Looks like I'll be driving down to the Big Easy on Fri. I've been in touch with some Episcopal church relief people down there since Katrina.

Going to spend a week or so getting a building repaired/cleaned up, to house other volunteers in New Orleans. Should be an adventure - maybe I'll come back with some pictures.

more floodwaters from July:

 2

  
 Gray clouds like a heavy wave across the sky.
 Washing over the last of the reddish-gold
 maple leaves.  Mysterious, water-logged
 Thanksgiving – quiet, solitary.  Aches

  
 it, perpetual.  Slowly.  Slow mist of soul –
 almost medieval, out the cool window.
 Distant sound of Flemish dancing, down-
 wind.  (Through the mirror's modest pulse.)

  
 (Blurring.  Astigmatism.)  The distance...
 in Louisiana... in a wide flat space,
 uttering joyous leaves...  it seeps
 like a woodland scent.  Standish?

  
 John?  Speaking for yourself?  Or maybe
 turpentine, or linseed oil?  Solitary
 Harry the Minnesota turkey rattles
 pardoned neck-whiskers a-beam

  
 the Presidential podium, today.  Today.
 Heavy roasting odor hangs in the quiet air
 of empty streets.  A green spar, or sprig
 in the lonely room of one gray doting

  
 solitaire, uttering a different scent
 (oak sap?  Sperm oil?).  Today, knave –
 in an old house in Paris, covered with vines.
 Taste and see, crumblette.  River-nets

  
 and trawlers – nascent Crescent.
 City.  Rio del Espiritu Santo.  Flows
 one Mardi Gras, 300 years ago – wolfs
 down your flood of tears – one tessera or

  
 tesseract.  One cataract.  One dome
 petrified, and buried in your muddy delta
 being born, borne upside-down – an addled
 ark, ancestral crossroad – mode

  
 of darkened prairie – storming sky
 gone black.  Pitch-black.  And winded.
 In your mother's living room – painted node
 of bent grass, purple air, skewed sticks

  
 of weathered telephone poles, still standing.
 Empty meeting of two roads – three –
 in the presence of the wind only – earth
 droning, murmuring – under a distended

  
 whining, whistling – call put through too late
 to nobody – bent vertical, invisible there
 in the frozen painting, at the vortex – ether
 calling – switchback – rattler's tale.

  
 Where the serpent curls in the headwaters.
 Where the alligator opens wide the gates
 of ivory, and all the mistaken messages – Tagus,
 Thames – Neva, Yangtse – the whole tawdry mess

  
 merges – emerges – spread and disappear...
 bobbing, soaking, sinking – papers, cigarettes,
 summer nightloads of confederate rags,
 money... toiletries and crockery-of-paradise,

  
 the whole production... handicraft, hand-painted...
 as though the scattered basketry of breezy
 implausibilities – mere silverfish zebra-
 script – tongued a J2 temperate

  
 perfected buoyancy – your oh and ah
 along a London flank – Finnish, complete
 and seaworthy – a curious token temple
 of adhesive animale compagnevole –

  
 the cup or crown of long-forsaken Baptistry.
 Longing through the serpentine meanderings
 to the spread-wide grand finale of a Mardi Gras
 out of Lenten snowfall, backward, forward – stippled

 
 beast, graven, to apple-pied, applied
 beatitude – Jonah to Joan in
 an arc or surge of stone-dislodged
 desire, afloat now, Archimedean –

 
 you reckon, Huck?  – you see-saw, Jim?
 Acrest to the brim of your Shakespearean
 deluge-dodged mad-hatter's reaper's
 close-shaved bardic midget's

  
 gunnelled whaler's rim-rhymed absoluted
 Absalom, my boy!  And they whispered
 under the hanging moss, among the wide-spaced
 live-oaks, drifting with the curving tumbles

  
 of the banks, rafted and bound together,
 logging the current and the depth
 with little stones – their pithy thud
 sounding token icons, registers

  
 of greater gulfs – further up ahead, downstream.
 Mica and aluminum, pings in the soil –
 bubbles in the level.  Gneiss loss -
 binoculars (measuring a missing distance).

  
 Just the words, the symbols, the shapes themselves,
 shadowy inscrutable and serene, against
 that turgid background of a... bloody
 mischancing of human affairs.  Vikings and

  
 Dallas Cowboys...  Lincoln saw ahead,
 LaFarge, Degas (fils de New Orleans) –
 beyond the blue-gray looming snarl:  blagodar-
 nost (mingling with blood and oil).  Anointed

  
 stonemason geysers from the throat
 with nadezhda – all across black
 44.  Odessa jail – pale in a cab
 in Brooklyn - theater of troth

 
 bonded with a bondsman's muscled arm:
 yea, though I walk through the valley of death
 – psalm, solemn love-bubble, thread
 of overflowing burst from Roman

  
 candle's bronzen breast-coccoon:  another
 fluttering monarch of my soul (meek
 Indian summer colors – merged akme –
 Sumerian marks and crane bone theremin).

