States of the Union: Reflections from New Orleans

[garthranzz]

States of the Union: Reflections from New Orleans

Late night pictures across the screen -
Washed away truths look so pristine -
While muddy waters drown where I have been -
So let the songs support the trauma of our flight,
as if a melody might make it right
or exile’s sweetened with a trill
of rhythmed bayous and a blues quadrille.

Our threnody of time must leave them out,
all those too far to doubt, too near to fear
to do much more than mouth the sounds
of solace and, dopplering up despair,
declare
(babble, bubble, burp and broil
cauldrons, lies, crud(e) and oil)

Words in torrents like water drown
and we, and they, for cover cast about,
but we for souls and next-of-kin
and they for ways to swamp and spin:
The storm is echoed in the surge of lies,
a carnival of masks that screen neglect,
engulf the breach and blame reject.

Images overtopped or undermined,
portrait promises, impotent disguise,
reveal the flaws, the coast lines of our trust
in battures raised in battles for our mind:
let levees and the wetland marsh protect,
but justice overflow, a mighty stream:
betrayal flooded out - rebuild, redeem.

i

[Deja Q]

1. I think it's pathetic that the State of the Union puts other unions in favor of our own.

Iran, Iraq, I'm sure he even remembered Poland... but where was even one syllable devoted to New Orleans, which is actually INSIDE America - or so we're led to believe? To go back to topics from 2002 and 2003 yet ignore the far more recent disaster of Katrina... Is Bush speaking for America? I don't think so.

[Luckyduck]

2. The injustice is so outrageous

New Orleans is still a disaster, the response was an all time low for this country, who knows how many people actually died or could have been saved if they only let the rescue workers and the trucks of water etc. through...

yet they want us to believe they are so compassionate that we must stay in Iraq to help the Iraqis.