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Tag: Hurricane Katrina

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez

Published on December 8, 2005

Beneath the rust and the gray toxic dust
left behind when the water went down
past the edge of the Quarter’s bright lights and disorder
there’s nothing much left to this town

Maybe the Crescent City was never too pretty
for more than three blocks in a row,
but it made our lives fuller, regardless of color,
and now it’s someplace no one else can know.

You may know what it means to miss New Orleans
from a Mardi Gras record or two
but what’s gone’s gone forever; rebuilding will never
bring back Nawlins rhythm or blues.

‘Cause the heart of this city is broken in two
where the levees burst that afternoon;
and the warm welcome mat that asked “Hey, where ya’t?”
won’t be back again any time soon.

All the grand old traditions, corrupt politicians,
the trash tourists leave every year,
they’re all gone, or in trouble, buried in the rubble
that may take a lifetime to clear.

What they bring back will not be
New Orleans, not to me;
the places they’ve saved just are not
more than pretty postcards
of wrought iron and front yards:
ghosts of the town that care forgot.

08 DEC 2005

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No Useful Illusions

Published on December 4, 2005

What useful illusions we once had are gone:
that governments serve, that the lowliest pawns
with slow forward motion may yet become kings.
How quickly it seems that the simplest things

become complicated and mired in deceit,
and minor successes engulfed by defeat;
despite constant vigil and unending toil,
the fruits of one’s labors will wither and spoil.

And those who claim otherwise, believing luck
to be the foundation of bargains yet struck,
are lost to insanity greater than most:
that we are prized guests of some kind, noble host

who when we plead hunger, will provide the bread.
‘Tis more often shadows of crust, and instead
of a table of succulent dishes and wine,
more often takes form in less pleasant design.

What artifice leads us, in spite of these truths,
to believe in justice beyond tender youth
and strive for no purpose, for unseen reward,
each beyond the true means that they can afford,

to trust in a government built on such things
as man’s dignity and hope’s gossamer wings,
and think that the tightrope we cross at the top
of the tent has a net below for when we drop?

Illusion, illusion. There is little use
in hoping one’s neck out of reach of the noose;
and justice? Like vultures, the lynch mob rides in,
an anonymous mask for a number of sins.

04 DEC 2005

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The Aftermath

Published on November 19, 2005

Ain’t no use in looking back;
your eyes will be fooled by the mirror.
What seemed once to be so small,
becomes too big and crystal clear

Ain’t no use in laying blame;
The line between who’s right and wrong
is blurred with every movement on:
The tide rolls in, and then it’s gone.

What good is simply hanging on
to dreams that fade and turn to dust?
We struggle forward ’cause we must,
like darkness crawling to the dawn.

What good is thinking might have beens,
or wishing for some different path?
They won’t help you to understand
or live on in the aftermath.

Ain’t no use in looking back;
let shadows take the past and go.
There’s not much point in memories
that only say I told you so.

Ain’t no use in wondering why;
some things aren’t meant to understand,
and reason’s never all you need
to carry on the best you can.

What good is crying for a dream
that’s faded and returned to dust?
You struggle forward ’cause you must,
like winter’s snow melts into green.

What good is mourning what you’ve lost
in shadows somewhere down the path?
You’ve got to try to start again
and rebuild in the aftermath.

There’s just no point in sad tears
for the wasted years,
the time spent building those castles of sand;
As the new morning nears
and the stormclouds clear
you work with what you’ve got at hand.

What good is trying to hang on
to dreams of what is dead and gone,
leaves turned to dust there on the lawn,
the memory of a faded song

What good is dwelling on the past?
Those days are gone, the die are cast.
You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt
and live on in the aftermath.

19 NOV 2005

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Kali and Shiva

Published on October 9, 2005

A single shelf sits untouched by the rubble,
its contents unmolested by the storm;
while mold grows from the walls like razor stubble,
and walls and ceilings crumble beyond form.