  
 Oswald fingered a Cuban .44, scrawled
 limply, languorous.  Sport of nature (sick, ef-
 feminate f.m.c., flushed under a doctored kiss).
 Democracy (grand seeming, scheming:  reckless

  
 gamblers:  emboldened lambs).  In Creole
 haunts, headwaters mingle with the ghosts
 borne slowly (through a muddy All Souls'
 mist) into the gulf... one live-oak leaf.


      
                              11.25.99 (Thanksgiving)

some more old hurricane music from Grassblade Light:

 1


 
 Limping, climbing like a Lazarus
 from the well of amor, you wave goodby.
 Stigmatized and astigmatic, she.
 Passing beyond alarums, carnivals

  
 in the distance, Mardi Gras
 in the bent mirror, marvelous,
 far-off now, larmes
 des choses...

  
 your worn shoes.
 Hand waves.
 Left-over
 leaves.

  
 A valentine arrives from prison:
 a feather; a blue iris
 enveloped in glass;
 a tiny lead pellet.  Anon.

  
 The thickness of the lens slows light:
 ask Lena how it's done, Einstein.
 Absolute zero, swimming, sun.
 Blackstone here – was all for nought.

  
 Like an arrow like a grain of sand
 through your heart, you carry it
 and live (livid, limpid, lit,
 littoral, ghost).  Like a wave

  
 in your hand, the eye turns inward,
 a wave diving into itself; and a gnomon
 recedes toward noon, toward
 everyone.  You keep your word.


    
                 *


  
 Astigmatism of a reading Mary
 reddening, in green – a Magdalen's
 uncontrollable waving, here anointing
 knighthood's sword herself-to-be.

  
 A black twig shaken by the early wind.
 You hear the sound rustling
 in the tumbling sky-tumulus
 to come a two-man canoe wounded

  
 in the womb tum-tum she comes
 – so you heft her like a harlot's
 chaplet of quintuplets' fifty-
 two year-old foals – flagrant sums,

  
 fulgent, horsing across Mongolia
 – down tomorrow's lanes.
 Only thin lines –
 until angels in a J cry gloria.

  
 Toward noon in Miami –
 when eye, reflection, shadow
 merge in heisted iceberg.  Slow
 light - seeping, sleeping.  We.

  
 Solid, airy teatime, Alice!
 Parallelogrammar's cookies two-
 in-wonder!  I – whew!
 Mad – limey – delicious!

  
 Think you?  Yes!
 Thanks be!  And here's More
 come from an alcove to borrow
 your precipice – this time on ice –


    
                 *


  
 Her eye can wave good boy in fingerpoint
 so straighten up, Sun of No One, soon –
 her father's very weathery (monsoon
 ready or not).  Ash-wedded Lent

  
 was Poe – spent like a moth
 rolling murky balls in Baltimore.
 His silver adversary swore
 to ratify his vein, his troth, forsooth –

  
 of the elect, and ineluctable.  Inedible,
 for money.  Mammy's eyes he was.
 Iced blue.  J-crosted, crust-fried
 satin western chicken butt, indelible.

  
 A pencil on an island
 in the shade.
 Well-mud –
 crucified, battered, solid

  
 sand.  Spidered through a skull
 of mouldered glass – your
 basement story – sour, sure –
 ours, bare.  Pulled off the hull.

  
 A blarnicle.  By friction.
 Heavy work of art, held high
 by doom – by mordant glue.
 Mortal dew.  Suction

  
 cup of tiny tears, for hours and hours
 dropping slow – less balm than woe.
 That's gravity for you!  That gravity for you.
 That grave.  That you.  Yours.  Her.


    
                 *


  
 There's a Mardi Gras in the distance, Maggie –
 let's go.  Wave goodby now, honeychile.
 Goodby now, land.  Goodby, lamb.  Girl,
 I'm empty-handed now.  Goodby.

  
 A grain of sand in your throat
 or dregs in the tea, some crumbs –
 and you come up for air all thumbs
 and stuttering - a heavy Joseph coat

  
 over your shoulders – sopping wet.
 Doubled-over, the bend's heartburn
 stings your eyes – mustard bean
 pole-vaulted chicken crutch-in-a-net or

  
 weightlifting waiter-for-life –
 how can I explain
 a level plain?
 Noon light – a cautious knife's

  
 blackout.  Ore, blue, rampant, lion
 down – moniker black, milk
 Levite sky, with Moloch,
 kneaded, whining – warped, in chain –

  
 or Bluejay (fletched at cardinal point).
 He shakes his head – yells –
 seven heavens, seventeen hells
 debouch – with camel, embonpoint.

