Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Stone Soup Croutons, 11-27-17, Our Regular Heckler Closes the Open Mic



Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions butchered picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup'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. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes on because it's Tuesday morning Wednesday afternoon damn it, because some Stone Soups events are more special than others.

Elizabeth Gordon McKim gave an amazing performance Monday night. This was the last Stone Soup at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery, which is closing it's door at the end of this month. Maybe they wil relocate to another town, but it seems certain that their time in Cambridge is up. Elizabeth is a poet with such history in Stone Soup and elsewhere that she added the perfect gravitas to the event.

The Out of The Blue is the source of a lot of memories for me. It was where I had one of my earliest features as part of Stone Soup, a time before I was ever offered a position of any kind within the loose knit group. That offer would have never happened if I didn't meet someone during an OOTB barbecue who later became my girlfriend for a time. We are not in each others' lives today, but it is undeniable that I owe her for connecting me to the late Jack Powers and the person who for a time recorded the weekly gathering That launched the series of events that led me to become the regular host a few months later. And the rest, I hope, is ongoing history. I don't want to be finished today.

The opening open mic poem about launching a torpedo helped shape the piece below. Things were helped further along when Elizabeth told about the time she first encountered a lady at Stone Soup shouting expletives at the people reading (including a group of poets from Russia). According to Jack, she was a regular.

I had to take extra time to take in the whole experience and listen to the videos I took of Elizabeth, Toni Bee and James Van Looy. There was so much to process, which is part of the reason why this poem is only going up now. I am so grateful for Elizabeth, Toni, James and everyone else who showed up on Monday night. We had many readers and nearly just as many listeners. If Stone Soup doesn't come back for the rest of the year (believe me I'm working on it), at least we can say it ended wonderfully.

No true hecklers in the audience, but we can always hope for next time.


Our Regular Heckler Closes The Open Mic


She comes bearing a torpedo
extracted from the north shore,
now posing as a giant pencil.

She needs a small bone
to complete a key chain,
is too shy to ask directly.

When not attending shows
she's busy petitioning the region
to have snowstorms named after her.

We mistakenly call her Charlotte
when her delivery makes us recall
a summer riot's cacophony.

Her discontent enthralls the room.
Naked under her own eyes,
she insists we turn away,

wishes for a garden of corn,
no eyes, just ears, ready to give her
a pop from the crowd,

expecting the devotion equal
to those unnamed legions
who built the pyramids.

She reminds that a daisy
can both tickle and cut
depending on context,

extermination both threat
and promise you'll someday see,
a bullet to lull you to sleep.

Here comes winter, she groans.
Six more weeks of Sanders
warning of bigger storms. 

She says it's all rigged.
The real Miss Universe
is probably light years away.

We wait until she ends to read,
every poet's purpose
to fill the time in between.

Good, she says, Every poet 
should expect that of themselves,
speaking until something real happens!

It's our sole commandment,
to throw the last non-expletive
before the button is pushed.

Though critical, she assures us
we will find the muses we deserve
if not the ones we search for.


Sadly, no Janvier came up when called, hence the question mark after his name.


And then they were gone. Again.

Special thanks to Jamie M., Toni Bee, Shannon O'Connor, Blaine Hebbel, Dave Somerset, David Miller, Erik Nelson, Michael Igoe, Martha Boss. Bill Lewis (who reprised his role as Pencil Guy Bill), Melissa Silva, Carol Weston, John Bergstrom, Bill Brockmeyer, Lee Varon, Curtis Luke, James Van Looy and everyone else in attendance for this final night.

1 comment:

Melissa Kunga Silva said...
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