Neon and noise.
Night-world horrors.
Whose reflections, whose echoes
Showed not, nor shook
Its panes and doors.
Conscience-singeing.
Waywardly flapped.
Strange appeal! Once sought but through
A moonlight kiss.
A round dance. Clapped.
Accept the "Holy Fathers" stains?
What prideful tolerance sustains
The acts by priestly "Confessors"
Whose transgressions we all deplore.
Their molestations cause such pain
That no repentance can explain
To parishes stretched far and wide -
To innocents they cast aside.
Religious aristocracy,
Duplicitous conformity,
Accepted this hypocrisy -
This predatory blasphemy.
Faux piety to hide their shame,
Disdaining good and shielding blame;
No deft Indulgence could resolve -
No Inquisition would absolve.
Despicable to humankind,
By words and deeds now left behind;
No con nor lies supplant the proof:
The mirror to self-damning truth.
These crimes, these aggravated sins -
Atrocities no words can spin,
Nor can appeal 'yond earthly reign
For acquiesced eternal stains.
Poor soldier Andrew Jackson who
Attacked the British after peace
Was signed three weeks before at Ghent.
Unnecessary bravery
Is no less admirable for that.
He waves to patrons eating their
Beignets at the Café Du Monde.
Astride a horse, saluting with
His bicorn hat, and stern of face,
He looks less menacing than if
They cast him brandishing a sword.
But who can blame his victory
(Redundant though his conquest was),
The English might have occupied
The Crescent City, New Orleans.
Between Lake Ponchatrain and Gulf
Of Mexico the land is boggy here.
Once rains would pelt Orleans and make
A flood enough for fetid pools.
Pine coffins bobbed and knocked aloud
Discouraging the patronage
Of all the working girls for weeks.
But that was long before the war.
And British and Americans
Were mostly buried on high ground.
So no unnecessary dead
Were ever disinterred by rains
And washed some parishes away
Without their names on coffin lids
To now or ever be reclaimed.
The beacons of Caribbean ray
Made sunlight spins across this hot day
The heat arrives again between lush trees
Shedding their plump clothes leaves.
With dangling fruits on the branches
Bikes dance fluently around the hills.
Up through little towns and even villages
Part of the parishes looks like dishes.
Summer in jamaica wearing a grin
with flashes of torrential rain falling
Pools of water lay by the roadside
beneath the stream, a mist strode
Humidity blots out my vision
To the crystal crisp breaching ocean
Yellow bird in a cloud of immaculate stature
Swirl on the lookout for higher architecture
My pulse beat like a watch tower
Excitement racing over into the shore
Summer in jamaica raises the temperature
Into the high mosquito ceiling
Oxygen tight and drowning
Eroding names on long-faced headstones,
a small graveyard marooned on a patch of past;
long rooted and confined while beside it
2022 blares unseeing past the forgotten lot.
An old-fangled America right there
forgotten crypts
tucked between gas station and strip mall,
a small deposit of once horse-drawn bones
amid a modern thoroughfare.
A haze of traffic emissions half-hides the secreted,
the tucked away,
yet, there are whispers on mossy mounds,
mouthless echoes of forked-over farmers,
matrons of dispersed parishes,
tanners wrapped in musty mule skins.
An olden daze leans toward us,
tilts into the present, slides sideways into
a ‘Wendy's’ car-park.
Voices sweat into the skin of a biker filling his tank;
beneath his dew rag they wetly whisper.
He shudders in the warm sunlight,
thinks about a lime phosphate soda
long defunct.
A cloudy memory follows a teenager
toward a newly opened store,
but the new won’t thrive long.
Nothing around here survives
longer than the bygones.
Eroding names
on long-faced headstones.
Graves marooned
in a patch of the past
while 2019 blares unseeing
around the forgotten lot.
An old-fangled America
tucked between gas station and strip mall,
a small deposit
of once horse-drawn bones.
A haze of traffic emissions
half-hides the secreted,
the tucked away, the half seen,
yet,
there are whispers on mossy mounds,
mouth-lost echoes
of forked-over farmers,
matrons of dispersed parishes,
tanners still reeking of
raw mule skins
An olden daze leans toward us,
tilts into our future,
slides discreetly sideways 'round
a ‘Wendy's’ car-park.
A biker filling his tank;
beneath his dew rag.
voices sweat into his skin,
he shudders in the warm sunlight,
thinks about a cold soda long defunct.
A cloudy memory follows a teenager,
toward a newly opened store,
but it won’t live long.
Nothing around here survives
longer than the bygones.
Lights Out
When the lights are on your right here
When the lights are out you disappear,
Lights are back on but you are gone
Why did you vanish what's going on,
Where did you go
Nobody knows,
Are you coming back
It doesn't seem so,
The lights go out again and come back on
And once again someone else is gone,
Next time it could be me or you
How can we stop it what are we going to do,
Darkness is coming again and that a fact
And once we're gone we're not coming back,
Darkness is approaching I feel it coming near
And all we can do is tremble with fear,
Lights go out and come back on again
We're gone, we're ghost, we parishes it's the end!
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