NEW ORLEANS GYPSY

Missing In Action

I fly like paper, get high like planes
If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name
If you come around here, I make 'em all day
I get one down in a second if you wait

Sometimes I feel sitting on trains
Every stop I get to I'm clocking that game
Everyone's a winner now we're making that fame
Bonafide hustler making my name

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bombs
Running when we hit 'em
Lethal poison through their system

No one on the corner has swag like us
Hit me on my banner prepaid wireless
We pack and deliver like UPS trucks
A radio in hell just pumping that gas

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

M.I.A.
Third world democracy
Yeah, I got more records than the K.G.B.
So, uh, no funny business

Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go
Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go                     

 

 

Soupchain

It's not always hard - it is always different

The Complete Greek Tragedies

I said earlier that the only criterion of an act is its elegance.  I am not contradicting myself in asserting my choice of betrayal.  Betrayal may be a handsome, elegant gesture, compounded of nervous force and grace.  I definitely reject the notion of nobility which favors a harmonious form and ignores a more hidden, almost invisible beauty, a beauty which would have to be revealed elsewhere than in objectionable acts and things.  No one will misunderstand me if I write: "Betrayal is beautiful," or will be so cowardly as to think - to pretend to think - that I am talking about cases in which it is necessary and noble, when it makes for the realization of Good.  I was talking of low betrayal.  The kind that cannot be justified by any heroic excuse.  The sneaky, cringing kind, elicited by the least noble of sentiments: envy, hatred (though a certain ethic dares class hatred among the noble sentiments), greed.  It is enough that the betrayer be aware of her betrayal, that she will it, that she be able to break the bonds of love uniting her with humankind.  Indispensable for achieving beauty: love.  And cruelty shattering that love.

Before entering Murcia I crossed the palm grove of Elche, and I was already so spontaneously excited by nature that my relations with people were beginning to be those which usually exist between people and things.  I reached Alicante at night.  I had to sleep in a work-yard.  However I did not wander along the roads at random.  My path was that of all beggars and , like them, I was to know Gibraltar.  At night, the erotic mass of the rock, filled, thronged, with soldiers and sleeping cannons, drove me wild.

"You feel yourself living."

During the day, my body is exposed.  I know that it is sparkling with all of my gestures.  The world is attentive to all my movements, if it wants me to trip up.  I shall pay dearly for a mistake, but if there is a mistake and I catch it in time, it seems to me that there will be joy in my Father's dwelling.  Or, I fall, and there is woe upon woe and then prison.   If, going through the virgin forest, you come upon a place guarded by ancient tribes, you will either be killed by them or be saved.  It is by a long, long road that I choose to go back to the primitive life. 

The beauty of a moral act depends on the beauty of its expression.  To say that it is beautiful is to decide that it will be so.  It remains to be proven so.  This is the task of images, that is, of the correspondences with the splendors of the physical world.  The act is beautiful if it provokes, and in our throat reveals, song.

Now I will watch Rose Haladon, eat buttered toast and drink earl grey tea, while the rain the rain the rain rains over and down the knotted melting fences and the cat-nest tree.

Alithea Vox!

All this time, I've changed my name.  The coffin with three handles and three emissaries, I buried it.  The undead body inside, I bury it.  These choices, in coming into the birthing mothering of myself and my work and my city, the choice to be honest, to ask forgiveness, to forgive, to let go - I let go of the mother-load.  I let go of narcissists, I let go of the dynamic of dependence, I let go of needing to learn what it is to not be hit, I let go.   And I find a bag of jewels, a bounty of fresh root vegetables, jars filled with feathers, hot tea, and contentment lying in the grass.  No, I don't want a home, but I do, I don't go back, I go forward.  The song of truth, it's a dumb one but I know it, I am the singer the crow, it's not difficult but it's obscure and mysterious.  You can't act like a queen - you're not a queen.  You can't lie about me, you don't forget even though you say you do.  I was a slave too.  I loved you but it gave me the flu, pretending like I believed your hubris, your exhausting dramas, your selfish manipulations.  My poetry is strong, my voice is uncanny, I love everything about this time - the time of values and action - the time of economics, true independence, and stones.  The jasmine covers my house in the morning; the heart opens up for more.

