After the Flood: Ode t New Orleans

 

The Commodore condominiums on St. Charles, where I was staying,

Seemed an ideal place for prose, while streetcars roamed

And the marble fountain hissed a Lotus discontent,

And I,

To be Buddha the poet,

commencing a satyr like vision of the city

did not match how I knew

or always knew the place I use to call

Home. The city of…

 

Distance I believe did it for me.

Distance also brought me here and

The miles in my head drove me

To my Metairie hometown. I was still

Distant and Mute… and

Still mute for description,

But the muter I became

The louder the city waned

And Randy Newman’s prophetic album

Drew surreal recall to my days of bliss

And my teenage angst for the profane wish,

While my father listened to his antics

About the Kingfish and his promising politics.

 

Still withdrawn, New Orleans was only comfort

And I knew nothing outside the levee,

Which convinced me to go through

The gnat-infested air

And at least fish there,

Watch the levee pumps

Exhausting the Spillway’s dumps.

 

Later in my school days

I learned of longitudes, latitudes

And the Tropic of Cancer that beamed

the hot air that formed crystals on my head,

and I learned about peninsulas but I wasn’t

wise enough to synthesize this knowledge

I called my home as an Island onto myself,

 

I did not realize that I was the Island,

And the city was the seat of my imagination

That iterated ghostly glances of my childhood,   What is outside the levee?

                                           What is outside the levee, What is outsidethelevee?

 

It was too faint to hear

Because my heart tainted with fear

of typical school-day fun of busting up,

And sneaking out and pretending…

 

That’s what my friends were like,

Chuck was like Al-Alfa with the freckles,

Michael was a character from “Welcome Back Kotter”

And Brett, for his lack of height, made it up,

Pretending to be anybody… he was like Webster

With a temper, a rated R Dennis the menace.

 

It was easy to pretend,

To make friends

And the broken, neglected fence boards

And the easy passageways kept friends close.

 

But I don’t pretend anymore,

That is why its’ different, the city after the flood,

The vision of Newman, The flood of 1927,

And I don’t pretend anymore.

 

Now the city is a treasure map

Castled in photograph albums,

And now it has been glossed

With a new varnish from the gulf,

 

I in Lotus position

Pretending to write some remote idea about home,

Because Now I am remote and still pretending

That home, in its picturesque fashion

Is there in the Novel of my mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[The Rock And Roll Cowbo..]

How devastating it was to see a place rich in history practically wiped out because our government isn't prepared, worried about other things like what we do behind closed doors when what they do is ten time worse and then the heartbreak of all the lost lives... I was irritated when religious people said it was punishment for the stuff that takes place in New Orleans, I don't think God would do that. What a great poem in tribute to a city that always shined and one day will shine again.

[The Archangel Gabriel]

That's so sad. Where is the money to build a new levee so that this mess is not repeated? Iraq? We need bread and butter before bullets.

Long after Katrina, New Orleans is still a gaping wound in the side of America, passed up for the greater glory of the American empire. In 100 years, will that be the San Francisco fire about which people still talk?

I hope that America can fix your home soon.

-Gabe

[Chloe..Across the Unive..]

Lionel this makes me feel so so sad.. that your home is flooded . I love that City. Newmans song is so great..
This is just as BBS says, powerful it also gives some hint of you .. what colorful friends you had..
A wanderlust for what was outside the levee .. this reminds me a little of 'tear down the wall'...i always think of music when i read things... and this is not a thing it is to me a work of art.

Chloe
xoxo

[Blackbirdsong]

Wow....well clearly only someone who knows and loves New Orleans as you do could have written such a powerful poem about what life was like before and after the flood...you can't pretend anymore and that idea is so much what I have heard people from there say after everything that happened. So many repeatedly said that in Spike Lee's documentary about it and it's echoed here as well...the unreal feeling of reality you've so wonderfully written about here.