French Quarter Fragments

This prison
A prism
Honor roll and
Debate club

*

No room for cheerleaders
Everyone is a cellphone casualty

*

To walk is to swim
To cry is to bleed

Road trip hajj voyage and sojourn

*

Bury the egg to
Prevent this dream
From becoming reality

*

Independence is a fairy tale
Autonomy a fable
Economy an absurdist fantasy
The university a tanning salon

*

Stepfather buried our
Sacred artifacts in the sewers of
Darfur Rwanda Ethiopia Sierre Leone
THe South bronx and The 9th ward

*

And they tell us racism is a thing of the past

But how come there is no Genocide
In Belgium or Sweden?

*

Getting $6.15 an hour
Doesn't make you free

In a place where the graves sprout
To remind us that
We all must return to soil

Our digital networks will distract us
Only for so long

The clouds will conspire to
Bring 35 gallons of truth to our shoulders

As we stand at the pump
Pull the trigger that will unload
Processed Earth into machines of
Steel Hunger

*

Everything was moving but their minds

*

They were the storm that toppled their city

*

Discipline is Freedom

*

"'Using single quotes within double quotes
Is a sign of impending insanity'
Quoted Vladimir Nabokov
(As quoted by Andrei Codrescu)"

*

The only police I appreciate
Are Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland

*

The therapist's therapist
Prescribed him to catch
The ferry across the river
And get off half way

*

We were
Holding a cocktail party with the rapids
When it dawned on us that
We were the drink and not the straw

*

Marilyn Monroe had ugly feet
And I am not convinced that she read

Ulysses

*

A baptism in the swamp
A cataclysm of cattle
Every house a yacht

*

When will they learn
That tagbanging
Is the advent of holy scripture

Like Han Shan's koans
Carved into unsuspecting trees

*

Sleepwalking
Convinced we are awake
Our makers unmake us
Shake us from the orange tree
Shipping us to a supermarket kiosk

*

We pass through this plane
Like wind through an accordian

Our finer parts escape through
Holes carefully places

Infrequently we reach a frequency
Only dogs and gods can hear

Like an ATM we punch codes
Into a virtual surface

Expecting dispensed paper
To satiate or save us

If you repeat something enough times
The people will believe it

It does not matter if it is true
Beam it up onto a screen

And they will value it more than
Their own relatives

It does not matter if it is worthless
We have already bought into the recycling trend

Recycling trash
Recycling people

Recycling ideas for another useless film
Primal instincts intact but contorted

Now we hunt in malls
Fish in cyberspace

Our reptiliam centers plucked
And dropped into aquariums

With sand an blue rocks
To keep us company

Someday soon we will be the souvenirs
Tourists purchase during their

Most mundane Holiday getaways

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