Saltines

How many can you eat without taking a drink of water?

Truth Be Told

Will You Watch My Water?

There was a time
once I was a young lass, as
restless as now, as ever
laying my tongue upon
frozen fences, hiding in tall grass from the dog
Uncle Ron and Uncle Nick took Jamie out hunting
I remember the cold cement of the driveway at dawn, watching
them pull away
in their Chevrolet trucks. There was a time
I didn't put my faith in visible things
The faith I feel is real, New Orleans.

All The People Collected In This Garden

1. And coming to the garden, I went
and encouraged you, the entrance
a corsage of yellow tulle -
I imagined 2 doors opening to
an amber necklace, a thousand truffles,
the cellar, embroidered pillowcases -

I accepted silk stockings of a delicate rose color,
faded ribbons, 2 mother-of-pearl fans,
a skull carved in plaster,
bacon and eggs -

I believed in the heavenly spirit of the verdure
perpindicular horizons
a horizon of c'etant bien lu, ce fou, cet
insensé, sublime illusions that impeded
your thoughts -

And if this not be a god
at least it's a daemon
climbing the skies again.

2. Sometimes I rise at daybreak
escape from the inconstant loves
to recount my first loves and sorrows,
the Elahim, the intellectual curiosity,
delusions of grandeur -
Because I like the old songs
in the garden, at night, you came to me
tremblant e'branlait l'univers in green eyes
in bluish hills
and the lush stillness of this setting
this commencement of a cure.

3. We read a little poetry
and filled with the excruciating agony of the
unknown world, said goodbye
and goodbye (the ordeal you have undergone is
coming to an end)
goodbye (dreams which follow the one I have
just described).

I buried a pigeon in the mulch used to landscape around the tiny crepe myrtles of the Winn Dixie parking lot, it'd just been killed, lying spread-eagle, breast up. I stared at its exposed innards; I took a wing feather from its open dead wing, smeared with a bit of its blood. I put my fingers to my lips, crossed myself, apologized for humanity ("Who kills a pigeon?"), and haven't been the same since. Let me write of my life now, now.

I eat rarely, work hard, find photographs, dance, kiss, laugh, confide in my friends, my new friends, my real friends who last, buy beautiful things for my beautiful store to sell to my people so they can be more than provincial and get over their fleur de lis accessories, smoke cigarettes sometimes, drink rum when I want to, drink sparkling water when I don't.

Tomorrow I move from Constance Street and Jennifer's where I not only --- --- ---- ---- ----, at separate times, but survived my car stolen, recovered, and the loss and recovery of my keys, the meaning of which my analyst, who sees no private patients anymore but me, says, "Now I don't want to get too symbolic about this. But if you want to we could say ...". Yes I am in analysis and everything is the better for it. I sleep like a baby when I sleep and I'm moving to the Bywater.

Which does unnerve me a bit, being as it is not 5 blocks from where Helen was murdered, not far from Eve fighting off an attempted rape, and so many guns, and so many angry young men. Be that as it may I trust my instinct that I am moving to a safe place, given its Adam's house being left to me, with its iron gate, off-street parking, workshop with tools, huge yard with mammoth plants, and its mythic invisibility/fierce protective forcefield, being that the house, set way way back, is covered in mirrors. My roommate will be Gregory Good, with our 2 bedrooms/2 bathrooms and wifi and bells and doves, trees and cats.

And the weather broke last night, it broke and its October and my birthday appears. I feel the season of it in my bones, I am a Fall girl its true, the seasons are real. I dreamt I was phgotographing multi-colored balloons in trees, carnival rides, Kodachrome things. I woke and opened the front door to look down upon Constance Street and there was the most lovely noble black and white pigeon in the sun, walking. A message of clemency, a message of peace. Now I think afternoon thoughts and give thanks for having been able to come this far. I remember all the innocent people who died here. Who loved this city. Who stayed and stay and stay, circling my shoulders like a silver-fox stole, noticing that I remember them.