A ridiculous frilly blouse of anemic salmon, of transparent dacron sashimi, with truly titanic mouth attached above, booming pontificated that,

“As a Degreed Linguist and teacher from New York, I declare New Orleans ‘Hopeless.’  This people’s speech is atrocious!  Is not even English!  Is rife with mismatched modifiers and made-up words; is a rotting melange of slipshod conjunctions and subject.verb deathmatches and wretched, illiterate mispronounciations; it is completely unintelligible, to the point of utter gibberish.”

And a number of things raced ears, eyes, nearly mouth in me: 

(this:)  Hey, I wonder if she can feel the twenty.odd bleary eyes’ glaring her stiff spine;

(and:)  She sounds kinda uncomfortable, sorta strident.

…Or maybe just pompous, terrified, and out of her depth.

(and, and:)  And, really, I’d love to know

how the hell this froofy bitch got a degree in linguistics without

grasping the most basic assumptions and principles of,

y’know,

linguistics?

(and:)  That’s so funny:  she thinks New Orleans is part of the U.S.

Where’s she been the last few hundred years?

New Orleans (and southern Louisiana, in general) does have its own languages.  Yeah, plural.  Languages.  In this teeniny little wetland.  Its got its own code.  Its own Cajun, Napoleonic, and Plantation Society French; its Yat; its Louisiana Creole (tongues sticky with rooted Spanish, Native American, West African, and French); its Isleño and Brule Spanish; its urban rich white and tan, poor black and poor white.  I cannot think of another place in this country that can boast such a rich tureen of language in which to dip one’s linguistic ladle.  A Creole gentleman explained to me, “We know howta read.  We understand how things are sposed to be pronounced.  But we got our own waya sayin things, and we don’t care what anybody thinks about that.  It’s our own thing.  Nobody in the world talks like folks from New Orleans.”

What a beautiful, enviable thing.

Silly bitch got no idea what she’s missin.

(salvaged from august 2008)

absolutely anything

in the Lavender Hour

before dawn.

i consider his mistresses

:::liquid ladies of purple

velvet

and lime green chiffon:::

and i wonder,

can they love him better than i do?

or just more dependably?

habitually.

:::::

and i remind myself not to be resentful because

it’s always like this:

if a man does not have a mistress

:::no booze, no brush, no microphone,

no camera, cocaine, or video game:::

if he has no ephemeral other that sustains his ego as surely

as it destroys his soul,

then he will/must eventually feed his ego with the soul of another.

:::::

without a mistress,

a man will destroy me,

will need to eat that thing most precious to me,

will need to consume my sparkling madness

so that

he,

too

might shine.

:::::

it is the unnatural order of things.

:::::

once my heart is in his mouth,

he discovers i am human, like him

:::not so special,

predictably unfathomable:::

he spits my muscle to the gritted earth and moves on,

now that I am too tired

to weave for him

the web that lets him

feel

like

who he wants to be.

:::::

i have learned

i continue to learn

the mistress’ lesson.

:::::

i try not to envy her transparent finery.

“hey that’s not funny; i was in that shit.”
…the original agent orange, he meant.

swift zoomingout vertigo of perspective,
and i thoughtfully replied,

no.  of course it’s not funny.
tragedy and horror never are if you’ve ever actually experienced either.
which is why, if you look at the ‘merican entertainment industry,
it’s pretty fuckin easy to see that we, as a country, are generally a buncha spoiled little bitches with no context in which to paste our imagined empathy for other living things.

ain’t nobody gonna find such harmless, titillating humor in an indiehollywood psychothriller if you’ve lost a few family members or even a few nights’ sleep to a stalker or a murderer or a rapist.  lost to the real thing, the flesh and blood and blood and bloodbloodblood, all over your living room floor, where your favorite reading chair used to be.

a natural.disaster special.effects.extravaganza is nowhere near as surrealistically entertaining if you’ve physically watched the water or the lava or the mudslide comin toofast toofast toward your door, and tried to figure out, in crazysmall fractions of barkingmad seconds, how to save your children, your elderly parents, yourself, from sudden, certain death.

and i tell you what:  holiday pyrotechnic displays, the ooh and ahh fireworks, are nowhere near as impressive once you’ve got thickly visceral audial.visual.olfactory associations between those sounds and these limbless child.soldiers, these burning houses, these dusty burned blowedapart bodies of children and dogs and old men and women, with their living left.behinds screaming ululating sorrow to smoke.filled skies.

smell of too.much blood, fresh and sticky and drawing flies.
sound of unexpected mourning torn from the guts.
sight of insides on the outsides of a
moment.ago
whole,
living
friend.lover.mother.neighbor.

