"tulane" poems
A clothes hanger
clutches a line
of paper lanterns
lighting my next step
on streets my shoes stick to
from wheat beer
I hear the ‘Pit' coursing through cracks
& inebriating aged clay bricks
‘Pat”
of rain on rooftops
& falsely take it
for Charlie Parker's
'Hot House'
but it’s 2am near Tulane
& they’ve graduated to
tracks from Tremé;
Brass jazz & barflies;
Mad Hatters & Mademoiselles
dancing barefoot
in the French Quarters
under red fluorescent lights
under cloud-covered stars;
She gets them drunk off dance & song;
Guaranteed to make locals
late to last call;
shows them back-country gems,
the beautiful ruins known only
by bayou gals
& city folk
outside, in search of sirens
where the ceiling's missing,
dancing 'till their bodies taste like rain
They 'crash'
&
'splash'
.....breaking through worn wooden floors
& cracks in plaster walls
lead by the ‘Pit’ back to the street,
&
‘Pat’
as other strange drops join the dance,
descending from skies to rooftops;
Finding lower highs
in search of Bourbon Street
lost & looking
& near Tulane at 2am
my blue suede shoes are dying of thirst,
stuck upon each step;
lacking direction
& looking for jazz
waiting to drown
in the 'Pit'
& 'Pat'
& splash
of this daily rain dance;
Lose myself in this listening
as dreamers do
on the streets near Tulane
At 2am;
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 9:29 PM UTC
Somehow today I saw disappointment on your face
And something just snapped inside of me
How does my 4.125 GPA not please you?
How does balancing my honor role with
Being one of the starters on the basket ball team
unsatisfactory
How does going to ******* Tulane for neuroscience
Not good enough.
What about going to state for track WHILE
maintaining mostly A's just okay
I get this feeling you don't appreciate me
As much as you should,
A daughter that her reasoning for striving
To do everything perfectly
Is to please you
Because I feel like I still haven't quite done it yet.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 12:45 PM UTC
the charm of French Colonial style
with Cajun cooking promised -"genuine!" -
at every second door
jazz bands at every other
the flair of well-groomed wealth and savoir vivre
exuding from St. Charles´ porticos,
the restaurants on Calle du Roi,
the campuses of Tulane, UNO, and Loyola
the grandeur of the superdome
the open space of Audubon and City Park
oakes draped with Spanish Moss
alive with jogging, skating, biking, walking health
between the nights -
all this makes you almost forget
the city project housings
slumming beneath the highrise business shadows
crime ridden,
floating on neverending waves of dime-a-dozen tunes
from hi-fi stereos of cruising cars
the grand lake spoiled for generations
with the big city's waste,
the 'father of rivers' dwarfed beyond repair
by wharfs and cranes and fortified embankments
that line his banks as far as you can see
and far beyond
a shotgun wedding of the rich and poor,
the black and white,
torn by the struggle to ascend
from shotgun to colonial
to the soft sound of dixie
* * *
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 3:45 PM UTC
My then boyfriend
Now husband
Never forgave you for putting your hand on my thigh,
Casually mentioning the ******* beaches in the south of France.
Your daughter needed a chaperone on your family’s upcoming vacation.
You went and I stayed of course
The ******* beach all the poorer for my absence.
I am not the kind of girl who
Finds herself at Disney Paris at the end of the movie.
That’s not the way this movie ends, anyhow.
12 years later
One lung lighter
Tens of millions denser
and poised to send your daughter
to Dartmouth
Or Tulane
Or anywhere she’d rather.
She’ll have everything the world could offer her
In exchange for her father.
A parent shouldn’t have to know.
So I forgave you the hand thing
And the lewdness of a drunken survivor
Poised on the lip of an ever-widening hole.
If you asked to take me now,
I think I’d go.
I’ve always wanted to see the Louvre.
I can almost hear it:
The clicking heels and murmurs,
Your overwrought humanities professor explanations of this or that and me humoring you with appropriate reverence as always,
And the dead certain silence of the thing we will not speak about,
Pointedly conspicuous in its absence,
Filling the space between.
Feb 23, 2022
Feb 23, 2022 at 2:43 AM UTC
Part of me wants to quit school,
Run away, hitching rides on cargo planes
To foreign countries and experience life
As they do, encounter the wild, natural world
Instead of watching it on animal planet
But then again, you need money for anything,
And it seems like my life has already
Been predetermined, set on a path
I'm vet school and Tulane bound, that's what would make my parents proud
I still have a choice they say,
But that on it's own is daring me to pick the wrong thing
And they'll disprove of me forever
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 5:39 PM UTC