"biloxi" poems
It ain’t too bad to be from there
Just ask my family and friends
But it’s too flat, ain’t no way out
The roads are all dead ends.
Sometime soon I’ll find a place
Where the music I’ll enjoy
But for now I keep on tryin’
To escape from Illinois!
There’s a river on the border west
That moves a lot of dirt
Mighty Muddy Mississipp
Drowns the pain and covers hurt
Yeah, I’m movin’ south to New Orleans
Maybe I can find employ
In a blues bar down on Bourbon Street
Escape from Illinois!
Well I stopped a week along the way
When I saw the Gateway Arch.
But the folks out by the airport
Were stagin’ up a march.
Seems a white cop fired a shot that killed
An unarmed teenage boy
Oh yeah, the teenage boy was black,
Escape from Illinois.
Kept walkin’ to the Landing
(Named for Pierre Laclede)
It has most every thing you want
But nothing that you need
Some travelin’ folk told me some news
That made me jump for joy
Memphis maybe had some work
Escape from Illinois!
Found the haunted house called Graceland
And the grave where Elvis lay
Where half a million go each year
(Fifteen thousand every day)
They all want to pay respects
To the rockin’ – rollin’ boy
Put their finger in the bullet holes
Escape from Illinois.
Went downtown, knocked on some doors
Once or twice I went inside
But Beale Street was broken
The travelin’ folks had lied.
‘Cuz there ain’t no jobs in Memphis,
Or maybe I’m too coy
So I hitched a ride to Nashville
Escape from Illinois.
Nashville’s a big old meltin’ ***
Lots of great ones started here
But most end up as tourists
Getting’ ****** and drinkin’ beer
So money’s at a premium
And fame’s a fake decoy
End up workin’ in a record store
Escape from Illinois?
From Asheville to Atlanta
From Austin to LA
From Biloxi back to Baton Rouge
Need a place where I can play
I’ll follow all the buskers,
Form a musical convoy
Livin’ day by day and town by town
Escape from Illinois!
I’m a minstrel, like a rubber band
I keep on snappin’ back
I’m gonna make it somewhere
Singing somewhere, that’s a fact
Got my guitar and my music
Gotta do what I enjoy
Find a place to sing my songs for you,
Hell, it may be Illinois!
Phil Lindsey 6/4/15
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 1:46 PM UTC
It seems to have spontaneously combusted, but it didn’t. The disease struck long ago, brewed in the petri dish of Depression, WWII, and convergent technologies. Well before that, really, but that was the point of critical mass. By the 1950's, it was an epidemic. The independent Republic of individuals, small towns, coherent communities, distinct cities, local diners, shops and stores tied together with two lane blacktop was crumbling. Things only got worse faster. It was a disease of toxic, lulling dreams. American Dreams. And standardization was its crushing foot that flattened everything and left a homogenized wasteland in its trail. The old gods vanished and the new became despots. Go anywhere in America, Boston or Biloxi. You can’t tell where you are. Most shop at the same stores (real or virtual), eat at the same chain restaurants, wear the same clothes, gulp from the same Internet, swallow similar information, and think (within acceptable variations) the same thoughts. Even sin has become tediously consubstantial. Knowledge has been supplanted by content. Words are squeezed of meaning. Everyone is an expert and no one knows anything. Except Siri and Alexa. The Dreamtime of consumerism, consumption and conformity dominates. All that remains to come is the dominion of AI. Then we will all be watched over by machines of loving grace, free to graze in bovine bliss in the cybernetic meadows of bland utopia.
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 6:54 AM UTC
She holds his body by her bough,
where ghosts have hung him like a puppet.
Swinging slowly, shadow dancing
above a “sacred” cross of flame
Raven dark her shattered darling,
black as bruises, light as smoke.
Hollow spinning boy in blue jeans
held aloft by mother’s limb.
Swollen eyes and tongue extended
to taste the warm Biloxi rain
Suspended high enough to witness
where his mother lay in tears.
Mississippi lepidoptera.
Shedding chrysalis of sorrow.
Ascending far above the reach
of bayou dragons and men of prayer.
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 2:00 AM UTC
Mississippi, let the good times ramble
Biloxi, and Jackson
Flag raised high
Passion,
Tupelo rocking and roar
Hattiesburg for a show tonight
With my wife
My girl
Aug 4, 2015
Aug 4, 2015 at 8:57 AM UTC
Ah, so she’s
Got that mincemeat
Mumbo jumbo
Going on
The Biloxi banality
That girl knows the proper way to get toasted
I’ve seen those types tapping their toes
In blues house ho-downs
But this little Mississippi mugger
She must have made off proper
Skinned to the bone
I got no money no more
Cash strapped and wallet gone
****** if I didn’t get taken
By a Podunk prom queen
You gotta watch for them mudslingers
***** sly and mean
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
He walked off the yellow bus
the young “black” man
the first, his pack
full of what a mother would pack
to taunts, surrounded
gulls around a struggling fish
coyotes on a newborn calf
sharks ready to clean things up
this was Wisconsin
not Birmingham, Selma, Biloxi
No one called him “African-American”
I remember him as cute
I remember him as friendly
I remember him scared
I remember him gone
What word, what experience
what tears?
The proud father, craving peace
warm earth, simple animals
fresh green plants from the soil
protection for his son
Sold the farm and returned to Chicago
Sep 30, 2016
Sep 30, 2016 at 9:34 PM UTC
I've been to Bangkok, Barcelona, and Bordeaux
Beijing, Biloxi, Edinborough
I probed Pakistan, Poland, Portugal
Yet I'm primarily provincial
But what province, I don't know
May 30, 2021
May 30, 2021 at 11:02 PM UTC
As I write this I see you hurtling
across the delta beneath a low ceiling.
There is rain in the forecast. Your wallet
is fat with cash and rides high in an
anxious hip pocket. A window is cracked
to pull the smoke. It's lunch-time and
you're checking the Garmin for a
Crackle Barrel, all the while wondering
if the casino will take a check.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 5:41 PM UTC