Carrion birds spear flesh
Off dead in battlefield mud
Blood on my sword dried black
In white sunlight
And you, the precious treasure
Defended at all cost and sacrifice,
Have turned traitor at my back:

I have lived too long.
                        

Of N’Awlins

With its jazzy twilights and devilish dawns,
Purple green beads and lichen
Decorating any day of the drunken
Week, candles in windowsills
Beckoning along sidewalks
Cracked and upturned by
Ancient, twisted trees, the
Sentinels that know
Who really belongs to this swamp, its
Oppression of humidity breathing
Over tourists in placid, glistering midday while
Lazy lore-river licks passed revelers, their
Tinsel-surface sliding atop black hole
Wounds on display like the abandoned
Ninth Ward houses spray painted
With the number of those
Katrina killed in them – 
People like ghosts fingering trumpets 
In all the stage’s shadows.

I am parading you to your grave.
Do you hear the drums and shouting
And spilling of rum?