Post by MichaelFirewalker on Feb 12, 2008 18:07:04 GMT -5
* I am posting this one, written almost two years ago, not for critique, but in support of David's poem, The Sagging Flag...
______BEWARE THE SILENCE IN NEW ORLEANS______
New Orleans, September 4, 2006, after six days of silence, wonders why it took so long for the federal government to send help after Katrina’s devastation, which had occurred a week previous, on August 29, 2005.
This is a narrative poem,written on that Saturday, one week later,
September 4, 2005, and asking the question, “Why the silence?”
BEWARE THE SILENCE
a strangely loud silence
now terrifies more,
since last Saturday’s
screaming is over.
for after that unholy roar,
there’s come a political quiet.
it’s time for dread-dreaming
in eerie New Nevermore.
The Big Easy it used to be,
where unlike before,
sightseeing galore
now comes quite free.
though, sadly, you must
be willing to see
through broken down levees
and uprooted trees.
don’t seem too sane.
don’t peer into doorways,
or crushed window frames.
you’ll not wish to stay.
for this is a place
of rot and decay,
where joy’s left no trace
and the dead rule all ways.
they each wear one face
while their lost spirits play
on the streets of New Orleans
in the dark light of day.
oh, Mr. Emergency
Management manager,
your mom’s on the phone
from St. Bernard Rest Home.
and each day she calls you.
“are you coming, son?
is somebody coming?”
someway and somehow,
she always gets through.
you say in your fright,
“yeah, Momma,
somebody’s coming to get you.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Tuesday.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Wednesday.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Thursday.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Friday.”
but that little old lady
quietly drowned Friday night.
quiet is key.
silence must rule
political powers politically.
they are busy waging a war, you see.
and they are no fools.
they won’t be told what to do,
nor will they be swayed
from paramount goals
they’ve thoughtfully laid
to protect monstrous treasures
of liquid black gold.
they think of the pleasures
such plush wealth will buy.
they dream of high power,
then collectively sigh.
“we must remain silent.
we shall keep very still.
we’ll just watch all that violence
from here on “The Hill”.
up here whites are safe,
while just down over there,
poor, terrified blacks,
they loot and they kill.
they fall in exhaustion,
asleep in their filth,
diseased and delirious,
and oft deadly ill.”
New Orleans black mayor, Ray Nagin,
after steaming a week in wet hell,
says the actual number of dead
still is too great to tell.
we may finally know
a thousand who fell.
in funereal blood
they lie far below,
beneath this vast flood
filling History’s mouth,
and destroying so much
revered in the South.
all of this now
is recorded for sorrow,
to be held for sad children
born in tomorrow.
they are children like us,
born into chance,
into these streets
where spirits now dance,
while off the gulf coast,
you can see at a glance,
concern on the faces
of American sailors.
our sailors upon
USS Bataan,
know just how to tell
live right from dead wrong.
there’s a hospital on
that goodship Bataan,
with six hundred beds.
there’s fine goods in store.
and whose is the failure
that twelve hundred sailors
have not been asked
to help on the shore?
from the depths
of the woman’s
earnest compassion,
Bataan commander,
Captain Nora Tyson,
sincerely implores,
“Could we do more?
…here we are.”
and so it goes on,
while a palpable silence
lies over dark waters,
and stealthily covers the land.
up into the north
it spreads like a shroud,
where it excretely abides
inside Washington’s pride.
so beware of the voice of the silence,
the six days of silence too grand
to pierce through the fears,
or be heard by the ears
of the laboring citizen man.
flood waters soon will recede,
when there will be
nowhere to hide.
then what is now high
will assuredly try
to lie very low,
but there will be nowhere to go.
those one thousand voices of death
will rise up as one and cry,
shouting on borrowed breath,
“Not one of us should have died!”
