"bayou" poems
Down in the bayou where the mangroves grow
There's talk of black voodoo, like Marie Leveau
The Swamp Witch, is legend, she has magic so black
That those who have seen her, have never come back
There;s tales of the noises that come from the dark
Of werewolves and zombies as rough as the bark
The mangroves are sentinels, to where the magic resides
Where even a longboat has no room to glide
Bodies go missing from the graveyards most nights
And there's always a fog shading the fireflies lights
The Swamp Witch is ruler and Queen of this world
Where souls are all taken and spines can be curled
They say that she came here from Canadian lands
She was a metis they say, from the Western Tar Sands
A mystic by nature, a dark witch by blood
She lives deep in the swamp, protected by gators and mud
The gators respect her, they do as she bids
They keep watch on the waters, they're her reptillian kids
She keeps zombies as gendarmes, collecting bodies to turn
Just how black is her magic, no one can discern
The Swamp Witch is legend, she is as old as all time
The air in the bayou is as thick as the slime
The cajuns say voodoo is the core of her heart
They avoid fishing where the mangrove trees start
The Swamp Witch, a legend ? or is she truly the Queen
She's the Louisiana Witch, no one survives once she's seen.....
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 11:33 PM UTC
I planted a mango seed,
Hoping?
Not sure what...
But the mango grew
Out of its context,
Poked shiny green leaves
Looking for sun and surf,
But found itself awakened
In a land of snow and cold.
Seven leaves into its
Exponential Mango growth,
The newest leaf
Yellowed...
Shriveled...
Died.
The Minnesota Mango
Meditates now...
Watered, but waiting....
Slumbering?
Planning a spring break?
Meditating?
Waiting for summer sun?
Perhaps....
Today
I heard about
A neighbor boy
Who smuggled in
A baby alligator
From the Bayou,
South and warm.
At least my Mango
Stays inside its
Crockery planter,
And an alligator jail break
Will leave him
Freezing in his tracks...
We'll see what happens
In the summer.
Dec 21, 2011
Dec 21, 2011 at 5:21 PM UTC
island summer heat
big backyards
shared by three families
with rambunctious kids
sundresses, sandals, swim trunks
a big mango tree and
a merry-go-round with red chipped paint
geckos and mud baths
"boy's got cooties!"
mid-west plains' dry, summer heat
Mr. Sun is our lamp well past 9:00pm
Dow St., a giant hill covered
in uniform houses, filled with the uniformed sacrificial
spinning wheels, acre-wide hide and seek
nintendo and donkey kong, fireflies in jars
front yard mulberry trees
pippy longstocking "lets' go into this 'cave' of vines"
poison-ivy
southern peninsula, humid, summer heat
above ground pools and trampolines
a red brick house; the first home
the first CD collection, Filipino food
THE PARK,
the sandbox lid drowning in the bayou
sleeping in guest rooms, sleepovers a sign of status
pelicans, ducks, fishing,
sleeping in the boat; camping on the beach
Jul 2, 2012
Jul 2, 2012 at 4:18 PM UTC
There was nothing I was ever so ashamed of
that I dumped it in a river to drown,
but one time my best friend accidentally tossed my pink fishing pole
into the bayou when a spider dangled from the line.
We were eight, everything was wishy-washy
because she called herself a mulatto like it were an insult
and my older friends kept mentioning that my mom walked herself
to a liquor store very late at night
twelve-packs bruising her German-colored shoulder.
I did not tell them my father had hidden away her car keys.
Girls teased me and I still wanted to kiss their cheeks at goodbyes,
The Little Mermaid featured at our sleepovers
saying, “kiss the girl,” so I did
but we stopped talking when I bought my training bra,
it proved what was in my skirt, my lips could not touch them again.
You cannot kiss a girl if you are a girl,
even if Disney movies say it is okay because Mickie Mouse
has no ***** to be ashamed of though a wife of the opposite ***
I learned important things until I turned ten
and Hurricane Katrina unraveled the bayou into my house
and I existed in four different classrooms in my fourth grade year
where nobody had enough time
to learn my name, much less the way it is spelled.
Now, in therapy, the certified insists
that I am a girl who kisses other girls because my mother
only put her lips on a bottle.
But maybe I wear striped dresses just because mold grew that
shape in my home on Camellia Street,
mud decorated the fallen refrigerator so it looked like
a cow some punk tipped over.
