Ballad of Hurricane Katrina

[jon1jt]

The people who didn‘t love or love enough.

It must have been about me too. I didn’t help.
I'm not guilty, we're all natural disasters.
And after all this time I only recall a news clipping
of a piano floating down a New Orleans street,
a monument caught in a current of gloomy green,
the piano keys like mangled teeth. You think of
better days when you drove in the rain, or the
smell of peeled oranges, the goodbyes, the blue
eyes, the keen eyes, the sweet goodbyes my
love, goodbye, or as a boy drawing pictures of
pretty girls. I felt no reality.

Forgive me if I turn the gray matter into a matter of the heart,
for hard blows of wind and ice the cold cut into my skin.
No matter how hard I think we wish the rain would stop...
as the SuperDome folk wished,
the rain is delirious with language, it joins us all. Tendons,
bones, capillaries, the veins in our hands, my face in your hands,
our palms psalms cut from glass. Let go of the sky.
Our eyes hold the planets and lead me into temptation.
We breathe the air sweetly alert, the rain on our tongues,
Our bodies move with each breath--
artful, the yellow of a yellowing afternoon,
childly as a scraped knee.

The piano is gone.
I’d like to think that it has gone infinite, like the moon.
I'd like to think the stars have faces
and the songs they sing,
more powerful than the president.

[motherhubbard]

Amen. Jon, that was a wonderful poem- tragic and helpless and still hopeful, but like a child hopes when they talk to the man in the moon.

[Sweets America]

I love it. Your poetry has something really intriguing to me. Many of your lines make me wonder, they are beautiful. There is a mysterious tone to your poems. I think that what really attracts me to your poetry is the fact that it seems that your words come from a deep place, somewhere in you, and it makes me wonder about this place. I don't know how to explain what I mean. But I loved this poem.

[TheFifthElement]

A powerful piece Jon, avoiding the self-pitying tone which these subjects often engender. There's a weird blend with this piece, the factual and the mystical juxtaposing each other. You'll have to explain what FEMA is, I've no idea on that one.



It must have been about me too. I didn’t help.
I'm not guilty, we're all natural disasters.

love that line, 'I'm not guilty, we're all natural disasters' so true, though we all feel guilty that we weren't affected, and weren't affected by the apparent suffering of others. It's the media, of course, we're all so used to seeing suffering on TV these days.

and how it turns here :


the rain is delirious with language, it joins us all. Tendons,
bones, capillaries, the veins in our hands, my face in your hands,
our palms psalms cut from glass. Let go of the sky.
Our eyes hold the planets and lead me into temptation.
We breathe the air sweetly alert, the rain on our tongues,
Our bodies move with each breath--
artful, the yellow of a yellowing afternoon,
childly as a scraped knee.

into something else, something more positive, earthy, real. From the factual to the mystical in one quick movement. Not sure about 'childly' though, doesn't really work for me. This stanza makes the poem for me.

[Xillus_Xavier]

This is excellent jon.
The best line of the poem for me was:


I'm not guilty, we're all natural disasters

[ampoule]

This is excellent jon.
The best line of the poem for me was: "we're all natural disasters"

Yes, I liked that line also but I especially liked...let me see...what was that line...oh yes...here it is...the whole danged poem!! :D

[jon1jt]

Thanks for these kind words and for reading, wow!



You'll have to explain what FEMA is, I've no idea on that one.

As far as I know FEMA is a US government agency overseeing disaster cleanup and have been relentlessly shamed for not doing enough or not responding quickly enough. It became a sideshow in the US media along with the race issue. The fact Hurricane Katrina was, after all, a natural disaster, sort of drifted away, like the piano. ;)

[AuntShecky]

This piece is a bit bifurcated. The first part is more like a
persuasive essay, albeit a highly effective one. The dirty little secret about NOLA is that the seeds of the tragedy of
Katrina were planted decades before -- mainly in the contrasting ways the "smart" tourist areas of the city , such as the French Quarter were treated as opposed to the poor who had been living and struggling there for decades.

The second part of your piece, the lines which begin with the phrase "forgive me. . ." is the more poetic section.

[Riesa]

you lost me on the first two, felt a little emptied, yeah yeah, yeah.

but because it was yours I stuck with it and ended up full. I suppose you could sell it to a NO paper. or else strike the first two stanzas and jus' talk.

[B-Mental]

Hey jon, where in the hell do you come up with all of the ideas? I love it. I was actually toying with the idea of taking a helicopter ride over New Orleans one of these days, to kind of take it all in...I'll keep my eyes peeled for the piano.

[jon1jt]

This piece is a bit bifurcated. The first part is more like a persuasive essay, albeit a highly effective one. The dirty little secret about NOLA is that the seeds of the tragedy of Katrina were planted decades before -- mainly in the contrasting ways the "smart" tourist areas of the city , such as the French Quarter were treated as opposed to the poor who had been living and struggling there for decades.