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
News information, some quoted, some paraphrased on September 4, 2005, from “New Orleans Begins Counting Its Dead” by Robert Tanner, AP, and “Doctors, Beds, and Food Go Unused” by Stephen J. Hedges, Chicago Tribune
______BEWARE THE SILENCE IN NEW ORLEANS______
New Orleans, September 4, 2006, after six days of silence, wonders why it took so long for the federal government to send help after Katrina’s devastation, which had occurred a week previous, on August 29, 2005.
This is a narrative poem,written on that Saturday, one week later,
September 4, 2005, and asking the question, “Why the silence?”
BEWARE THE SILENCE
a strangely loud silence
now terrifies more,
since last Saturday’s
screaming is over.
for after that unholy roar,
there’s come a political quiet.
it’s time for dread-dreaming
in eerie New Nevermore.
The Big Easy it used to be,
where unlike before,
sightseeing galore
now comes quite free.
though, sadly, you must
be willing to see
through broken down levees
and uprooted trees.
don’t seem too sane.
don’t peer into doorways,
or crushed window frames.
you’ll not wish to stay.
for this is a place
of rot and decay,
where joy’s left no trace
and the dead rule all ways.
they each wear one face
while their lost spirits play
on the streets of New Orleans
in the dark light of day.
oh, Mr. Emergency
Management manager,
your mom’s on the phone
from St. Bernard Rest Home.
and each day she calls you.
“are you coming, son?
is somebody coming?”
someway and somehow,
she always gets through.
you say in your fright,
“yeah, Momma,
somebody’s coming to get you.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Tuesday.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Wednesday.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Thursday.
somebody’s coming to get you
on Friday.”
but that little old lady
quietly drowned Friday night.
quiet is key.
silence must rule
political powers politically.
they are busy waging a war, you see.
and they are no fools.
they won’t be told what to do,
nor will they be swayed
from paramount goals
they’ve thoughtfully laid
to protect monstrous treasures
of liquid black gold.
they think of the pleasures
such plush wealth will buy.
they dream of high power,
then collectively sigh.
“we must remain silent.
we shall keep very still.
we’ll just watch all that violence
from here on “The Hill”.
up here whites are safe,
while just down over there,
poor, terrified blacks,
they loot and they kill.
they fall in exhaustion,
asleep in their filth,
diseased and delirious,
and oft deadly ill.”
New Orleans black mayor, Ray Nagin,
after steaming a week in wet hell,
says the actual number of dead
still is too great to tell.
we may finally know
a thousand who fell.
in funereal blood
they lie far below,
beneath this vast flood
filling History’s mouth,
and destroying so much
revered in the South.
all of this now
is recorded for sorrow,
to be held for sad children
born in tomorrow.
they are children like us,
born into chance,
into these streets
where spirits now dance,
while off the gulf coast,
you can see at a glance,
concern on the faces
of American sailors.
our sailors upon
USS Bataan,
know just how to tell
live right from dead wrong.
there’s a hospital on
that goodship Bataan,
with six hundred beds.
there’s fine goods in store.
and whose is the failure
that twelve hundred sailors
have not been asked
to help on the shore?
from the depths
of the woman’s
earnest compassion,
Bataan commander,
Captain Nora Tyson,
sincerely implores,
“Could we do more?
…here we are.”
and so it goes on,
while a palpable silence
lies over dark waters,
and stealthily covers the land.
up into the north
it spreads like a shroud,
where it excretely abides
inside Washington’s pride.
so beware of the voice of the silence,
the six days of silence too grand
to pierce through the fears,
or be heard by the ears
of the laboring citizen man.
flood waters soon will recede,
when there will be
nowhere to hide.
then what is now high
will assuredly try
to lie very low,
but there will be nowhere to go.
those one thousand voices of death
will rise up as one and cry,
shouting on borrowed breath,
“Not one of us should have died!”
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
News information, some quoted, some paraphrased on September 4, 2005, from “New Orleans Begins Counting Its Dead” by Robert Tanner, AP, and “Doctors, Beds, and Food Go Unused” by Stephen J. Hedges, Chicago Tribune