  
 Benighted with stars and stripped
 for tussles with an angel, he –
 he pencils in – see?
 See!  Another dantesque Danish whip.


       
                                      2.18.99

I wrote much about N'Orleans back then (more from Grassblade Light):

 9


  
 Into the double-blind sea-swell
 of Venetian loam.  Hand-
 moving, in the clay – behind
 the stern wake, stunned, indivisible.

  
 Nine day's journey, Alma –
 out of the land of ye men, into
 a marryless land.  Through
 firewater, an anthole

  
 gauntlet lambada-limbo crouch
 (way backward) – a nine-
 moon labor pang.  Sign
 here, sailor, if you want to join – ouch!

  
 The pen tightens – doubles you
 up in one humus humvee – while
 you emulate a taut-unison chorale
 ascending in five-moth double Eu-

  
 bie Blake entwinements of the keys
 to a greenhouse kiss in a hexagon...
 where petals drift like snow – sun-
 dappled dogwood chariots, magnolias...

  
 magnanimous.  In May.
 And married like a jeweled bumblebee
 to their drifting, flowery labor, you will be
 saying Nein to the cyclopean neighing

  
 nay-saying Goliaths in your path,
 and Ja like J. of Ark did come one July,
 and rose steely, more than 0, tall Michael's
 scrimshaw – lifted on a lion's back (sans wrath).


      
                             5.16.99
 
 10


  
 So into a black milk-weave of blindness
 the light of a steady moth star steers you,
 ruddy penny – toward your amygdaloid's eye-
 opener errand road – your high so-phoenixness

  
 crying, I think icon, I think icon... – so fly,
 Sophie, benign little boatie! – and say
 Noah to chilled rains, aswim idly
 up to their yes in idolatries!

  
 Water's clear now – all the way
 to Rorrim the Clown's harbor
 borealis, and yon lil blue engineer
 that could climb the mountain.  Hey

  
 ey yo, Santa Griot – egg of Rio, G-dis-
 railer of the dragon – yo, milky, dizzy
 danglo-dangler – he done diz it, see?
 In yon marbled-arbor – muh herb, a Iz-

  
 reel... caa, caa, si?  Noah way, man!
 I stump ya yeti?  Caa-caa see Canonicus,
 son?  From diz angle?  Beak again!  Suss?
 Fly, lil snowflake – dew faster in sun!

  
 Ain't gonna herd you none, hear?
 Let him on go, Unc – red him his.
 For the load of the level church est
 right out of your chest, dovey dear –

  
 the ur-church worship – the chip-dip and
 swing-slippy can-do-U-can-you ca-new-new!
 Rainbowled over and rovered... a blue-
 red wing of humanbird-rainbearing El Atland!


      
                                5.16.99

 
 11
   i.m. Judge J.M. Wisdom

    
         "The criterion is the relevancy of color to a
         legitimate government purpose."
  
 America, the beautiful weaves of... grain
 upon grain.  In the eye of mountainous
 storms.  You, endebted dust.  Let's
 jam,  JM... ravin ravelin man.

  
 Made of Orleans jazz, yesterday –
 and tomorrow too, Bluejay - Ol'
 Man Wisdom – your birthday.
 Ol' brown muddy vacation, missus –

  
 weepy today – into the clay.
 Scythe cometh – while we blow
 these windy horns.  But you know,
 he done be beautiful.  That color-boy,

  
 he done it.  LA-forged rainbee affirmation.
 All-Franciscan cut-the-bull franchise.
 Out go the guardian ingenuous devices,
 the Donnelly-brooks – all the commotion

  
 of cantilevered cannot knots – he done it.
 Wisdom & Stone – that Jewish blood
 gone filtered through the 'hood.
 Delta land.  The swamp.  To-wit,

  
 to-woo... – soul river, Bluejay says.
 Where Blackstone reddened the blue-
 stockaded labored lawbook – where you
 read, down to the rushing streaming clays.

  
 Where Bluejay goes, JD – into Jerusalem.
 Washed along down the Mississippi, all
 my integral calculus.  A circuit of fifths.  Will
 be for you – these minor chords, my hummin hymn.

