The city
Is touched by
Madness
The cracks in
The sidewalk
Filled with memories
and ghosts
Walk through the
night
Looking for home
–
This used to be
Swampland
She said
Teeming with muddy
Water
and the sediment
of centuries
A sacred place
Where the rains
Of the four corners
would mix
Bringing tidings
Of great things
In land
Far away
–
How do you mourn
That which
is no longer felt
no longer known
How do you remember
Something
that was never forgotten?
–
Now the land is
rotten
she said
Buried under layers
of oil and concrete
levees and canals
What once was a home
to many
Is now a barren place
Filled with the miasma
of self-hatred and
Willful neglect
–
How do you imagine
Something that is real
Manifest something
That can never be
Make love to something
That was never there?
–
The marrow of this place
She said
has been sucked dry
desicated remains litter
the ground
white shapes savagely
drain
Art Culture Experience
for their sustenance
trying to stave off
the Yawing jaws of emptiness
I must have more
They say
More More More
and their appetites are never
sated
–
Despite this
She said
We survive
In the cracks of
The sidewalk
Growing up out
of destruction
In the notes that leap
from the Jazz bands
Brass
In the homes
we rebuild and the seasons
we weather
–
We survive
She said
Because we must
There is no other option
the ancestors that we
Remember impel us
Forward
To claim what is ours
–
I see now
Where the road
Turns
and resistance exists
even if it is not
known