Love Letters to New Orleans

Nola

I hear you easy in the morning
when your notes slip gold from your trumpet
and slide down the empty underbelly
of the interstate on-ramp,
floating fresh and clean and pure
above the dirty wet pavement

You are the grit beneath
my bitten fingernails
that I can’t ever scrub away,
while the homeless wilt beneath
that great big boiling sun,
under the unseeing glazed eyes
of dead men forever immortalized in stone,
the statues high above on sturdy columns

And it’s all so sad and beautiful,
just desolate enough to completely break my heart,
but enough shades of beauty
to keep me under this paperweight,
and you and I both know
that there are countless tiny reasons,
both beautiful and sad,
that hold me down, against my will,
but completely my own choice. 

-----

Crescent City

Have you ever had a love affair with this city?
So madly and deeply and painfully in love with this place
that you swear it must be a sin,
but when you walk into that big old echoing cathedral,
you find you’ve got nothing to confess

She’ll pin you down and smile into you with her curves,
that one big sweep of the river, and the little tug boats
will pull you up and away and down through
the muddy waters, and it’s not just that you can’t
fight the current— it’s that you don’t want to

She has her good days and her bad days but
most of all she has her ways, her mystery and
her charm and if you ever think of leaving her,
she’ll pass a plate of spices and something fried
under your nose, and you’ll sit back down

Have you ever had your heart broken by this city?
Have you ever been held back by the arms of
the oak trees, knocked over by the gently flapping
flags hanging from the wrought iron balconies,
tied down by the latitude and longitude of
the sleepy, easy way of life?

Have you ever begged for permission to leave her?
But once she hangs her heavy head and lets you go,
pulls a hurricane from within her depths to flush you out
and give you the excuse you need,
you realize you never wanted anything more
in your whole life than to love her back,
even if you find yourself drowning in that specialty of hers,
her all-consuming love

-----

Hope

we went back

they said don’t go, they said
there was no hope

there is always hope

but

nothing could prepare us
for the stench rising from the streets,
rotten food and spoiled meats
and dead dreams

nothing could prepare us
for the big dripping painted X’s
letting us know who was dead
and where they died

nothing could prepare us
for making the big sweeping turn,
our eyes starving for the sight
of the glittering city lights,
skyscrapers and festivities,
but nothing could prepare us
for the darkness, the emptiness,

nothing could prepare us for
the loneliness, the pain, the despair

but

there is always hope

30 Days of Poetry

I'm proudly joining Denise Hopkins in her 30 Days Challenge.  Denise began this type of challenge this past April, where she completed 30 paintings in 30 days, including blog posts that left me marveling.  This September, she invited others to join her in doing something for 30 straight days.

I waited until almost the last day to sign up.  You may notice from my last blog post that things involving the word "challenge" involve a great deal of thought from me.  So do things that involve doing something for an extended period of time, re my quitting the 100 Happy Days challenge.

But when I think about it, those instances may be more exception than rule for me.  I successfully completed my personal "One Good Thing a Day" for 365 days.  And my most treasured accomplishment: I successfully completed the full month of NaNoWriMo, where I wrote over 1,600 words a day for a month straight.  I didn't plan for that one, either.  I signed up to do it two days before it started, with no plot and no sense of direction.  Since November of 2012, those 50,000 words have turned into an entire novel that I'm in the middle of editing.

And yet, having been inspired by Denise's first go-round of 30 days of paintings, I attempted to do a month of poetry in May.  I survived 8 days of that before giving up, exhausted and frustrated.

Of course, I had no one to hold me accountable, and I had bound myself with a couple of rules for my poetry that left me feeling confined and uncreative.  This time, I told myself, I would just let go and write, the way I had done for NaNoWriMo.  But I still woke up today feeling nervous, and when I sat down before my notebook, I felt an odd sense of loneliness.  I knew I had the solidarity of the others doing this challenge with me, in their own unique styles and media, but I felt a bit helpless alone with my paper and pen.

I write, a lot.  But no one reads it, and when I do post it, I'm more or less anonymous.  People will (presumably) be reading my work for 30 straight days.  People I probably know.  Yikes.

But I'm committed.  I wasn't certain about how the sharing would go, since I never post an explanation or disclaimer of my writing.  Denise was the one who taught me that, about 5 years ago, and I've stuck pretty closely to that rule.  So how would I go about sharing my poetry via blog post?  Just put a poem up each day and leave it at that?  Seemed kind of boring.

So I'll be sharing the poem each day on the 30 Days blog, along with a scanned picture of the original version of it as I write it in my notebook.  But still no explanation.  I'd like my words to mean what they need to mean for each individual who reads them.

Sometimes I think I'm way too serious about this sort of stuff.  Enh.  I'm not even really sure what I'm looking to gain or get out of this endeavor.  I'm just trying not to be afraid of it.

See you at the end of September... and every day until then!