Before the murky waters came
Life was different
Maw-Maw’s red-bricked house sat at the back of our dead-end road
The ever-welcoming glass door with the
Faulty hitch opened up to a two-step stair
Leading down into a living room
Encompassed with the smell of
Cajun cooking
And basked in the essence
Of Family

After the murky waters came
Life looked different
I remember the water whirl pooling into the tops of my
rain boots
As I trudged next door to my aunt’s water-lined house
To comfort Maw-Maw, who lost everything
Her tears falling into the stench-infested puddles at her feet
And jumping right back up in a splash as if they too
Were hurrying to find shelter

The heat of the sun held the
Stench of the monster
That had us all in its grip
Patches of brown grass mocked us
Where the water had decided to leave early
And accumulate somewhere else

Piles of our lives lined the driveways
Mildew fogged up the windows of
Miscellaneous cars and trucks
Which still held secrets that the murky waters left inside
What could be salvaged
What remnants were left
From before
The murky waters came

Floors were ripped up
Walls gutted out
Bricks broke easily under the weight
Of demolition
Our hearts broke easily under the weight
Of the water

I once watched a documentary about horror
Which was described as something that simply should not be
but somehow
is
Horror was the bulging, black molded bar in my kitchen
The scattered furniture in my living room
The stench that took over my senses at the opening of a door to go inside or outside; fresh air forgotten
The fact that my bedroom looked normal in spite of the soggy carpet and the
Drooping painting hanging on my wall,
Clothes strewn across my bed in an effort
To survive

After the murky waters left
Life was different
Life became “before the flood” and “after the flood”
“Hey, how are you,” became “have you heard from FEMA?”
“What are you up to” became “are y’all raising or demolishing?”
Three mountains of bricks down my road became
Trailers on pedestals
The trash, our former possessions, was eventually gone
New replaced the old

Now
life is life
We are thankful for what we have
We still sit on that wooden swing in the shade of the afternoon
And we reminisce of a time before the murky waters came
All the while appreciating the
Now

And we still laugh together
We still cry together
Up in that storm-safe trailer
At the back of our dead-end road
Gumbo is cooking on the stove
And we’re basking warmly in the essence
Of Family

Smiling, you bless every day,
A regular Louis I might say.
A jazz musician with a giant heart ,
Letting all who come take part.

Join the music! Jump in the sway!
Hear that jazz musiscian play.
Hit the notes by the lamplight friend,
Until with the night our revel ends.

This land still sings your silent song
I chased it West under suspension bridges
In the empty whiskey bottles along Mississippi railroad tracks
In the sound of sugar sweet air in blue humid mornings
and the cool breath of absinthe sipped by the riverside
flanked by banana leaves.
Heard it in the breeze of swamp-side Cyprus trees, over swaying docks to rod iron French Quarter balconies, above the Bourbon street children drumming hymns of the Bayou's soul.

Ain't no woman for me, no, no,
'Cept the Lady Annabelle.
I'm gonna tell the story,
'Bout how she put me through hell.

I said to my Lady,
"You can have whatever you claim."
She took her box to the Northern fields;
She filled her box with the sugar cane.

I said, "Why'd ja have to break my heart?
Why'd ja have to break my heart?"

Aint't no kind of feeling
Like when your heart is in some pain.
And it don't help at all to know
She filled her box with the sugar cane.

I said, "Why'd ja have to break my heart?
Why'd ja have to break my heart?"

There is a girl called Southern Ugly,
She often faces the mirror- Believing
that the reflection must be oneself.

But a woman’s essence
Lives in the light, not in our eyes.
Mother Mary, dressed in blue-

Your daughter sees her face, knowing
That she is not first to be saved for Heaven.
We come second to God

(Though Man did not refuse the apple).
Mother said, “You are a southern belle,
Just baptized in the bayou.

****** in the water,
The depths of the swamp do not foster
Power nor Fortune

But your birth, the prayer of the Moon.
And like a cypress knee
That has not yet broken the surface,

You’re hidden in wisdom unknown."

