Miss you, New Orleans

"Wanna go back home, go back home, go back home...to my used-to-be." (From a song whose name I can't remember by the Neville Bros. on an amazing compilation called "Miss You, New Orleans" or is it "Love You, New Orleans"?)

Those words are a lot more poignant after seeing some of the remnants of Katrina that still remain on the streets of the greatest city in the United States. Oh my heart.

These people's pursuit of the American Dream ripped to shreds and thrown into the street, just lying there almost a YEAR after the disaster, as the next hurricane season looms over them, a possible repeat offender lurking in storm clouds. God DAMN this administration and the city and state governments (in an Old Testament, fire-and-brimstone sense) for what they've done to these people. Normal, average people who worked so hard to buy those houses, to turn them into homes, to put their lives into them. Now those homes are ghosted with those lives and you can only wonder what became of the dreamholders, the landholders who have become displaced people because nature turned its knuckles on them and their governments turned their eyes away. Where are they? Are they alive? What's left in their hearts? Do they burn stronger or have they burned out? Light to guide them. Please, light.


Then I came home to revise the haiku I'd written for Jolene and Bryan's wedding tomorrow. Here they are. Beauty and love do still thrive, regardless of the thrashing.


5 Haiku for Your Wedding

1.
Your hearts were gypsies,
looking for warm-lighted homes.
Your arms, open doors.

2.
Two: solid, treelike.
Your roots tangle to make shoes
that stain your bare feet.

3.
Hands clasped, you both leap
without fear into the light.
Blossoms pave your way.

4.
Lifelong seduction:
At home in each other's arms.
You have made a nest.

5.
Tequila, vodka.
Hot Brooklyn courtyard, summer:
Van Halen approves.