now the for the second anniversary

Note: Believe this poem was published on the ULA's Literary Adventures some time after the catastrophe referred to in '04, but we all know that that particular blog and it's work by members and guest poets and writers there in was hostilely seized by bad apples if not traitorous moles embedded in the Alliance. Who like cowardly bullies refused access or to release the aforementioned work after reasonable requests from the ULA. Anywho this poem is again posted lest we forget what happened and is still not happening in the big easy!


Grief by artist, Amy Roberts, @1988

HURRICANE LAMP

“It was not a normal hurricane...”

-- Bush, in his address to the nation from New Orleans,

Thursday, 9.15.05

Was she a giant spider escaped

from the rings of Saturn,

or a mutated crayfish crashing the barricades .

piled in the brink like mashed potatoes

and gravy, or was She a lightning bolt spooked

out of the black and blue lagoon, or a passing

fad taking the market by storm,

or was she just visiting the wet-land bayou

that army corps of engineered no more

and like a mother of four

living hand to mouth got pissed?

If not the heart the liver and spleen

have been tore out of the country

soul first left to rot in the delta

by the tens of thousands poor

and the hurricane lamps

and the hurricane oil lighter than water

unless one counts the toxins,

fry-later grease and the Malathion

run off to kill the insects in the fields

of share-crops where the Mississippi

rolls over bucks for the combines,

cotton wicks drowned in the boxes and those

in the confines of bloated wharves

gone to deep six in the gulf

between the haves’ and the have nots’ husk.

The baby jazz smothered in their cribs

and the blues men blown over into the dark

drink like rum and coke nothing’s changed

and as usually no bureaucrats charged

not one croc in the public works to be

held accountable again and little you

and little me dismissed by fat cats

and Hollywood TV without a peep

unsung solidarity for them in New Orleans

and the muddy proscenium of the deepest South.

One of the sacred cities of the continental cut

with St. Augustine and San Antonio exposed

on either side where the soul of America

quickens from a skip to a back slide.

Where will Nature strike the nine pins next?

What does it all mean, should we pray to God

on our knees when the ministers and priest

have lost before the open and shut eyes

of the dispossessed, the working mother of four

who survives pay check to pay check and huddles

with the rest of them people in the bottom lands

filled up like a bowl without no cereal or soup tho’

but what else is different, nothing has changed.

Unless you can catch a glimpse in the poisoned

sheen waiving like the flag but black and overturned

the slave ships ghostly prowed toward the blocks

block after block slave auctions without terminus

or old Ponce De Leon privateer and skinner

of muskrats whose ghost would be less fearful

than most being a Frenchman stoked the high ground

for a Quarter frequented by intoxicated tourists

Northern for cous- cous and gumbo and a voodoo

tease in the yellow fever of the souvenir news.

Speaking of the turn of the screw what agency

will comfort if not the poor minority and Cajun

parishes perished under the surge in the cycle

gone made hotter than hell and globally warmed

to a irreversible burn but the creatures of the mojo

midnight witching hour in the silvered glass,

the aristocratic vampyre, pathetic zombie hordes,

and even a loupe-garue or two, when its obvious

from the tube there’s not even a place for the living dead

to lay their heads but then again perhaps all these

things have got themselves an office in Washington D.C.

Nothing ‘round these parts, nothing ever changes much.

So on the third day I caught the Louisiana Governor say

cease and desist the search and rescue in effect

get your shot guns loaded

and the billy clubs spit shined

‘cos there’s poor people roving behind the picture-

windows, Walmart, K-mart, Quickie-mart

must be defended at all costs, money floats the whole damn

network, as visions of ownership danced

in their profits’ heads, the disparate are

racing off with diapers, colored televisions, and bread

and bargain basement semi-automatics to kill the living dead.

Eighteen holes cut short for the vacationing Feds.

The mass media spun and monopolized

same old same old to keep us hypnotized

looter and helicopter rerun nine to five

obscuring the truth that the poor are sodomized

day after day under the boots of a corrupt

and underworldly government bottom to top.

What are systems, lies, dirty deals

in face of the homeless panning for a meal

when the wrath makes all the church bells squeal,

Old deities send plagues and catastrophe

against the common people when tyrants reign

so that them folk will rise up against those

in power who rile and ruin the humane

Earth and sign the times with monster births.

Nothing ever changes but there’s chance

a third or fourth party might emerge at last.

Let those who dodge just desserts swill like hogs,

our Creator has proved more powerful than their God.

9.8.05