I came downtown to N’Awlins
To fire off the N’Year
But found it wasn’t quite the place
That Mem’ry makes it appear.
This ain’t no Princess and the Frog,
This ain’t no La-La Jazz-land,
Harry Connick’s got it wrong
‘Bout this old N’Awlins!
Papa Noel
Fled swampy Hell
Ruined by drink and drugs-o;
The beggars sheet
On every street
And the rich puke up their guts-o.
So stay away!
You’re bound to pay
To make it what you dreamt-o;
Or else you find youself knee-deep
In a N’Awlins New Year shit-hole!
I came to N’Awlins, upriver,
And fancied it Jamaica;
The weed and coke keep it afloat –
Oh, the places that they take ya!
To shacks and packs of tourist traps – Hack artists trail ya, bawlin’ –
There are no bands, just freelance hands
Who toot-toot for N’Awlins!
The folks at Preservation Hall
Play their own funerals daily
While tourists tip them cigarettes
And fall asleep quite gayly
Halloween’s
The time to be
Passed out in the streets-o
Since this is not the tight-knit town
You imagined on the bayou.
N’Awlins, I like to say,
Though only tourists talk that way –
Those who ain’t been here before
Never seen stores that only sell cork
Nor penis-shaped lollipops
Nor Mama’s discount voodoo shops –
The whole city is one big sham
Left from years it earned that glam
(though we can’t act like it’s the only offender;
L.A. has also gone through one big upender).
New Orleans is old, it’s trash, it’s done,
And it takes inebriation to have any fun.
I walked through Armstrong Park
When it was dimming, close to dark
And witnessed it abandoned –
Overgrown with weeds and dreams
Tangled up in isolation –
A stamp of times gone by.
A homeless man rode through the park,
Metal on concrete
(his front tire was missing),
To join his fellows sleeping under the lights
Of the main public library.
Seeing that, riding the bus back from a ghost tour,
Took all poetry out of my form.
So now I stop rhyme and rhythm
To flatly state that New Orleans has lost both –
By cutting the crap, we realize that
We like to delude ourselves
Into thinking the sparkle’s still there
Since it was there once,
But now no more.
A raging lunatic
Her flabby folds flapping with fury
Called my mother a bitch
And a piece of shit
Because we were taking a carriage tour
And she thought the horse
Was undergoing a sort of slavery.
How blissfully lost in an illusion one must be
To worry about extremist ideas
Of captivity
When New Orleans holds its rotting people in bondage
Without holding them in any expectations at all
As they hold out for a bygone dream
Swept up in Hurricanes –
A mix of drink and disaster –
Spat out on the curbs
Where misery dwells
Like that enormous theatre of boundless potential
Destined to ruin by location alone.
Or those twin abandoned hospital with terrible stories
Destined to ruin by character alone.
It’s easy to forget how new the year is
When you celebrate it so close to death
Or in a town where the only thing New about it
Is the next ailment or disease that kicks the glittering corpse
Of what once was Green and Gold New Orleans.
Morning's Early Dark 