the next morning. 

The feature cancelled, the second feature fell through, so we had an extended open mic and workshop.  A small enough group that was almost too shy to clap in such a large space (I'll get back to that somewhere in this post), but intimate enough that the workshop worked really well. I will likely post what was written during the workshop, but I'll get to the poem, which was finally able to include everyone on the open mic. Granted, there six people on the open mic, but imaging if I skipped anyone on a week as slow as this.


Edit: "Fish on A Bicycle Pulpit" is available only from my first collection of Stone Soup Crouton poems, The Collapsed Bookshelf, available at Amazon.

 Special thanks to Julia Carlson, Joyce Jellison, Chris Fitzgerald, Jonathan J. Joseph, Martha Boss and James Van Looy.