I just wish the sidewalk I use to rollerblade on hadn’t flooded.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 6:50 PM UTC
O'er the ocean
By the sea
On the sand
Or in a tree
Wherever your
Heart beats
Wherever your
Blood red
Heart bleeds
I'll always be
Right next
To thee
You can climb
Every mountain
Any place you want to go
You are my fountain
I will stand beside you
Watch as your ocean
Waves and flows
A beautiful collision
Walking on water
Your blooms unfold
Our flowers grow
We levitate
We gravitate
In two
One another
We are
Stardust
Undercover
Meet me underneath
The sea
You are a mermaid
Diving into the deep
Everything imaginary
Exists with me
I'll be your seahorse
Float around you
I'll be your owl
Soaring down to
Offer you
A ride
You decide
Glide
On my wings
Rest your head
Face the magic
Of Queens
And Kings
Breathing under water
Is an art we have
Perfected
Unaffected
By the world that
Surrounds us
Even if
War has found us
We are blessed
I have you
You have me
A sturdy nest
Protectors
We are the directors
Of world peace
Nothing can stop
The brilliance
We possess
Watch as every
Constellation
Kneels before us
To confess
The joy
That they
Witness
Flying in the sky
I'll be your falcon
You can always
Count on me
Relentlessly
Resilience is my middle name
I know you feel the same
Two twin lights
We fight the storm
Of life
Our love is warm
Sending off our fires
Into the night
A blast of stars
Fireworks
Unite in the
Nursery of
Our heaven
One voice
One song
We shine like the moon
Above the jungle
Every lagoon
Coasting over every island
Eternal friends
Every bayou
Until earth bends
I'll go with you
We are
In the back pocket
Of every lover
Reaching in
They will find
The kisses
That we keep there
Our galaxies
Of affection
We are everywhere
In everything
Let the universe stare
Wherever we are
We are there
A magnetism of
Contagious smiles
A sound that
Resonates for miles
A definite glow
A laser light show
Atomic illumination
In the blink of an eye
The Big Bomb
Of Creation
We are the resolution
God's gift to evolution
Sharing our love
With every child
Every elder
Every homeless
Shelter
Let the universe stare
Wherever we are
We are there
A magnetism of
Contagious smiles
A sound that
Resonates for miles
And miles
© tHE tERRY tREE
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
Summer was
******* on sugarcane and cinnamon peels
handed from your grandparents, occasionally mine
when our roller-skates made love to cracks in
the sidewalk
our knees were drunk on its feathers
so many specks of moss get caught in there, too
you taught me not to cry
or have that formaldehyde-chugging look
until I hit the bunkbed; your sheets made my sweat
look so much worse
we got anything we could want.
I wanted to kiss you when your wore your
Popsicle lipstick, a freeze cracking the crib of your
mouth and circling buzzards around.
But how does a girl say
she would rather have someone than a cigarette
stick of candy from the ice cream man –
the ones she would twirl like cherry stems
and feign middle school maturity?
We would whisper about things at night
with the lamp off, our pants down
but never ever love:
love is for adults. Love is Mardi Gras in the city
not powdered sugar from beignets
or the kind of beads you settle around your neck.
I wanted to be the bayou you swam in,
cast your fishing pole at the underbelly of and
counted how many seconds it took to lift back up.
I wanted to be a chest you put
your personal belongings in, a treasure box.
Most of all, I wanted
to be your personal belonging
the treasure you immediately thought of –
but that is not what Summer was.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 5:18 PM UTC
America, Why I Love Her
Written by John Mitchum
Poet/Actor
You ask me why I love her? Well, give me time, and I'll explain...
Have you seen a Kansas sunset or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou down Louisiana way?
Have you watched the cold fog drifting over San Francisco Bay?
Have you heard a Bobwhite calling in the Carolina pines?
Or heard the bellow of a diesel in the Appalachia mines?
Does the call of Niagara thrill you when you hear her waters roar?
Do you look with awe and wonder at a Massachusetts shore...
Where men who braved a hard new world, first stepped on Plymouth Rock?
And do you think of them when you stroll along a New York City dock ?
Have you seen a snowflake drifting in the Rockies...way up high?
Have you seen the sun come blazing down from a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia as she rushes to the sea...
Or bow your head at Gettysburg...in our struggle to be free?
