Bourbon Street

Her voice sounds

more whiskey-soaked

than lacquered

with daiquiris as it

floats out the doors

onto Bourbon Street.

Covering a forty-six

Year-old song by

The Pretenders:

Got brass in pocket

Got bottle, I’m gonna use it

Intention, I feel inventive

Gonna make you,

make you notice.

Yeah, how could I not?

Especially when you get

to the chorus that proclaims

I’m special, so special.

That’s a wry assertion

on Bourbon Street.

Where half the businesses

feature some kind of invocation

of voodoo. Voodoo chicken

and daiquiris, Free samples.

Jello shots, Voodoo pharmacy,

voodoo dispensary. Voodoo t-shirts.

I wonder, if they have

some kind of voodoo fix for

The blood thirsty, fist pumping

maniacs on Fox News?

Dolls and pins?

Beads are still hanging from

the wrought iron balconies,

the party lingers on long after

the embers of Fat Tuesday

have dwindled and cooled

into the ashes of Wednesday

And the night air is scented

with the vapors and spliffs

of spring break.

We know, we walk past

the posters and stickers

plastered with skulls,

the girls dressed in sparkly

micro minis and the bros

are already quite primed

for primo party time

In the French Quarter.

Another relic lyric from the sixties

blares from another doorway,

“Been a long time,

been a long time,

been a long lonely, lonely,

lonely, lonely, lonely time”

And now we are escorted

into a high ceilinged room 

with overhead fans and

white cotton table cloths.

Waiters in black suits and bow ties

filling goblets and answering

questions about menu selections

and wines or entrees with many

a Yes Ma’am or Yes Sir.

I want a Sazerac and oysters

if they have them raw

on the half shell.

Crab and crayfish, blackend

redfish, the traditional bounty

of the gulf and the delta.

Is that not what I should

ask for here? Perhaps not?

I haven’t forgotten the possibility

of immanent mortality that

drew us here in the first place.

We ride up St Charles Street,

under the wide oaks that cover

the street like an arbor.

Perhaps the same tunnel

that sheltered slavery’s whip

on naked black backs

and the fine horses hauling

carriages and ice wagons

In a time not yet lost

from memory and sorrow.

We bear that in mind

when we now pray, every day:

God, help us, to find our way,

to vanquish evil, in our hearts

and our actions, our consequences,

In this day, this hour, this moment.

Bourbon Street promises

a party, a time that you’ll

never forget or perhaps

never remember. It’s voodoo.

With beads and free drinks.

And songs that attempt

to resurrect yesterdays. 

What's in a name?

My phone says the dainty white

star-shaped flowers beside the path

are named Fremont’s Deathcamas.

The blue-flowered ones

are Pacific Hound’s Tongue.

“what's in a name?”

Oh much more than scent.

John C Fremont, the explorer

the so-called Pathfinder

has dozens of species named

after him, the avid collector

on his Western expeditions

in California, Nevada and Oregon.

Counties, cities, even mountains

are named after him and 

his frequent guide, Kit Carson.

Perhaps there should also be

some other locations named

after something else they collected,

murders and massacres. Like the

Sacramento River Massacre.

of close to a thousand people.

Participant Kit Carson later

called it “a perfect butchery”

Perhaps a monument to

the Klamath Lake Massacre,

or the Sutter Buttes Massacre.

The bright gleaming leaves

on the viridian underbrush

are fresh sprouting poison.

-oak. Like the golden

oak leafs that Army majors

wear on their collars. Until

they’re promoted to lieutenant

colonel. Then they go silver.

Like Colonel Korn, who was

assistant to Colonel Cathcart

in Catch-22. They decided

that only soldiers who

don’t ask questions

are allowed to ask questions.

You see a lot of interesting

forbs and sedges, shrubs

and flowers, on King Mountain.

And think about what's in a name.

Original Philz

In the plaza

stark with sun

and brushed aluminum,

she talks to him with hands and wiggles.

Cops loaded with gear, that old decor of guns,

and clubs and black uniforms lounge stroll

and strut real casual like. Armed authority.

They ignore the oung black men passing

 pliffs outside the World of Stereo shop.

it's white collar Wednesday at the strip club,

bring your own business card.

Payday loans are available

at United Nations plaza,

just across the street

from Tako Nako Java Xpress.

i'm listening to a song

played with hammers on steel

and banjos in a language i don't know

so why does it touch me like

the three penny opera songs do?

The scowling face of the BART train

accelerates from the light of the station

into the dark of the tunnel,

a mask becomes a pinpoint.

The barista at Philz on 24th Street is disgusted,

tells her colleague that she saw her boyfriend

with another woman in a on myspace.com

and still he lied until she said:

Dude, you were wearing the same outfit

you’re wearing right now.

I read in the paper this morning

that half a million unexploded cluster bomblets

are scattered all over Lebanon. The same kind

that are strewn all over Afghanistan?

The ones that look like toys or packaged meals?

Assorted Elvis Presley figurines strut

their Ed Sullivan or Las Vegas stuff

atop the ancient refrigerated cases in this cafe.

Paintings of rock stars on black velvet

and a sign in the window says:

learn to use art 4 justice.

i'm smitten by a painting of victorian mermaid

gazing over her shoulder while she pulls a comb

through her hair, a salmon tail wrapped round her ass.

I’m sinking into an ancient couch watching flies

go in and out the door,

Hieroglyphic overspray adorns the sidewalk

and you can eat tortilla-wrapped tongue and brains

at the little lighthouse taqueria on the corner where

a potato-bodied woman in a miniskirt and heels

ignores a muttering whiskered man who curses

and slams a newsrack stuffed with bannered words,

memorials to the numbered day of victimhood

and justification, -motherfuckers, they just......

A pair boots dangles overhead from a powerline

and a billboard asks: who is an outsider?