Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry now meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery’s new location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. The open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

On April 27, we welcome Jonathan J. Joseph, a young poet who has been taking Stone Soup’s open mic by storm. Read his poem below and please be in the audience this Monday.

 

I am cold
shoulderless
without a brotha to lean on
who’s cup full brim
filled to tip
spills
overflowing
warmth and compassion

fraid seat next to me
reeks of emptiness
just a calloused
rear end bench
homeless makeshift bed
I don’t expect comfort
present in this life
or the next

but what about heaven?
humbly you ask

I’m much too familiar
with even the tiniest of fallace
tell me child
who told ya such a tale?
Please, be careful spreading
such cruel ideals

people swept away in faith
spiritually drowning
concealed by their fear of god
modern day daddy issues
gone to far

mercy y’all
spare yourself the rod
for it takes dedication
to maintain
such self hatred
a hopeful sentence
which imprisons true nature
the sick spin off of
love

ahhh we know that one
sweet n sincere
sought by every creature
not just those who dream

tis our essence
souls stuck searching
forever
the luring chase
where nobody catches
anything superficially tangent

we fall down victim
instead
lying there, lost to ethereal forces
distractions obsolete, no longer missed
raw thought remains
true transformation may begin

this is the heart hunter’s intervention