Have you seen the mighty Tetons? ...Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi roll along Missouri's shore?
Have you felt a chill at Michigan, when on a winters day,
Her waters rage along the shore in a thunderous display?
Does the word "Aloha"... make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief When you see the surf come roaring in at Waimea reef?
From Alaska's gold to the Everglades...from the Rio Grande to Maine...
My heart cries out... my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain.
You ask me why I love her?... I've a million reasons why.
My beautiful America... beneath Gods' wide, wide sky.
[topp]
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 6:11 AM UTC
bayou baby
She comes from the swamplands
Back in the mangrove
Back where the stories say
Magic runs wild
The devil plays host
And all who visit must stay
Witches and Zombies
Together by night
Gators and Snakes there as well
The river, it changes
Cut you off in a flash
And then you end up in hell
Hair as black as Kentucky Coal
And eyes green as the sea
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Born out of the magic's world
Where the mystic world runs free
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
She comes to town
to get supplies
That's where I saw her first
I followed close
Back to the swamp
And saw her do her worst
A simple boat
A single lamp
An oarsmen, long, long dead
A different route
Through water black
To a place where most folks dread
Hair as black as Kentucky Coal
And eyes green as the sea
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Born out of the magic's world
Where the mystic world runs free
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
She saw me
And I looked back
She knew that I would follow
She slowed down
Her travel home
And she trapped me in the hollow
I never told
Another soul
Of who I go to see
I travel out
At night alone
My Bayou Baby waits for me
Hair as black as Kentucky Coal
And eyes green as the sea
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Born out of the magic's world
Where the mystic world runs free
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 9:31 PM UTC
Ha-Ha, Joker's laugh, wildcard coyote
dances a maniac tango, joking
in the midst of elemental chaos--
giggling at the lava, way hot
watching the castle's mortar dissolve, doting
the cacophonous crumbling symphony akin to Amadeus.
Ha-ha, joker's laugh, wildcard coyote
ignites a spliff with incandescent embers, smoking--
up under falling stars getting higher than the Himalayas
and more enlightened as the midnight parades off
into a translucent, steaming ashy bayou, hoping
there's a bite to eat before the heat waves doff
the darkness completely into blinding, hokey
sunbeams reflecting in snow, that cuckoo tune never lost,
Ha-ha, joker's laugh from that wildcard coyote.
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 12:03 AM UTC
There is no night like a bayou night,
the air pregnant with expectancy and
mystery, mingling scents of wisteria,
trumpet honeysuckle and gumbo mud -
a Dark Ages alchemist seeking an elusive
golden fragrance. It's a night dark despite
the nearly full moon, a night in which
fireflies pulsate as so many flickering
neon bulbs and the cacophony of insects
reaches toward an unattainable crescendo.
Mammoth cypress trees line the bayous,
letting fall Spanish moss as strands of ghostly
gray-green hair, and the oppression of dark
is waiting just beyond the searching lantern.
At times the wind moans like a sated lover,
at other times it howls wildly, but it's always
present and always vocal to those who
would listen. There could be fear in such nights,
or there can be a love of the mysteries inherent
with the bayous - I choose the love of the bayous.
*I lived in Louisiana about nine years,
and there are many things about that
state I still love - bayous being one of them.*
--
Dec 18, 2011
Dec 18, 2011 at 4:45 PM UTC
Siddhartha sat steady on a the hearth of an apartment, eyes closed
mouth closed, mind open and enchanted
Zen-man lingers in a dark park starting,
to realise indiscretions of his past lives avatar
(but don't for a second believe the lies you've been fed by the brother of your brother and the father's of the jingoist mafia because eyes blink often and the accumulative effect is a life of temporary blindness and in that blindness it's not possible to be enlightened)
Your mantras are a lie but the belief remains still
and so rolling over wild green hills in some Welsh country village it dawns on the spirits of the ether that humanity is struggling
to find absolution of even the most relative peace
- but so, and Siddhartha still sits, cross-legged and barely breathing
Emaciated; fast, faster
Losing her nerve
Zen-man died a few months back but you always live again and so a beetle on a hot car hood scampers in some intrinsic folly, semi-aware of being something or being at all
Towards the walls of weather-beaten towns the levee finally bursts and all life ends -
until a gathering mist pulls absurd faces in the simpatico rays of a third-eye sun over the bayou of some forgotten rock in the cosmos
and the ethereal temptress of existence rolls the next dice on a green matted board
and our unified oneness speaks a solitudinal greeting to the sky.
