The gutterline across Lafitte’s is strung
with plastic banners for the Mardi Gras—
the colors of the King Cake, purple hung
by gold and green—the quintessential trois
couleurs. It’s bunting for the old parade
on Bourbon and St. Philip in the Quarter.
Tip the Pleasure Club for Social Aid,
we’re leaning into the shadow, bricks and mortar,
where on the jukebox, Richard Manuel
complains about the sorry shape he’s in.
That rumble in the alley. What the hell—
it’s save your neck or save your brother’s skin
and call a number for the second line.
Let’s say we resurrect Evangeline.
Gold (Roll and Walk)
I met some solid Catholics at St. Ray’s
on Friday morning. In from Washington
(the State), they drove me to a yellow shotgun
out in St. Bernard’s (the Parish). Days
and days (a year or three) of work and real prayer
got this palace studded-up for walls,
and so we screwed the gypsum down the halls—
your typical two-family with a wheelchair.
At lunch, a guy called Tom who didn’t talk
a lot began to juggle hammers, not
that he was any good. A nervous tic.
a little extra energy. It got
the neighborhood’s attention. Roll and walk,
your harder kids looked sideways at this trick.
Green (L’Enfer)
I lose the echo of accordion
amidst the vials of absinthe on the bar,
the spyboy calls and lamplight denouement… “Prepare yourself for Krewe Endymion!”
(or Continental Airlines in the morning)
…and focus on an antique silver bowl,
the cubes that burn, suspended, to the toll
of spoon on glass. Their bluish glow a warning,
now they flare and melt into a liquor
green, a scene insidiously steeped
in Degasesque demise. L’enfer, despair,
temptation. Like the wisp of flame that leaped
through blackness to the match at my cigar
expiring as I cross to Frenchman Square.
I felt a bit like Ravi Shankar at the Concert for Bangladesh today warming up for local guitar luminaries at a benefit for Haiti at Tasty Coco in Caldwell. This comes with a succinct definition of a “sestina”, which it happens to be.
Before Dick Cheney went away, I told her,
little boys and girls were fingerprinted,
photographed, required to pledge allegiance
to the flag and quizzed on history
at gunpoint in a room without their parents–
all to see how they would hold up under
torture and to gather data points
required to follow every move they made.
Of course I reassured her things have changed,
despite the uniforms and bullet-proof
enclosures for the customs officers
and soldiers and the yellow paperwork.
I told her not to worry when they called
her name. To just let Daddy do the talking.
The Raintown Review, Vol. 8, issue 2, is out with poetry by Mike Alexander, Rose Kelleher, Michael Cantor, Allen Tice, April Linder, and Jee Leong Koh (who impresses with a ghazal). My poem, Belem, about Lisbon, Portugal, is in there too.
The lovely upscale couples with their dogs
come dour and dressed for the apocalypse
on paths depicted in their travelogues.
This landing of the far-from-homeless slogs
across the square from alabaster ships.
The lovely upscale couples with their dogs
are not deployed by common demagogues–
a higher occupation never trips
on paths depicted in its travelogues.
Magogs in love with their Magog Agogs
prefer the choker with a chain that slips.
The lovely upscale couples with their dogs
come sometimes bundled up for winter jogs,
but rarely kiss each other on the lips
on paths depicted in their travelogues.
Accustomed to their antiseptic snogs,
and having said goodbye to Mr. Chips,
the lovely upscale couples walk their dogs
on paths depicted in their travelogues.
Tompkins Square Park,
New York City,
January 10, 2010
In my nostalgic alchemy, these things
exchange dispersive properties for weight.
The liquid elements of love and hate
evaporate and leave discursive rings.
You’ll find my enigmatic gardening
more interesting from an aeroplane.
That wan varietal, the Hucklebane,
seen circled in a heart that’s hardening.
The kitchen of my empathy’s on fire.
Its atmosphere a carbon thunderhead,
my range a galaxy of gaseous blue.
The corpse of my devotion is undead,
conspiring with the ghost of my desire
to cast a Golden Idol. Something new.
Rick Mullin's Chapbook from Modern Metrics, an imprint of 