      
                             5.16.99

from July :

 5

  
 A wash of evening colors the swerving crowds
 around the statue with its own Code Noir
 as, lifting three steeples out of its groin
 over the fracas, squat St. Louis works

  
 toward the sky.  Evening outward,
 spread flat past the levées, the river’s
 tongues flow swirling – a severance
 larger, wider than our herd can understand,

  
 soldered as it is behind its masks
 within a masque, like a quick-drying
 dying mudpie funneled through ridiculous
 morning - after tubes of – scams

  
 and slippery make-ups – repartee
 for fast departures – old recipes for
 sleep.  On the twenty-eighth of August
 at the hour of midnight   a latteen sail

  
 was visible   in the direction of Cat Island
 And Edna was awakening   or was it
 only a weakening?  The cords loosening
 into a catenary arc   one   (naked) isolato

  
 stares toward the Gulf beginning
 to dilate and to end within her own
 breast   heaving-ho now
 solitaire   (au secours!)   nigredo   Flood

  
 tears from inside   outwards
 to the white majestic peaks of a mirage
 Andes   her own melting   Jeremiah’s
 daughter-dryad   vaporizing into   drought

  
 (– these waters and these feral masks
 crowding the square, emerging to merge
 magnetized like iron – glimmering germ
 of bronze ribcage – Julius the Czar).


 
 Whose woods these are I think I know   where
 an outline sags into swamp   into the Nile
 a vernal undertaking or   snaking line
 of some royal blue J’s funeral   Erewhwhwhw...

  
 My little horse must think it queer   the shakes
 of harness bells undersea or   under the skin
 outline gone   a coracle of hardened mud and ink
 drifts or   swims upside-down   flesh succotash

  
 Cawtantowwit   Coatlicue   the way an eye
 swims in Bluejay’s hand like a   Natchez
 match for a   Red Clay bridle’s channel
 of   loose rains   swims   your way

  
 The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
 Snow now soon for sure   on the rooftops
 of Florence and the Negus peaks of
 Ethiopia   upstream, down   perpendicular

  
 like a grid or crossroad   And miles to go
 into a Danish interior, Edna   of melted wax
 and a half-ring   carnelian   of cat paternity
 (missing the rest of the tale, O   Solomon)

  
 before I sleep   and the drugged blood
 dissipates with age and complacent cork
 bobs   wine-spilled   Queen to Rook
 my flesh will stand before you   double-

  
 You   O Thou Hand   of bubbled light
 (through the depth-charge of the Gulf’s
 ink Sanskrit and   Rosetta-Stone   glyph)
 because   this mud-cap is   one reddish tile

  
 atop   that kingdom’s Dome (aerie
 of kingdom come)   between the
 woods and frozen lake   The
 darkest evening of the year.

         
 Erupts   a droning man or   infant   burning
 between truth and desire forever   and
 must stand by his word (revolving
 referee with   heavy revolver   like a nub

  
 weighted with lead   through the hole
 in the candyman’s lifesaver)   coffin drop
 for the throat of muddy earth   poured
 out upon the ground   red-wreathd   Lo

  
 the millennial Moi   of gypsy water
 (tumbleweed-spine node) doubling over
 You   wracked   reverberating
 telegraphic Thou –   Tereuuuu...

  
 as Hamlet reverses course O prodigal
 homing   binding the ring to the promise
 and the arm to the sword as   Ophelia
 droops   into the flowery dewlap

  
 of that Minotaur of starry   tarry   Nay,
 tarry   water   (O   Nevermore
 velocity   beneath the sea   your venerable
 remorse   my son, my   rat-bitten son)

  
 And only the eye swims in the muddy
 coracle of your hand, messy messenger.
 Bluejay, funereal, crowing.  Seminal
 guardian of the drownèd doomed.

  
 Our W hand   lifted in blessing and   savage
 saving.  Listening Crane twitched his long-
 necked crown   toward the scree   (a lone
 emissary note   his own wing-bone gave).

  
 Circles   swims over the parallactic
 tables   the spirals graven
 in his brain (wake of one vagrant
 blood-vessel’s burst   moonship calipers).

         
 Thus   the featherweighted   drunken coracle
 rimmed around the rooftop   with an arc
 of sloping copper   (burnished barge
 or burning car of king’s   collected bones within)

  
 slipped out   into a Gulf
 of merging clays and
 colored sands.
 One fibrillated leaf

  
 of green Ophelia   Coatlicue
 asleep   upon her coat of faded blue.
 One penny in the deep.  One lobe
 of an ear   of Natchez corn

  
 one bee one   W   into   Y (our)  G
 Ophelia  your shapely   L    O     U
 splintered spar    O        U    R     L 
 hove-to  O   U  curling   J  (B2)   F...


      
                                        12.3.99