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Desire Street 505a
Desire Street
May, 1995
cyberspace chapbook of
The New Orleans Poetry Forum
established 1971
Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium
Listserv: DESIRE-ST@SOUBELLE.JAXX.COM
Email: Robert Menuet, Publisher
robmenuet@aol.com
Mail: Andrea Saunders Gereighty, President
New Orleans Poetry Forum
257 Bonnabel Blvd.
Metairie, La 70005
Programmer: Kevin Johnson
Copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum
(21 Messages for May, 1995)
3 whiteman jazz band
(Cafe Lautrec, 18th St., NW, Washington, DC - '94)
by Kevin Johnson
so we're talkin' SHIT
in that HUSH between sets
when 'bOOM-bOO-bOO-BOOM,bOOM-bOO-bOO-BOOM...'
& the former line-backer, now
hardware store manager,
knows hes got the UP
on just doin' his WEEKEND-THING,
bald globe gleamin'
as if ANY other middle-age exertions for chumps,
bass lines BOOMIN'
like his HEART after a TACKLE
So we're MOUTH TO EAR
yellin' punchlines & SHIT
'bAM-bA-bA-bAM-bAM-bAM-SPLASH, bAM-bA-bA-bAM-bAM-bAM-SPLASH...'
& the buddhist/mathematicians
doin' the Taoist 1000 stroke method,
workin' SO GOOD
the kit SWEATS,
face makin' caricatures of
AGONY/ECSTASY
So, like a LIGHT rain after THUNDERIN'&LIGHTNIN',
we're swillin' & clappin' & SHIT
'tWING-tWING-tWING-tWAAANG-TWAAANG, tWING-tWING-TWAAANG...'
& the hippie-come-stockbrockers pickin' strings
like a MONKEY ON SPEED,
TRIPPIN' on blue-chip chords,
fillin' the air with the SMELL of cold cash
so, our last OVER-PRICED drinks are GONE
and we don't have money to put in thier HAT,
but we're really talkin' SHIT now,
to their PACKIN', TIP-TAPPIN'
with arms full o' wires, boxes and
big black luggage & SHIT
through us HYPED-UP fashionables
through a SLAMMIN' door
'SEE YA! TOO HOT! LATER MAN! YOU GOT IT! OWW.
YEAH, ALRIGHT! NOW SEE HERE I GOT A GIG
COMIN UP AND...'
& ha! even their leavins got a BEAT, a RHYTHM,
keepin' us from FADIN' OUT into silence & SHIT...
Desire
by Obra Melancon
Ask to be cool
and warm in the morning--
sun and summer breeze
through the bedroom window
add extra sparkle
to the afterglow
Then we love again--
slowly fingertips
move through curls
as our lips brush
together like leaves
limbs tremble
in fear of this moment
having to end
as our trunks
mesh
Then we love again--
roots intertwine
sap squirts, streaming
down the branches
of a bloomy oak.
Double Vision II
Reality
by Bonnie Crumley-Fastring
I
Wolf is awake
in me.
I am suspicious
of all that reeks of man.
Instinct leads.
Trust nothing of tradition.
I squirt my urine
in every corner of my house,
tear chunks of meat
out of life.
Blood dripping from my jaws,
No longer on my haunches,
I howl.
II
My mouth bites
into the round globe-like fruit.
The golden sweetened juices
drip down my chin, onto my
fingers. They are so sticky.
I dare not touch the furniture.
I bite straight through the bitter peel,
not bothering with a knife
this morning. I need to feel
the sun-kist fruit with all
my senses, would like to rub it
over my naked body.
Yesterday, I sat in the chair
across from my principal's desk,
while we examined the red crisp apples
of our mutual problem. She told me,
sweetly, apples were oranges.
In long descriptive sentences,
always smiling gently, she encouraged me to see the orangeness,
only becoming slightly irritated
when I could not.
"It's your mind, it's closed,"
she told me.
That evening I did each paper
according to her prescribed definition,
writing it down first, so I could double-think
apples into oranges.
However, a blackness rose inside me,
like a deadly mold after a bad freeze.
When you arrived home, looking different,
beard and mustache cut off,
I did not know you, doubted
my own sight, vomited black moldy
rotted fruit on you. I'm sorry.
The Fool speaks true
by Robert Menuet
Before the turn I look back. I hear:
"Who got turned into a pillar of salt?"
I turn round, roll past a Fool, one I've seen before.
Old sailor he seems, with duffel and sock cap,
perched on the floodwall.
I circle back and stop.