not much of anything but Time gonna get those things outta yhead.
and Time ain’t even that thorough.

if we ‘mericans can watch shoot.em.up, blow.it.up, take.no.prisoners, kill.all.terrorists movies without suffering  viciously undulating waves of nausea,
we should at least recognize this tiny phenomenon as a sure sign of the privileges of peace and detachment that we have madly, coldly, egregiously stolen from others in our frenzied grasp at empire.
woe to this country when its government’s grand defenses fall to their own swollen egos.
woe that we must eventually,
no doubt very quickly
learn what it is
these days
to be a citizen
of the Rest of the World.

you’ll see.
you’ll see how much this town is
just like me.
how oddly, perfectly suited.

how separated at birth.

i’ve read how new orleans survives on dreams,
how it steals the dreams of visitors and drinks them midnightly,
leaving same visitors feeling somehow drained
by more than just excess.
…
i have had the opposite experience.
i dream all the time now,
awake and asleep and in between,
and the dreams are pulpy and remembered and
holy,
somehow.

maybe it’s just me going crazy(er).
maybe it’s just that i am finally going sane.

either way,
it seems to suit me.

god sees & accounts for every living thing-

…every sparrow, every lily, every you know the story.

…..

fell half asleep & saw myself in my future garden.

hands & knees & dirt,

planting in riotous tumult a plot organized only in terms of

who gets along well with whom.

i pause digging planting to look up into full-leafed pecan tree.

kelly & blue beneath meowmeowing me to come play.

under the pecan, on my back, matching stretch for kitty stretch,

rolling grassly and tree.spotty sunlit,

we three are joined by a little goat, whose family naps nearby.

the kid dances rolls plays with us & then pops! his tiny hoof into my clavicle,

sharpbruising.

i “hey cut it out!” & shove him away.

he shakes his head, runs back, & butts me in the forehead,

angry to’ve been brushed off.

& i start to get angry cause that fuckin hurt! &

i sudden realize his goatish motivation, &

laughing like wellspring,

my heart light as quail chicks,

gather kidlet in my arms & squeezyhold him,

struggling stilling nuzzling, and say to him,

“silly thing!  i love you!

you don’t need to hurt me to get my attention.

i love you & am therefore always aware of you.

you are always in my sight.

your need.love.concern is always in my heart!”

…..

& i woke & thought

‘huh!’…

‘so, that’s what it feels like to be god.’

someone’s left their puppy outside for the night, and i can

hear his high pleading down the street.

but for the distant siren moan of train whistles and

the earlier.than.sanity birdsong,

i have the night,

the early morning,

to myself.

You strawberry blood and passionfruit viscera!
You clam cum and fiddlehead fur!
You root and tuber of my longing!
You great unknown, you stranger waiting to meet me,
You are the alarm in the meat of my legs, and I cannot ignore your clamor.

For whom do you wait?
For which golden opportunity do you hold your growling affection?

I am ready now.

The truffles beneath my tongue hold their must for you;
My fatted calves bawl for the long blade of your spine;
My catfish’s vibratile whiskers twitch to have you near.

I am waiting behind the kitchen door,
Am paused, armed with basket and knife,
Breathless and flushed,
Selfishly prepared to sever your connections to any other Earth but me.

You need not be so anxious;
There are no losers in this game of seed and suckle.
We are ourselves supper and succor,
Fruits of sacrificial groves,
Penultimate harvest of the long, cool nights of titillation.
We are neither of us complete without the other,
Like chili without citrus or honey without salt.

Curb and encourage me; I will do justice to you.
I will reveal to you your own succulence,
Your gustatory lechery and libidinous gluttony.

Come! Let us feast on one another!
Let us tuck into the sumptuous banquet in the court of our skin!

…

‘Beat’ was once a term for poverty, bein broke, as in ‘dead beat, man.’

Could it now also be for the beating of the heart?

…

Love is wisdom.

Personal is political.

The heart beats out a lyric rhythm, a living belle lettres,

living beat, breathing bebop,

a burnin I’m burnin I’m burnin for new,

for change,

for the unholy holysmoke of suburbia gone up in flames!

It’s a strip.mall luau, ladies and gentlemen,

a chance to bury ubiquity and cum on the face of conformity,

Hentai style!

Cause when your breath grabs hands with your heart.shaped beatbox,

when lungs match time with your sliver of the yuniverse,

with glass shards of splintering starlight,

with that glow in the solar plexus that feels like a chestburster,

a facehugger,

a palpitating beginning of end of beginning,

that is when knowledge starts to tango into wisdom!

When the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil shakes its leaves naked and shimmies up forbidden dances,

swayin branches in libidinous ecstasy and oh heavens,

oh heavens, when the trees start making out?

What then?