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 12:29 PM UTC
welcome to houston texas
we roll swangas n swishers
we might hit cha
with the torch
if ya dont know where ya stand
in the ghetto we never let go
of painful memories
we got brothers get shot by cops
to brothers getting got
by they own i try not to led a path of sin on my own
phone home
soon to be at the crossroads
knockin at thugs mansion door
got **** how did i get smoked
i thought i was backed by my locs
now im sittin with malcolm
and martin n garvey
enjoying a smoke
wish i could reach deep into the pains
of black folks brain
and let em know
we used to be kings n queens
but **** dont flipped
once they change the color of the script
but ***** i peep game since i was embryo
last of a dying breed corrupt seed
we can changr indeed
we just gotta change waht our minds feed
but we too intrigue
from the worlds scent
a ghetto ih
now that've got your intention
lets form a syndication
reform strategize black nation
we all brothers from haitan to jamacian makin
nothing but flawless beats
smokin swisher sweets at the swap meet
or better yet the bayou classic
listenin to magic
1 0 2 point one everybody having fun
without the use of a gun
buts ther3s always one
that wanna start ****
got his wig split
now take a picture for yo casket
wish times wasnt so hard
but im always on the guard
sneaky *** white supremacy
pushin gay antics
miss with that semantic
yall aint slick
so let me hit ya with some of the realist
rhymes that make up for the crimes cuz im
tired of this ****** poor livin
everyday sinning
no winning stuck at a permenant loss
but somehow my soul still grows
even though the world be a ghetto the ghetto
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 9:45 PM UTC
I went to Justin Ploof and the Throwbacks Creedence Clearwater Reviva Tribute concert it was a lot of fun it made me feel like I was a Fortunate Son even though I'm a lady
I thought of flowers and psychedelic colors or maybe that was the effect of colorful lights on stage
I saw some people Down In The Corner break out in a dance at least it was peaceful not enraged
I think the crowd went a little crazy when the Bad Moon Rising played I was encouraged by some friends to get out of my seat when they pulled on my hands and we raised our hands to the band
The blast from the past took people on a trip to memory lane ending the rockumentary with Proud Mary, I wish you could have been there my friends!
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 11:54 PM UTC
it's a bone dry west
for a cool east summer
i'm steeple chasing baby
from a derby to a dungeon
orange cones on the left
bright beams on a Hummer
i'm flicking off the bird
from nevada to wyoming
get this load off my chest
it burns April like a stoner
i'm a bayou baby
from the streets of magnolia
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019 at 9:30 PM UTC
Wandering through the bayou,
wrapped in its eerie embrace.
Mysterious and strange,
a magical place.
Never seeming to change,
even as seasons come and go,
swampy waters ebb to and fro.
Like long-lost daughters,
gnarled courtly cypress trees,
rise from black murky waters.
Draped lovingly in Spanish moss,
swaying softly in the breeze.
Butterflies seem to float across,
as gentle winds ruffle their leaves.
Bouquets of wild hibiscus fill the air,
mingled with sweet azaleas blooming there.
Bullfrogs croak and crickets chirp,
the bayou is awash with soothing music.
As dragonflies flit the cattails, elusive,
water moccasins slithering at your feet
or lurk above you in the trees.
Just as, the sun begins to sink low,
comes the faint sound of a fiddle and bow.
The gator comes out of hiding,
rising from the dark waters below.
Looking for his meal and smiling,
with snapping jaws, a deer is caught,
then taken below where he will rot.
The moon rises high into the night,
as fireflies glow in the twilight.
A voodoo queen slips into sight,
with gnarled hands, she rolls the bones.
Whispering cryptic words, she softly moans.
Tenderly she caresses her snake,
wrapped around and about her neck.
A coon-hound whoops it up.
The gnarled trees cast spooky shadows.
Is that the ghostly apparition of Jean Lafitte?
Who managed to escape prison and gallows.
Did you bury your treasure in the water or weeds?
As the wind moans softly, time to turn home,
where you can fill your belly with spicy gumbo.
