"I want to have fun and watch God's fury," said Gaetano Zarzana, a street performer and musician who said he planned to stay in town. "I'm going to hang out in Johnny White's bar on Bourbon Street and watch the flood come up."
The thing that kinda haunts me
still lives at the edge of my body:
An outcast of experience about to
show itself, unveils its heart as
the wished for hope: the transformation
of matter into energy of energy into
consciousness and a few seconds of
awareness I can't help not thinking
about but experience this haunting
as if water will burn the sun.
The knower of the wish is very subtle
even as it loses its cordial temper and becomes
something truer, more stately, disbelieving
the inside by calling it the outside;
we turn to the knower of the experience
because the world is transient and unhappy.
The books all in a tumble; ideas waterlogged
devastated drowning "unbelievable" a
nightmare I can't wake from; walk away;
when he sleeps I come, lay down
by your side, I grow tired and want so
much to run toward friends with friends,
take substance from the world; I can't wake
from wanting, my sleep casts off the body,
there are no roads, no means of travel,
no joy, no pleasures,
the country of waking only is his
for the things which he sees when awake
these only he sees when asleep
the Sycamore wearing the aspect of that
which will not be hereafter
the River birch negating any reality
beyond the individual
the Bald cypress warranted to be
real by its existence in a visible
and sensible body
the Red maple which questions all its
own standards of life and knowledge
doubts whether all this is real
or else whether all
even if real
is not futile
you have been on a journey
castaway and disowned
you need to resign yourself
to the awkwardness of life
when the stars exploded
millions of years ago
they created you: makes
for devil-may-care movie dialogue
the audience chuckles: admission
to both yes and no
simultaneously
people seem to be
dissolving into the background
-- Jeff Wietor
