punkrockpoet
Really Experienced
- Joined
- May 13, 2002
- Posts
- 182
hi, i've been working on this little bit of verse about my sad, crazy home town of new orleans. any feedback would be welcomed; the more honest the better
At raucous angles the walls are rolling
In a sad canyon of tenements
And neon cathedrals
In damp lanes sink.
So, sister, whisper
Those jasmine spells;
From your lips they’ll
Fall Santeria-sticky
Like sweat drips, tepid.
Now, I don’t miss the taste
Of the Mississippi’s mud:
Stagnant grit and bramble scraping
The summer’s youth prayer,
Genuflecting in a mud warm ditch
Of blackberry snakespit
And honeysuckle
Tangled among the cane.
And all the rain can’t
Wash the cabaret crust
From the old men’s final nightly gigs—
Arthritic fingers moving from a
Bummed and lit Parliament,
To the off-pitch dark keys
Of a tune played so often that
The strings stink with familiar notes.
They still kill, if you know
What you are hearing.
Spireward sprawl cries
In Frenchman Street’s cacophony;
Coarse approval tugged from throats
Indistinct at The Apple Barrel,
Across shattered street and sidewalk
The Blue Nile weeps castanets,
Congo, Freddy Omar con su Banda,
Allen Ginsberg leers in earthy oils
From the wall of The Spotted Cat
Languid lips parted over the island
Of brass in a sea of stomping feet and
Imported beer bottles, an angry
Young tenor man asserts his sax
In the shadow of Café Brasil
To staccato claps and whistles
“He blew that, man!” and nods
And agreement of the elders
Who can still recall the vitality
In their fingers, dexterous as
Dexter Gordon, in the birth of the cool
Blue notes, before the delta drowned them,
Left them bent and shuffling among the
Stars, the bits of splintered bone
Gleaming in a solipsistic tar pit.
It’s too much.
I run like Slim Greer
Out and up Decatur
Crosses St.Phillip (I don’t
Piss on streets named for saints)
Crosses Rampart crosses
Canal and there the neutral ground
Grips the street car before it
Click, click, clicks me home.
The river rolls
her.
She’s my
mother.
She’s my cradle
grave.
She’s indescribable
and
My fingers stick just
trying.
At raucous angles the walls are rolling
In a sad canyon of tenements
And neon cathedrals
In damp lanes sink.
So, sister, whisper
Those jasmine spells;
From your lips they’ll
Fall Santeria-sticky
Like sweat drips, tepid.
Now, I don’t miss the taste
Of the Mississippi’s mud:
Stagnant grit and bramble scraping
The summer’s youth prayer,
Genuflecting in a mud warm ditch
Of blackberry snakespit
And honeysuckle
Tangled among the cane.
And all the rain can’t
Wash the cabaret crust
From the old men’s final nightly gigs—
Arthritic fingers moving from a
Bummed and lit Parliament,
To the off-pitch dark keys
Of a tune played so often that
The strings stink with familiar notes.
They still kill, if you know
What you are hearing.
Spireward sprawl cries
In Frenchman Street’s cacophony;
Coarse approval tugged from throats
Indistinct at The Apple Barrel,
Across shattered street and sidewalk
The Blue Nile weeps castanets,
Congo, Freddy Omar con su Banda,
Allen Ginsberg leers in earthy oils
From the wall of The Spotted Cat
Languid lips parted over the island
Of brass in a sea of stomping feet and
Imported beer bottles, an angry
Young tenor man asserts his sax
In the shadow of Café Brasil
To staccato claps and whistles
“He blew that, man!” and nods
And agreement of the elders
Who can still recall the vitality
In their fingers, dexterous as
Dexter Gordon, in the birth of the cool
Blue notes, before the delta drowned them,
Left them bent and shuffling among the
Stars, the bits of splintered bone
Gleaming in a solipsistic tar pit.
It’s too much.
I run like Slim Greer
Out and up Decatur
Crosses St.Phillip (I don’t
Piss on streets named for saints)
Crosses Rampart crosses
Canal and there the neutral ground
Grips the street car before it
Click, click, clicks me home.
The river rolls
her.
She’s my
mother.
She’s my cradle
grave.
She’s indescribable
and
My fingers stick just
trying.