ALesiach © 10/12/2014
Jul 26, 2019
Jul 26, 2019 at 8:51 PM UTC
Enter softly, she spoke to me, twisted like fungi on a tree trunk. For every spot of desert there's an ounce of ocean to fit inside it. Our tunnels will meet someday I told her. Do not be afraid reading this, doom can be sweet as a garden or smelly like an eye ******
My abdomen is creased with age and tourniquets. Every time...I tie myself to a lamp post and wait for my Master to come with the next direction. I eat sugar cubes, carrots, and stand eight feet- so dive with me. I am a Pisces. I have been built to swim and suffer intolerable cruelties. Break me with your hand, your closed fist, a strap of leather, a bagful of flour. I am not the valor of your toothbrush or table cloth. I do not follow the sunset home, instead I fly over the bayou, scouting for sandpipers in the low tide.
Looking at the telephone for you to appear, playing the songs of you in my head. I hear you, I remember the airports, the MCA, the head holding, and the longing. In place of reality, I choose your colors boldly and stuff them tightly into my left lapel and chest breast pocket. You are superior evidence that I exist.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 5:27 AM UTC
Eleven to you
Star-crust in de stijl courts
Silhouettes and shadows
Speed boats race around the lake
On and on and on and on and
Guilty pleasures and guilty moldy blues
Sandwiches on the weekends
Pasta and pesto or gnocchi every other day too
Common mysteries follow the bayou
Heavy heads laden in niello swamps
Does acrostics in the daytime
Pleasures herself with crosswords on her days off
Sacks of coffee, potatoes and ivory- beer at 5am
Three fingers lay across the stitch
This needlepoint is something good
No one died but someone could
Heavy on the hops, melancholy Wednesday's
Miracles in wrestling Russian masters
Thwarting automobiles without their governors
Faster and faster they go
Growing faster and faster they show
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 at 8:46 AM UTC
Crème brulee, a careless mind,
singeing, burning albeit caramelized
like a politician never normalized,
crawfish should never be apologetic
there's an avaricious food chain
in there somewhere,
gun shot without hardly knowing
right from wrong
conceal that powder trail
dig down to Bayou.
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 12:34 PM UTC
Nobody knows how to say goodbye to anything, even the
sea has ruined edges
leaves its will to a muddy bayou. Our
phonecalls hang onto me after there rings a dial tone, a curly tail
of wires ribboned around my most important parts
thigh, artery, genital. The bed
is the whole bedroom, now. I am handcuffed from the ceiling
waiting for your voice box to quiver again
and am kicking and screaming –
I am heartbroken at nothing, not for no reason but for
nothing. Lovers are not versed in goodbyes
or else we would not be lovers. But I prefer the sensation of
suffocation to cold blankets,
rather heat them up with blood and guts than have a
mattress that has never smelled my *** You do not know how to
ring my neck or drown me in sheets that’ll
just hide hide hide the word
goodbye. If this is your worst trait, not wanting to go,
I am happy to let you love and hurt me until I can float, too.
Sep 15, 2013
Sep 15, 2013 at 2:29 PM UTC
Words by: Willyam Pax
Music by: Daisie Partido Vergara
How far would I go to love you?
How many times would I dive in River Bayou.
Loving you this way seems isn't enough
I longed for you to give me a chance, ohh...
Would my love be enough for you?
Or you'll disregard me for what I have at hand?
Would you leave me in shades of black or blue.
My love is bare because I care, my love
Refrain:
Would you give me a little bit of love in advance?
Would you give me a chance to see you stay.
So much as I breathe your essence like air
I was so tired even though I tried my very best
Sometimes I feel like giving-up,
But resigning wouldn't do anything to stop
This heart that beats only for you somehow ask
How far would I go to love you?
I know I don't have everything
For I survive with just some little things,
Enough for me to live this kind of life
And even my choices are full of strife
Refrain:
Would you give me a little bit of love in advance?
Would you give me a chance to see you stay.
So much as I breathe your essence like air
I was so tired even though I tried my very best
Sometimes I feel like giving-up,
But resigning wouldn't do anything to stop
This heart that beats only for you somehow ask
How far would I go to love you?
Original poem:
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/willyampax/1346413/">
How far would I go to love you?
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 5:27 PM UTC
June bugs crash into screens
mosquitoes whine
to get in by any means
dogs howl, frogs croak
like the bass fiddle
in Lightning Hopkins’ blues.