"Lot."
"Wrong, Lot's Wife."
An old trick.
I pedal on.
What will I say to him on the way back?
He must want to talk. It would be a kindness.
What did he mean?
Perhaps it was my lot to be the wife:
at the corner I looked back ,
saw only traffic; it hid the city.
His eye was on eternity.
But what to say to the old salt,
Now I'm back ?
Suddenly I know: speak like a madman to make a friend for pity's sake.
"Your thoughts cannot turn me into salt:
this column is flesh." I point to my leg.
"You cannot kill me with your mind,
for see I have returned,
and I will not turn my back on this city;
no, I will not turn my back on this city,
or on you; I will return again here with you."
He cringes, and his eyes turn red. Then his face.
"It wasn't me that did it,
It was Him." He points to heaven.
His eyes stay fixed on the sky,
as tears roll down his cheeks.
Next time
he will look away;
I'll walk past, say nothing.
El Higado
by Athena O. Kildegaard
In Batopilas, a Canadian
walked out in the
damp early light
and found some men
butchering a cow.
They used machetes.
The blood ran into
the mayor's yard.
The Canadian asked
for the liver, el higado,
and they handed it
to him, though they
thought it strange.
He held out his
two soft hands,
hands that played
a tenor sax the night before
under a canopy.
A couple danced in the rain,
their clothes so wet
they had become naked.
He held out his hands
and a man placed the liver
into the bowl of his palms.
It sought the open windows of
his fingers, and he carried it
back to his lover, thus:
the deep wound of the cow
spreading before him.
House Painter
by Kerry Poree
I was the house painter
in that universal painter's uniform
undershirt
white pants
bandanna for a cap
spotted shoes
a rag (back pocket).
You? A professor woman.
I couldn't do binary numbers
but I knew
what a Beaufort scale was
what leeks are good for
what flat top cypress wish for
and how to tint red, till she kissed back.
She
liked
that I still call her Miss
I have spotted shoes.
I KNEW
by Barbara Lamont
The last time
I held you in my arms
I knew it was the end
and savored each touch
each smell, each small and tender sound
what's going to happen to us
i asked, you answered
it's already happened.
Kentucky Derby, 1994:
When the Big Horse Won (Strodes Creek)
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
Alto Cumulus clouds trail plumes
like Bessemer, Alabama smokestacks
The same yellow and gun-metal grey
Eddie Delahoussaye wears
Astride
What a ride
on a track the color, consistency
of Mississippi mud
Too thin to plow, too thick to drink
"Yielding" the announcer calls it.
And the rain pelts us, the jockeys, the horses,
ladies' spring bonnets, Jones of N.Y. suits
Sweat, bratwurst. Rain drives; hail from Hades
repeating, repeating like a villanelle
Go for Gin digs in the far turn
Hydroplanes the stretch
Eddie gives Strodes Creek the whip
brushes withers in feather-duster motion
blue electricity: forward, back
When he does that, horse, man and rain connect.
So my horse, ny number five in the Eighth
(I'd bet him across the board)
I bet him to win, I bet him to place, I bet him to show
He waltzes in second
as the crowd, freezing, roars, rises and belts out
"My Old Kentucky Home."
Laid Waste
by Stan Bemis
Ezra pounded
a manuscript that had been
placed in his possession.
No one looks objectively
to his or her own creation
but Ezra
had no such attachments.
He could pound it
up and down
to the right and to the left.
He could take a forest
and make it into a wasteland.
He could do it for the Elliot of it.
The writer, T.S.
genuflected in gratitude,
took the whittled pages,
stepping over the discarded ones,
for all of him they were leaves upon the floor,
not betrayed and neglected,
abandoned children
of his own imagination.
"Thank you, Mr. Pound," T.S. said.
"Think nothing of it," Ezra said,
careful to lock his blue-nosed pencil
in a drawer
despite the fact
it'd been worn down to a
stub.
Ezra had, critics were to say,
taken out the sense
but not the rhythm.
"It means," the original writer
said, "what you wand it to mean."
Then he chewed the ass off
a critic
who found it full of homosexuality,
tried to pound him through
the courts.
"Tell us what it means, then," the hungry
public cried
but T.S. demurred.
he didn't want to admit
he'd forgotten to ask his editor --
he only knew
what he'd originally intended.
The Phantom of Camp Lori
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
The state constitution of Louisiana limits
any new construction over coastal waterways.
Tired of it all, the sun
Turns its burned-out back
On the camp's charred skeleton.
