Vieux Carre' Reprise

[Berwick Bay]

[b]Still negative, if you will. But I just spent an hour or so, working on it, to add more imagery and poetic elements. I think its better now. Here goes.

[/Vieux Carre’

There’s a sadness here.
An emptiness
That can’t be spoken.
Very profound.
Whispered only
Within the family.
Not to company.
Underlying fear,
And now
Resignation.
Fear of the future,of nature,
Faith in the spirit
Finally lost.

The storm consumed
What was left,
Like a Cajun,
Sucking yellow fat
From the heads of crawfish.
Only the shell remains.
Like Canal Street.
Red brick buildings
Abandoned,
Buildings, like the city,
Sure to implode.
Arches and carved capitals
Over boarded up windows
Some having bright purple
And red lights,
Pasted over lower floors
As if over the nipples of
French Quarter strippers.
Over what was once beautiful,
Now a mockery
Of that time,
Beads, clown figurines,
And sex toys
To remember New Orleans.

That old Vieux Carre’,
Black wrought iron balconys
In an island confused.
In a painful dream
Ignorant and unable to accept
Her fate.
A weird mix of the forgotten young,
Forging a living
Amongst the homeless
And those outsiders who come,
Gawking
At the cadaver.
Sculpted stone fountains
In courtyards,
Strangely out of place now,
Bringing forth
A tonic of nostalgia
Laced
With the bitter dregs of
Decay and defeat.
Broken glass,
And windows that
Display dust and dirt,
A look into the clouded
Soul of the city.
Across the street
Fire escapes
Dangling broken and rusty
Going nowhere.
A city too, now with no escape
Simply awaits its destiny.
A bell of mourning,
Overlooking Andrew Jackson’s
Trail of tears,
Tolling from elegant spires
Of the St. Louis Cathedral.

She no longer speaks, this city,
Once flushed with Latin
Warmth and passion, now
Silent and cold,
Passing away
As surely as Babylon or Atlantis,
She has chosen that better part.

The storm has fulfilled its purpose,
Its intent.
Lifting a veil
And shining a light,
In dark places.
The decay and evil
Below the gaiety,
From the city’s bowels.
As if a stench from the sewers
Has been shouted from the housetops.
And what is left?
My child thy sins are forgiven!
But not first without confession,
An embracing of the sin.
And so I pray thee,
That thine death
May be quick and painless.
That city that care forgot
Now giving up the ghost,
Like a Mardi Gras without merriment,
Without purple green or gold,
Might pass swiftly from sight,
Swallowed up and returned
To brown rich river delta
And marsh.


Perhaps tomorrow,
We will lift our glasses
And raise a toast,
To what used to be.
To a people
Grounded in warm Mississippi mud,
To gumbo, and to Green Irish Beer.
But today I will not drink;
The illusion is gone
And can no longer be conjured
By gin or hurricanes from Pat O’ Brian’s,
Voodoo, churches, or graves.
See, the Natchez blows her whistle,
And on her deck a few tourists take pictures.
On her way now,
Floating downstream,
Never to return.




b]

[JonathanBelles]

I still cannot agree wit it for the reasons listed in the other thread.

[Beam]

More days go by and I begin to agree with this poem. We've grown so very arrogant. A major American city, decaying and lost. Impossible in the minds of so many, but true. It was going to happen one day. If not Katrina, then another storm. What sits down there now is an island; a vacation spot in the middle of a sprawling ruin, with the very ground it sits on slowly sinking into the Gulf.

There's no pessimism in those verses of his; only realism. New Orleans as we knew it was practially doomed from the beginning due to it's location. All you can do is be glad it was around in that form for as long as it was. Some things can't be fixed.

[Berwick Bay]

Rainydaze, I think you said it better than I! Here are your words,

What sits down there now is an island; a vacation spot in the middle of a sprawling ruin,

Sad, but true I'm afraid.

[Berwick Bay]

I'm sorry Beam, those were your words. Very well said, I think.