New Orleans
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Not Enough Death
The crows are crying for peanuts.I guess there’s not enough death in the world today. There is no newsfeed in Crowin the wires where they waitI guess. I’ve got doom enough to shareand so I keep my carrioncousins close. I feed them peanuts untilI can get my hands on more worthy fodder. I have a Continue reading
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Drunk Bigots Blowing Shit Up
My German and French Acadian people, who arrived 50 years before the “American” revolution, were sold to “America” a century after they arrived here, unconsulted, along with the slaves in the fields and the “merciless Indian Savages” who showed the founders true democracy and were crushed for it. All just another colonial commodity to the Continue reading
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The One Who Vanished into Silence
My first wake-up-to-anxiety attack in more than a month, since I started changing medications to get the hell off Prozac which aggravated my REM sleep disorder. Personal stress meets the Big Bastardly Bill, the realization as Independence Day approaches at the constitutional United States is now a failed state, that everything I was raised to Continue reading
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Looks Like It Might Be Fixin’ To Storm Rag
Where should we direct our prayers now that the government is decommissioning hurricane weather satellites? I don’t do Catholic anymore so the city’s Lady of Prompt Succor is out. And many people in the United Christian States of America think that idolatry. Burnt offerings seem a bit much in our new heat regime, although the Continue reading
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Happy Transcendent Birthday Allen Ginsburg
Happy Birthday Allen. Sing us next a Song of Innocence from the Transcendent Vortex Sutra. Continue reading
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The Man Who Knew Godot
Long ago when I first started as an undergraduate I was at a bar speaking to an old man and told him I was an English major and he asked me to recite a poem. I couldn’t. Maybe I could manage Poe’s The Bells for I had that by heart once. Memorizing poetry was a Continue reading
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They Lifted Me Up
Lee Meitzen Grue when she came up after open mike at the Gold Mine and suggested a journal for the poem I’d just read and later solicited a poem for New Laurel Review. Darrel Borque, before a large crowd as he handed on the state laureate ‘s crown to his successor, when he said, So Continue reading
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The Surrender of New Orleans
The rode in our Mardi Gras Parades: ICE, La Migra, in an armoured car labeled Police (they are not; they can’t arrest anyone without a judicial warrant), in forest camo and tactical vests throwing beads and bobbing their heads on the 1 and 3 to the adjacent band. They rode through a city that would Continue reading
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Gods and Monsters
The gods were always monstrous. Ovid told us so. The Hebrew Bible is a nightmare for the less elect. The Great Men of history were always clay, hollow idols filled with iniquity. As the old gods drifted out of focus we raised up new idols on mythic screens with headline testaments. We hymned the chosen Continue reading
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Struck numb
Struck numbin the new yearby fresh horrors.The old yearscythes throughthe new, bodiesscattered likefirework wrappers.A year bornin blood and terrorwith politicianscrawling overthe mangled carcassfor the cameras. Monster truckzero to 60in four secondssilent electricengine twistscelebrationinnocentssheet metalinto horror.Does it matterwhich flagor religionthis broken mandeclared his banner? Each newhorror inspiresa lone Hero(he thinks)ready trainedto kill the Othermore horrificallyto honor Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 