Only pilings left, scorched
by a different fire.
Lake Pontchartrain covers the
Camp's remains, a fish-grey water skirt
Sewn with barnacles, in a sand-dollar print.
See for yourself: cross Hayne Boulevard
(Up the levee where joggers run) over
The railroad tracks.
People once danced the lindy
A juke box played on the camp's verandah.
Grizzled Gentilly residents
Hang out for beer at the Bacchus now.
As children, some vied at checkers
on the camp's floor, where the game was painted.
It wasn't the sea that rotted the place.
I mean she didn't go one piece at a time.
She burned one of those winters,
Rare in New Orleans, when the
Pipes freeze and crack.
A norther bellowed flames, finished her fast.
Something more than the egret lives,
I imagine from Gris-Gris, the camp east
I don't know it's her spirit, but I hear
Laughter in the acid-washed Little Woods evening fog.
THE SAME TALL TALE
(New Orleans)
by Byron Clement
An old mule halting
a tourist carriage
closes his ears and yawns:
His secret tongue swings wide
from a parabolic curve of teeth
like a comet in its orbit
stubbornly crossing our world's path
with another way of being
at Ursulines & Dauphine.
A Sentence About One Fucking Subatomic Particle
by Bob Rainer
It was late and I was tired
But I felt that one certain neutrino
That crossed my brow and fled down my cheek
With such staggering momentum
But so devoid of mass
That the soul-altering effects of its
Blind Passage was all that was necessary
To send me off again into a dimension of thought
With feelings so sensitive of the paths
Taken, and the Fool's choices made, and
That tiny neutrino was but a ripple in
The fabric of time which around me
I wrapped for comfort and glory.
Solo
by Obra Melancon
Speedy eyelids
racing mind
reality contaminates
the dream--
plays a song
a fake harmony
me (rebel rebel)
you and I
(a beautiful lie)
A woman-child brings
my numb flesh to life
leaves my soul buried
in values, a religion
a God to look-up-to--
I lose my eyes in the
clouds of my song
singing and singing
to the rhythm of
my own heartbeat
into the darkness
of my song.
Stroke the Cat
by Bob Rainer
She told me to love her
Like I was a nun stroking a cat,
Instead of like a baby shaking a rattle.
I was supposed to find the warmest parts and
tickle her fur.
Smooth her back until her legs were straight
and her claws extended.
When her eyes closed and her head was poised
at the end of her beckoning neck,
Roll her over,
Rub her stomach -- both ways.
Ruffle the fur,
Smooth the fur,
Ruffle the fur,
Smooth the fur,
Loin to belly to chest to neck,
Ruffle the fur,
Smooth the fur --
In a slow easy rhythm
Like a prayer for forgiveness.
She paid me back as would a cat.
When she left, I was confused.
Was I still the nun,
or had she just become one?
Super-Fund Site
by Kevin Johnson
bugs
dying
oh,
magnolia,
does
the
landfill
topsoil
burn?
under
dripping
water
ache
like
unborn
children
inside
dead
mothers
one-way
mirror
sky,
colored
like
new
eyes,
who
sees
us
laughing
murdering
caressing
courageously involuntary,
amock
in
our
somewhat
green
playground?
Mrs. Whipple, closing her writing book, watches as Tawna, Malcolm,
and Kenyata leave these school grounds forever. She thinks about
the only profession she's ever known.
Two Kings Over Danish
by Stan Bemis
Jesus had a chance encounter w/ Elvis
at a 24 hr convenience store
They bumped into ea other at
the bread rack
Although late at night they were
both wearing sun glasses
Despite their incognito disguises
they recognized ea other
immediately.
Elvis was a bit apologetic
"Lord," he said, "I didn't mean
to come back
I'm afraid the public's made
me
into a god of
sorts
the public sure has
been hard on me
I thought it would
end at death
but popular demand has brought me
back
It's had me traveling
around so much
it's made me
dizzy
'Lo, here is Elvis, Lo, there is Elvis'
& since I no longer exist
I'm at their whim."
"Come on," Jesus said, "Let's
go have a cup of coffee at Shoney's."
"My popularity," Jesus said over danish
"Has always been a marginal thing.
Everybody acclaims me 'Lord' this
& 'Lord' that
but nobody wants me.
The Beatles were right
they were more popular than
Me
but they were almost lynched
for pointing it out.
and Humperdink could
have said
the same thing...
I hang out w/ pimps & prostitutes
homeless and AIDS patients
and census takers
Religion is & always
has been
my greatest enemy.