Below, the room is nothing but destruction,
appliances and desks upturned and smashed,
displaced and wretched by the flood water’s suction,
strewn through the house and turned to worthless trash.

kalishivaaltar.jpg

Along the ceiling molding where it crested,
a gray mud line demarks the surge’s path;
yet that shelf seems pristine, and calm and rested,
quite unaffected by Katrina’s bath.

On that shelf? Kali and Shiva, destroyers,
look out into the chaos of the foyer.

08 OCT 2005

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The Storms We Name: an acrostic

Published on October 9, 2005

H elpless in the laughing face of elemental change
u nloosed as a pointed reminder that we each exist –
r eally, at the mercy of the Mother’s loving hands, the
r ight extending blessing, while the left removes our veiled
i llusions of reality. When humans pause and
c ontemplate their permanence beyond wild theories
a nd religious dogma it really comes to this:
n othing last forever except
e nergy, which we can only borrow for a while.

K ept too long, without knowledge of its purpose, it
a trophies, or seeks to be released; we see this shift as
t rauma, without sensing the balance that is
r ighted by a ruthlessness that makes our lives seem
i nconsequential, even meaningless, when compared to
n ature’s awesome bent for self-renewal
a nd will for preservation of the whole.

09 OCT 2005

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An Assessment of the Situation

Published on October 6, 2005

The telephone is ringing;
The assessor’s on the line.
He wants to avoid meeting us,
and asks us if that’s fine.

In essence, he wants us to lie
and say his job is done;
He’s three hours from New Orleans
and the drive in is not fun.

Of course, we need to meet him,
to settle our affairs;
some closure, so we can pretend our
mortgage holder cares.

Official now, the verdict:
what we had is wholly gone,
and if we’re lucky we may get
nothing to start upon

instead of owing thirty grand
for something we can’t use:
a toxic spot of swampland
and a use for rubber shoes.

The telephone’s stopped ringing;
all those promising some aid
are pondering our paperwork
in bureaucrat charade.

We found some friends who made it out,
like us, they’ve lost it all;
but now we’ve got each other
when there’s no one else to call.

Some said they’d help, and didn’t,
others took us by surprise;
you find out who your friends are
in such times, and realize

of course, there is some clarity
to be gained from all this:
the next time we’re on fire who we
can count on not to piss.

06 OCT 2005

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New Orleans

Published on September 26, 2005

Dear America:

The day after Katrina passed by New Orleans
and the reporters at the Royal Sonesta Hotel
on Bourbon Street,
in the goddamn sacred French Quarter,
were saying “New Orleans has been spared”
I knew it would come to this.

The day I heard the levees at the river and the lake
had been breeched, leaving New Orleans East
and the Ninth Ward
underwater,
I knew there would a Convention Center horrowshow,
the elderly and infirm,
the HIV-positive
and countless streams of self-medicated
mentally disturbed
wading through miles of toxic shit
and the garbage from under the streets
of the Quarter.

I knew it would become a race issue
for people outside New Orleans.
People who don’t know what it’s like
to live in a mixed white black neighborhood
that is also middle class.

People who aren’t privileged to understand,
just by driving down three blocks on St. Bernard Avenue, say,
that there are only four kinds of people in this world:
rich people,
poor people,
people pretending to be rich
and people pretending not to be poor.

In other words:
the haves,
the have-nots,
and the have-credits.

What good is sending people back to Covington,
to Metairie, to Harahan … to the freaking CBD?

Without the Ninth Ward, without the poverty that
birthed jazz, without those
underprivileged, undereducated, underemployed,
underwater souls
who would care about the City that Care Forgot?

The great boot of Louisiana is now a dirty sock.
With its great expanse of money-making Democratic blue
washed out
and only the tired elastic red left at the top.

I’m tired. And I’ve lost my home.

And Mayor Nagin,
nothing you can do can bring it back.
‘Cause unless it’s exactly the same,
it won’t be New Orleans.

26 SEP 2005

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