Nature, too, is self-consuming.
Even the grandest oak
of all southern Louisiana
will be uprooted in a hurricane.
The moss that grazes the water
with gentle finger tips
from those weary branches
will be swallowed by the water.
An old man's life spent in Houma
is reflected in the river currents;
his house built on stilts
across from the cemetery
where is wife is buried
next to her eldest son.
It meets the Mississippi
not surrendering,
returning

Tiny ankles hang down from a wooden bridge over the bayou-
and my friend and I stare at the black water
and point at all the furniture legs jetting out of the blackness
as if they were Cyprus knees—
and he says to me  “Someone said there’s at least a hundred bodies in there”
and without hesitation or a moment of silence
for the uncertain yet forgotten Dead
I say, “Bodies float, so we would see them if that were true”
and he replied,  after a brief moment of thought,
“Maybe they’re tied to all the couches or stuffed in the refrigerators”  
and I couldn’t believe how many house hold appliances
have been repurposed to host all these passed souls
in the bowels of the swamp
and with a swing of my leg, too swift—
my left shoe dropped  and hovered on the water
where lily pads should have been

It's 10 pm and the heat just hit me
The AC is off but I couldn't be more happy
Touched my first palm tree and dipped my hand in the toilet
Grabbed a cab to the city, on the seat there was a death threat
For breakfast we had Bananas foster, po'boys and hash brown
When Amanda power walked I had to tell her to slow down
By the Mississipi river I drank a peach daquiri
The waitress wanted more tips and across the streets she chased me
Strippers gave me the finger, ****** begged for ******
We were stuck in traffic cause of the constant flash floods
In a Camaro and a Werewolf to creep with vampires and slaves
Talking about plantations by the old family graves
And you were so beautiful under that big oak tree
Even more in the rain outside that locked cemetery
On Bourbon street the homeboys were asking for hugs
And I gave away all my coins to some thugs
We ate jambalaya and fried green tomatoes
The ladies were halfnaked but no one called them hoes
In a blacksmith shop with no electricity
We drank Morgan and got wasted with some other swedes
Wherever we went we felt the smell of ****
From every balcony people were throwing beads
All the ***** sounds were drowned out by the air condition
On the floor Hoyt from True Blood was changing positions
Then Chris slept like a baby when the cockroach sang him lullabies
For some reason it made more sense than "bridge may ice"

Down in the bayou where the mangroves grow
There's talk of black voodoo, like Marie Leveau
The Swamp Witch, is legend, she has magic so black
That those who have seen her, have never come back
There;s tales of the noises that come from the dark
Of werewolves and zombies as rough as the bark
The mangroves are sentinels, to where the magic resides
Where even a longboat has no room to glide
Bodies go missing from the graveyards most nights
And there's always a fog shading the fireflies lights
The Swamp Witch is ruler and Queen of this world
Where souls are all taken and spines can be curled
They say that she came here from Canadian lands
She was a metis they say, from the Western Tar Sands
A mystic by nature, a dark witch by blood
She lives deep in the swamp, protected by gators and mud
The gators respect her, they do as she bids
They keep watch on the waters, they're her reptillian kids
She keeps zombies as gendarmes, collecting bodies to turn
Just how black is her magic, no one can discern
The Swamp Witch is legend, she is as old as all time
The air in the bayou is as thick as the slime
The cajuns say voodoo is the core of her heart
They avoid fishing where the mangrove trees start
The Swamp Witch, a legend ? or is she truly the Queen
She's the Louisiana Witch, no one survives once she's seen.....

It's 10 pm and the heat just hit me
The AC is off but I couldn't be more happy
Touched my first palm tree and dipped my hand in the toilet
Grabbed a cab to the city, on the seat there was a death threat
For breakfast we had Bananas foster, po'boys and hash brown
When Amanda power walked I had to tell her to slow down
By the Mississipi river I drank a peach daquiri
The waitress wanted more tips and across the streets she chased me
Strippers gave me the finger, ****** begged for ******
We were stuck in traffic cause of the constant flash floods
In a Camaro and a Werewolf to creep with vampires and slaves
Talking about plantations by the old family graves
And you were so beautiful under that big oak tree
Even more in the rain outside that locked cemetery
On Bourbon street the homeboys were asking for hugs
And I gave away all my coins to some thugs
We ate jambalaya and fried green tomatoes
The ladies were halfnaked but no one called them hoes
In a blacksmith shop with no electricity
We drank Morgan and got wasted with some other swedes
Wherever we went we felt the smell of ****
From every balcony people were throwing beads
All the ***** sounds were drowned out by the air condition
On the floor Hoyt from True Blood was changing positions
Then Chris slept like a baby when the cockroach sang him lullabies
For some reason it made more sense than "bridge may ice"