First Judaism & now
Christianity
God! The things that are
done in my
name."
He sighed and sipped his
coffee.
"Because I do believe
in freedom
Freedom of choice
& individuals ability
to find me
I let it continue
at least for now
but the pope, Billy Graham,
etc. et al
have no idea how
much they
piss me off -
You, I always liked,
Elvis
in all your insanity
you tried to find
me
through
the haze of your own
notoriety...
You didn't ask to be King
& said there was only one
King & that
was me
but they didn't listen to
Me
I wonder if they actually
would have liked me
any better if I could sing."
The waitress making her
rounds
couldn't have cared less who
they were
two men in sun glasses
at 3:00 A.M.
She told one
that Shoney's would not make him a
fried banana sandwich
but, yes, to the other's
request for broiled fish.
to both she said,
"More coffee?"
Unintentional Predator
by Cedelas Hall
I have loneliness
enough to swallow
Los Angeles.
It breeds deep in my soul
and cries out for a kindred spirit.
It comes from being different
and there are no kindred spirits.
So I cry out to you
but you don't hear my heart.
You hear the natives' drums,
the sound of the hunt.
You smell the bait
in the snare.
But I have no snare.
I fear the hunters
as much as you.
You fear loss of freedom,
Count hours, minutes,
balanced against
your inner freedom clock.
Time, your talisman,
is insignificant.
It is the essence you withhold
that the black hole of need
inside of me craves.
My facade fools
the best of those
who pigeonhole and define.
I look grown up, secure...
benign.
But in the late night hours
when the hunger comes
I could
suck everything out of you
in ten minutes
and leave you an empty, dry husk
lying on the floor...
if ever
I let the loneliness
have full rein.
THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET
Stan Bemis, originally from California, is an artist & writer.
He is a frequent visitor to the Maple Leaf Bar's Sunday poetry
readings. He is currently working on a book of religious poetry
atempting to, in the words of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
"speak of God in a secular fashion." He has been a member of the
New Orleans Poetry Forum for some years.
Bonnie Fastring is a poet and teacher from New Orleans.
Byron Clement is a Bywater resident who walks through the Quarter
taking notes frequently.
Andrea Saunders Gereighty owns and manages New Orleans Field
Services Associates, a public opinion polls business and is
currently the president of the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Her poetry
has appeared in many journals, as well as in her book, ILLUSIONS
AND OTHER REALITIES.
Cedelas Hall has returned to poetry writing after a 20 year hiatus.
Her works range in subject matter from nostalgia to sex.
Kevin Johnson, Piscean, enjoys Tequila under the stars and writes
about the physiology of nothingness.
Athena O. Kildegaard is a freelancer writer and mother and
makes time between for writing poetry.
Barbara Lamont writes about fear.
Robert Menuet is a psychotherapist, marital therapist, and
clinical supervisor. Previously he was a social planner.
Obra Melancon does social work with the Office of Family Support
and has taught English at Xavier University.
Kerry Poree is an electrician from New Orleans.
Mary Riley is a semi-retired 30-plus-years social worker/child
care worker finally taking the time to write full time. Her current
project in addition to her poetry is a non-fiction book "A Year in
New Orleans" dealing with the paradoxes--the delights--the deaths
she has met in her five years there.
Bob Rainer is an Alabama redneck who lives in Metairie, Louisiana.
Christine Trimbo lives in a house that once neighbored Degas'
house. She has two bicycles but no cats.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Desire Street, May, 1995, copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum.
17 poems for May, 1995. Message format: 21 messages for May, 1995.
Various file formats.
Desire Street is a monthly electronic publication of the New Orleans
Poetry Forum. All poems published have been presented at weekly meetings
of the New Orleans Poetry Forum by members of the Forum.
The New Orleans Poetry Forum encourages widespread electronic
reproduction and distribution of its monthly magazine without cost,
subject to the few limitations described below. A request is made
to electronic publishers and bulletin board system operators that
they notify us by email when the publication is converted to
executable, text, or compressed file formats, or otherwise stored
for retrieval and download. This is not a requirement for publication,
but we would like to know who is reading us and where we are being
distributed. Email: robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet). We also publish
this magazine in various file formats and in several locations in
cyberspace.
Copyright of individual poems is owned by the writer of each poem.
In addition, the monthly edition of Desire Street is copyright by
the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Individual copyright owners and the
New Orleans Poetry Forum hereby permit the reproduction of this
publication subject to the following limitations:
The entire monthly edition, consisting of the number of poems and/or
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