The second part of your piece, the lines which begin with the phrase "forgive me. . ." is the more poetic section.

Persuasive? Hmm. That's interesting, Aunty...I never looked at it that way....what do you think it's persuading the reader 'about?' Fill me in. And thanks for reading. :)



you lost me on the first two, felt a little emptied, yeah yeah, yeah.

but because it was yours I stuck with it and ended up full. I suppose you could sell it to a NO paper. or else strike the first two stanzas and jus' talk.

:p What's that line from Zeppelin, "It's been a long time since we rock & rolled..." Ahh, Riesa, Riesa Riesa, good to see ya. Now let's see...

Well I'm with you about the first two stanzas, I could have easily cut them, but don't you think that would change the ending? the poetic blood is in the 2nd part. Maybe that kicked for you, but I'm not sure...'I can sell it to "a NO paper' jus' talk ¿Qué quiere decir usted, querido poeta? My half-Buddha bow...thank you for reading, Angie.



Hey jon, where in the hell do you come up with all of the ideas? I love it. I was actually toying with the idea of taking a helicopter ride over New Orleans one of these days, to kind of take it all in...I'll keep my eyes peeled for the piano.

Hell if I know, B! LOL! Actually, the deal with this poem is simply that I turned it into a writing exercise, an impossible one. I imagined a subject I would greatly dislike to write as a poem. Hurricane Katrina came to mind because of all the cliche landmines out there. So, I think I pulled it off, you, some others dig it, that's a good sign, right? See you on the mountain, my fellow Dharma Bum. :)

[Riesa]

interesting idea. there, I am saying that all the BLOOD of this poem is in the rest of the stanzas and there's even mention of the point in stanza 3 or four depending how we decipher sentence. it's very nice though in a whole, just telling you how I would read it.

if I were a reader of poems.

[jon1jt]

interesting idea. there, I am saying that all the BLOOD of this poem is in the rest of the stanzas and there's even mention of the point in stanza 3 or four depending how we decipher sentence. it's very nice though in a whole, just telling you how I would read it.

if I were a reader of poems.

But you are a reader of poems.
You waltz in their bright squares,
but your dance outlives them.
You deploy too much light.
Eventually, you step outside
to write your own,
the bare trees inscribe.
.
.
.
Don't believe me?
Read Riesa's Blog. ;)

[AuntShecky]

It was a "persuasive" as opposed to a descriptive or expository essay. Not so much "argumentative," but perhaps to convince or persuade readers to side with your way of thinking. It does seem to present one side of the story, though I do believe in me heart that it is the truthful side.
The paragraph that begins with a confessional -- "It must have been about me. I didn't help. . ." changes the tone into a personal essay.

Again, a good essay and the second part is poetic.

[firefangled]

Jon, for me this could have started with S2. I didn't think S1 added anything to the poem.

I loved the imaged of the piano drifting through it, its elevation to monument status.

[jon1jt]

Okay, so from what I've heard I have decided to cut the first two stanzas, which is actually a good thing because I thought the poem was too long. Or lemme know whatchathink.

Thanks all.

[NikolaiI]

I like it and I hope you don't take this the wrong way but this isn't a ballad.
I hope you know that. :)
I don't mean to annoy you, I got the same comment when I posted a poem called balld of something or other...
And I actually like it more when people praise my poetry really highly!
Same thing with people appreciating me as a person;
So it's not that it's not good poetry;
It's just that it's non-rhyme, or rather prose poetry,
if you don't mind my classifying it,
Where as a ballad is a set number of lines and rhyme, and usually 8-12 stanzas.
But you laid down some nice lines, you're a good poet.

[jon1jt]

I like it and I hope you don't take this the wrong way but this isn't a ballad.
I hope you know that. :)
I don't mean to annoy you, I got the same comment when I posted a poem called balld of something or other...
And I actually like it more when people praise my poetry really highly!
Same thing with people appreciating me as a person;
So it's not that it's not good poetry;
It's just that it's non-rhyme, or rather prose poetry,
if you don't mind my classifying it,
Where as a ballad is a set number of lines and rhyme, and usually 8-12 stanzas.
But you laid down some nice lines, you're a good poet.


Oh, well, it depends what kind of ballad we're talking about. Maybe I was dancing while singing this poem, me ballada dance, or maybe it's just a plain simple song. Peace, my brother. :D

[AuntShecky]

Well, I love the kind of songs the old-timey dj's call "standards" but it always grates when they call
a slow-tempo song a "ballad" which as NicholaiI pointed out is a specific kind of NARRATIVE poem.

[jon1jt]

Well, I love the kind of songs the old-timey dj's call "standards" but it always grates when they call
a slow-tempo song a "ballad" which as NicholaiI pointed out is a specific kind of NARRATIVE poem.

So what you and Nich are saying is that I can't call this a limerick or epic poem either, huh? But don't you know, free verse swallowed the Code Of Poetry. ;)