Another Katrina Poem

[garthranzz]

Broken Bicycles

Broken bicycles, bloated balloons,
belie the litter of the mind;
sidewalk remnants strewn across the lawn
flit like leaves still sewn within a book,
shifting with each breeze,
bound and blown, byproducts before their time;
candy wrappers, cans, and cardboard boxes
so swirl around the axis,
cemented spokes and frames
rusting on the verge of idleness,
as whirling whirlpools of cascading glass,
tarnished autumn and vows of yesterday
nullify the self - fulfilling prophecy:
if souls revolve around the rubber rim
in horizontal rides on red-lined tires,
and eyelids hover on the hub of sleep,
and tattered toys demanding tears, we weep
in fallow floods of floating lines of fault,
and stucco shrinks in sheetrock, marsh and salt -
a moiling mess of muddled moss and mire -
and dreams defend the drowning of desire,
and we in off-key pictures, blackened song,
return in sidebars, thickened thumping throng
of half-built hopes and stairs and sinks on stilts,
when depression lists against itself and tilts,
then we the broken cycles clean of mold
and only then the limping truth unfold.

[uppityperson]

1. Indeed, have you found the hurricane survivors forum here yet?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=360
Very nice poem, you doing ok?

[garthranzz]

2. I just did, thanks.

There are so many great forums on DU! It's hard to keep up with them all.

I'm doing OK. My parents lost everything and my father's Alzheimer's got accelerated as a result of all the relocations. He's now in a VA hospital.

There's a veneer of normalcy over various parts of the city. The north and west "suburbs" (Jefferson Parish primarily) are almost back to pre-Katrina populations. But Katrina's in the psyche here and I've seen only two things that balance it, one very subtle the other national in scope: The re-emergence and committment of Tulane and other area universities (UNO, Loyola, etc.) and the Saints.

[uppityperson]

3. Yea for the universities!

check in that other forum and let us know what's up, etc, please. Thanks for the poem and best wishes to you and your family.