Howling Algiers

The children of forgotten Lou'sian,

in a warehouse called Haven

black, white and brown, high yellow and Asian,

Choctaw, Creek and Houmas,

salvaged from a derelict time,

refuse of the atomic age, escapees

from the implosion of nuclear families,

abused, berated, shattered and bereft

led out of New Awlins over the snaking Mississippi

by their own daemon genius for flight,

cities draining youth from their catchments.

Some never made it back, some did;

some went down to the water's edge and

what became of them

after that brief shining time when they lived as one,

that long Summer of Love ago,

back when they made their way through broken windows

past unwound clocks and calendars of other days:

dragging tables chairs beds and blankets through the night,

creating a kitchen in candlelight

that no street ever saw; shadows within shadows

within darkness defying despair?

What became of them

hunting dumpsters for food and reusables,

making meals in big pots, always enough for all,

trying not to steal so the law wouldn't care:

theft the only unforgivable crime in America?

Boys almost men sold themselves to uptown Cadillacs

for cum-blown rides in quiet corners, buggered in rooms,

torn out of childhood, shames still buried, shames buried with them:

girls, escaped from ponytails and barbie dolls,

selling themselves, taken in every hole by hard, or lonely men,

returning with food and medicines and sundries: scars

and secrets no one ever learned; a city

that had no idea they were beating time together

in a place they called Haven, Havre, Bìfēnggǎng, Rifugio and Attuko.

That life became Jimmy Little Rat, for whom no crack was too small

the stealth of shadows, the diffidence of cats,

vanished into a sewer and never came back.

Became Linda the Red, and Billy the Knife, who took one another

as husband and wife then rode the junk train in their veins

til they had to be carried away, left

where others would find them, untraceable,

no one but those who carried them caring,

until newsmen dug up their families in Slaughter

set the flames of addiction burning

for treatments that came too late

for Billy Roberts and his Creek wife, Linda Tuskineah.

That life became Pistolero Pete,

the fifteen year old Chicano card shark,

who fancied himself a Riverboat blackleg but upped the wrong ante one hand too many, staggering down Patterson, with a stiletto-opened back,

found cold on the Levee dead eyes open on the River of his dreams,

left by the kids for the cops, the only time he was ever caught,

his discovered corpse becoming their joke in his honour ever after.

The oldest was twenty, the youngest, twelve, Kitty,

tubercular, runaway from Slidell, carried on a board

by the child whores though hurricane debris, coughing black blood,

past roofless, wailing, plaster-eyed nuns

who received her like a sacrament;

until seven years later, a newly frocked priest

gave up his collar for her good graces;

still working the hallucinatory streets,

missionary saints to runaways.

Children of forgotten Lou'sian, scavenge themselves

out of an abandoned wilderness, blow Teliko

on brass fittings and pipes, drum buckets and cans.

strung-wire screwed onto resonators strummed

for joy and ache wailing burnt-out basements,

becoming music the working world never hears,

concrete floors painted with their rage and redemptions,

resounding walls scrawled with their couplets and epitaphs,

their spoken minds chalked on giant beams from ancient forests,

carve themselves into soft brick walls,

Roman reliefs becalming unlit catacombs.

They slept and sleep together in arrays,

twos, threes, fours and many at once

loving, pleasing, despairing, desperate for kindness

from anyone, indifferent to background, to all the codes

they bring like baggage, busted open, remade into one rule:

protect haven and those who live and lived there, always.

Like Ginny Lupo, who everyone claimed was related to a mafia don

and who could talk her way out of anything but a run-in

with a wop-hating cracker from Gretna who beat her so badly

she spent months recovering, while the cracker went on with his business,

until she could speak again, after which, her assailant was found

with a bullet in his brain, hanging on a lamppost on Tolliss

near the Crescent City Bridge, after which

she went home came back with food and blankets and wine

time after time; never forgot her friends and never will.

Like Saint Odile, the daughter of a preacher from Thibodaux,

whose bed was open anytime loneliness broke one of them,

til she got pregnant and carried the child to full term,

gave birth in a heating duct,

and left her son with the Ladies Auxiliary,

the rumour's always told, how she's been a cook,

working an oil platform, shipping out of Beaumont, Texas,

and another rumour always told,

that she keeps leaving children for her daddy,

but no one knows why, though several went asking

and no one has found her, but they'll never stop looking.

Children and teens burned through life; come through years never enough;

the other Summer of Love was for those with flowers in their hair,

they themselves knew only full life bore on Sanctuary Drive

where wharves rot on pilings in the river sheen

of oil tanker rust while brackish wash among dying reeds

recites the coral snake rhyme becoming handy sometimes

“Red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, friend of Jack.”

And for those still alive now, the memories never died,

and for those who died then, they're inside those who survived,

and for those whose minds broke or silenced,

they too, are remembered across years,

the living still hoping

to lead them back

in the name of the one

who was hung on a tree,

the one at the heart,

lynched out of hate,

never forgotten,

whose only crime

was doing the best he could

for those who needed him,

lynched for being black,

for loving someone lighter,

someone who

remembers each day since,

including the days

when the walking streets almost took her

til others who loved her

got her home before

she too found a branch

on the same tree

to bear what she could not.

The children of forgotten Lou'sian,

black, white and brown, high yellow and Asian,

Choctaw, Creek and Houmas,

salvaged from a derelict time,

refuse of the atomic age, escapees

from the implosion of nuclear families,

abused, berated, shattered and bereft

led out of New Awlins and across the Mississippi

the way all cities drain youth from their catchments

the way some never make it back, the way some always escape

the way some always end up on the water's edge sinking

because no one knows when it began, or if it can ever end.