MarkFolse's profile

Its after the end of the world. Don't you know that yet? We are weary of our past, the ruins unrelieved by shepherds or fauns, the painted signs fading on the wall, the stories we're compelled to tell like reckoning Noah's ancestors and begots. Floods of private tears on forgotten boulevards in the no man's land back of town. Newspaper kindled rage and murder reruns on the news again. An unrelenting hammering in the brain. Our Plimsoll marks sunk beside collapsing wharves. The cranes standing...

Its after the end of the world. Don't you know that yet? We can't escape the past, the ruins strewn about the landscape, the painted signs fading on the wall, the stories we're compelled to tell like reckoning Noah's ancestors and begots. Floods of private tears on forgotten boulevards in the no man's land back of town. Newspaper kindled rage and murder reruns on the news again. An unrelenting hammering in the brain. Our Plimsoll marks are sunk beside collapsing wharves. The cranes stand dere...

It is possible to live in a New Orleans unmarked by disaster, to limit yourself to the circumscribed island of high ground along the river and avoid the streets that stretch block after block into mile after mile of persistent ruin. Confine yourself to downtown, to the French Quarter and Central Business District or stay Uptown below Prytania Street and it is pretty much the city a half-million fled in August 2005. Even the so-called Isle of Denial along the river is hardly a perfect place. I...

The new planted vine sure looks straggly next to its boisterous neighbors, alone on the end like the runt of the litter pushed to the hind teat. Sweat drips on the roots as I bury them in mulch on Spring's first hot day. Soon honeysuckle will skitter up the fence like swarming anole and I will have stars even when a cloudy night obscures the full moon, wallowing in that heavenly, confederate scent of hot June nights.

"Our precious hearts are all shattered, scattered across the land. And I know that I'm going back to a place where I know who I am" -- Susan Cowsill in "Crescent City Snow" Last night I met the man who brought me home. No, he didn't carry me on his back like St. Christopher or ferry me home in a boat or even loan me twenty bills. Still, it is because of him that I find myself here on the shores of my own personal Ithaca. The meeting that resulted was not as profound as it sounds. A sideman in...