Catharsis...

photo by the Associated Press (copyright 2005)

South of Paradise, Home of the Dispossessed
Written by Larry J. Knight, Jr.

-for the children of New Orleans

Remember the summer exodus
of southern heartbreak and diasporas
moving across the nation;
fleeing from rotting corpses, left to decay
in sewage and oil,
beneath a merciless Louisiana sun;
will families once solidified by community,
now split like breached levees
continue to be embraced with open arms
when the collective flood of evacuees
reach an impasse,
when America, forgets;

New Orleans,
will TV record your fate,
will AP photos document your future,
will the winds of change
blow cold, once altruism
is replaced with indifference-
the skeletal hand of charity
and humanism, methodically drawn in retreat;

Will hunger pangs and dehydration,
and shrieks for help
receive any remembrance
as the bones of drowned children
lost in the tidal surge of a swollen lake
crumble to dust;
will memorials for the dispossessed
be erected when the migration
marks an anniversary;
who’ll honor the disaster,
will scores of visitors flock
to the convention center,
to stand, or genuflect
where the poor were left to die;

Remember New Orleans;
its tree lined boulevards,
its putrid smell,
its pulsing jazz,
its people,
their joi d’ vivre,
their mulatto and Creole faces
contorted, in anguish,
forced from their homes;
who’ll remember their exodus,
mothered by hurricane,
inseminated by civic disparity,
the offspring is relocation,
people, moved from shelter to refuge,
sleeping for the first time
under unfamiliar skies
and unrecognizable stars,
Africans in Utah,
Nebraska,
Montana,
Oklahoma;
who’ll call them home,
remind them that red sunsets
never fell across their rooftops;
that the thick, grey looming shadow
of a chemical plant’s smoke trail,
cancerously rained down on them;
who’ll tell them that airborne carcinogens
aren’t tolerable as long as a government check
arrives at the end of the month,
discuss years of ecological ruin,
remind them, of the smell of poverty,
an inescapable odor trapped in memory’s grasp,
still, pungently, afflicting senses;

Remember New Orleans,
its orphaned children
scattered into the four winds,
lost in the wilderness,
adopted like human pets
only to be left behind
when they’re of no use,
when philanthropy withers,
when other children need bread and clothes,
who’ll champion their cause then;
will we still write songs about the bayou,
sing to the low moon over the Mississippi,
and dream, of the Crescent City
submerged under 20 feet of water;
what’ll become of compassion then,
when the attention is drawn elsewhere
and the city, is finally
and truly, left to fend for itself;

Where will the press conferences be held,
will we hear the sound bites
over the echoed screams of single mothers
who sift through the mud soaked remnants
of their lives;
when a son learns his daddy
was washed away with the flood;
when the ghastly sounds of the funeral dirge
rise, and hover above the city,
will we remember;

When empathy dries and tears subside,
will anybody count the hours
brown toxins spewed
into the poorest parts of the city;
who’ll speak of the death
that swept over them
as whispers of convenient resignation
and the guise of compassion
recount impoverished suffering;
who’ll worry about the affliction
fostered by the middle class, and sustained
by the continued poisoning of neighbors,
the slow extermination of strangers;
will they remember
that the rich and the poor
never intersected before this,
their lives too polarized;
abject poverty on the left,
needless excess on the right,
in-between them, a gulf that can’t be filled;
will they see this city,
New Orleans, as an oasis of corruption and greed,
proof of the lasting power of Jim Crow,
where the poor live deep in the barrel of shot gun homes,
cursed, like the wandering dead,
while in comparison, the affluent live like gods;
both divided by race, class, and education,
essential ingredients for the roux,
used to make a lethal gumbo of disproportion,
fed to the victims of gentrification
staining a nation when it boils over the top;
but who’s hands are marked,
who’ll clean up years of brewing antagonism;
a community displaced, or a society
that cares as long as the cameras are rolling;

Remember New Orleans,
its disease infested bowels,
its squalid ghettos,
its abandoned homes,
its deserted avenues, left to the dead,
will anybody recall the families, pulled apart,
stretched across a nation,
separated, given little, if any hope,
children and parents both
clinging to a myth of tomorrow;
will the fabric of the American dream
be ripped by society’s eventual indifference,
will the wounds on the feet of trekking masses
of dispossessed Southerners fester, and rot,
will their bodies succumb to the infection,
crippling them, for generations to come?

Who’ll remember?



Copyright 2005 by Larry J. Knight, Jr.