Sticky moisture from the bayou
envelopes, and soaks through,
permeates still night air
like the sad strains of Claude’s La Mer.
Growing up in southern climes
slowed days, stretched years
put me on the edge of tears
yearning for escape from there
from dominion of church
and Mama’s monarch perch.
Hints of her softness
were so rare and spare
that when she let us smooth her hair
we forgot how parched were we
for a trace of this tender intimacy
on summer nights’ scorch
spent on our homestead porch.
Aug 19, 2021
Aug 19, 2021 at 9:22 AM UTC
Grandma,
WHAT OF THE CORNER-- that you now no longer sit. the bed that you will no longer lay.
What of the pastels-- that you now no longer use. the soft tones of amber and pink. the pale blue shadow that silenced your eyes.
What of the lily pads-- on the surface ripples. of the pond you once watched us play in. the chair that rocked until it cracked. splintered right down the middle.
What of the poppies-- that you placed in my hair. that you helped me blow 'dream wishes' into. the poppies that tickled me. What of grandpa, poppy?
LIKE GREEN when it turns to brown. like pastel powder on an envelope,
you fade with time.
You left this place with nothing more than what you came here with, a presence. an empty room,
now, misplaced.
New milk and cookies, hide the old, mellow yellow, kitchen countertops. fresh cut poppies, are now six ninety-nine.
The old barn, that I once slept in, because of that hard summer day's humid warmth, was torn down last spring, and a new house, with a new family, got put in its place.
YES... like green when it turns to brown. like the powder from your old pastels that would stick on to my fingertips like there was no lettin' go. like yellow frostin on cake. i remember you. or at least, i try to keep that one happy image that is left of you:
In the barn--
when you awoke me from my sleep.
In the fields--
where you would sit and watch me play.
In the corner--
of that old house where you once sat.
In the lily pads--
where the bullfrogs still sing.
Mar 31, 2012
Mar 31, 2012 at 3:57 PM UTC
The teenagers of the bayou look down to their pocket God, summoning validation through divine vibrations;
heads bowed they pray for the prey, for the sensations of meaning, refreshed each second,
filed and cast aside,
except on thursdays, or maybe fridays ‒
for these are the sacred days reserved for nostalgia, for last weekend’s cigarette taste,
for those cheap-gin glances, lacerated by and filtered through the teeth of crocodile tears,
for the lovesick night sweats and the mouth of another, for the break from chronic ennui,
all captured in thirty-three unearthly flashes;
The teenagers of the bayou look up from their pocket God and stretch their aching fingers upwards,
exhausted, habituated, unquestioning
of the heaviness of such emptiness
within
their starving hearts
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 4:23 PM UTC
got hellhounds on my trail
my blood is in their nose
my fingerprints are on some sandpaper
in Arizona
All my money
in an empty bourbon
bottle
At the bottom
of Picayune bayou.
I know it's you at the end of this blind hallway
Robert Johnson
I finally feel safe to be overcome by fear
and hounds
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 4:07 AM UTC
Before the hurricane, in my youngest years things were extremely different
My outlook on Louisiana was a place of water and happiness
I was six years old, and boating was what I did for fun every single day
Boating was what basketball is to me today, a treasure, an outlet
The bayous were alive, the marshes were green, and the trees fruitful
You could smell the salty mud, (which smells very different from a beach)
Our white propeller boat sped to the lake, and lake mist sprayed our faces
Fishermen and crabbers littered the banks, pulling in flailing lively catches
We ate the fruits of their labor at the Cajun restaurant on the bayou, inwards
This was no commercial place, but only the locals had ever been
It was rough, light blue paint peeling, men with grey beards laughing
And the smell of fresh fried catfish had taken over the place,
Perhaps the most unique thing about it was the way to get to it, strictly by boat
My childhood is colorfully painted with these memories, however,
The real life experiences have been swept away in the muddy currents
The restaurant was knocked off its stilts and demolished,
The trees now branchless, dead, and the marshes are hues of yellow and brown
No longer is the water lively, but still, no longer is it safe to dive to the bottom
For fear of remains of houses, boats, glass puncturing our bodies
I consider myself lucky to get to experience that everyday, the bayou was my backyard
That was the Louisiana that is on postcards, not the usual experience of suburbs
That was the Louisiana I used to know, the Louisiana that is no more in my life
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 12:28 PM UTC