Convinced she would veer off and miss yet again,

Big Easy rolled into the heat of the night,

But tropical tempest did show no refrain,

The eye got the old town right in its sight.

 

And so it begins, the aftermath,

Black tide mark of unwanted children,

They pulled the plug on an overflowing bath,

Sat back and watched in disaffected sin.

 

White flight, black plight,

Wasn’t that the point of Lincoln’s long fight?

In the old French quarter it’s all plus ca change,

In the human hell of the dome a tear-soaked sponge,

 

Of poor souls screaming for a little bit of sense,

‘Where’s your priorities lie in this nation’s defense?’

You can deploy with alacrity all the way to Baghdad,

To your own southern comfort you moved not a tad.

 

Man builds cardboard ramparts and casts them in stone,

Is property of the land yet calls it his own,

Runs little circles through the sand of the shore,

Sees not fragile tenancy under his floor.

 

A broiling gulf that storm she exposed,

Whipped up old enmities in a nation disposed,

To dress all its wounds in star-spangled banners,

This hard wind and rain will test southern manners.

(©SMS2006)