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Dymphna, Patron of the Mad
I am reading On A Wednesday Night poems from the creative writing workshop at the University of New Orleans, and discovered a saint story I don’t recall from my confirmation Book of Saints. That is likely because I had the boy’s edition, from which we were to select our confirmation name. I chose Thomas after… Continue reading
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Touched with fire
“Sufficient anxiety is its own / persistent meditative state.”. – K.S. Reading an MFA anthology of a program I’m interested in and halfway through I come across a poem that makes me think: bipolar disorder. Most students have two or three poems and she has only one. I hope she made it. I recently met… Continue reading
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Just another manic Monday
Sunday Neurosis: Victor Frankl is thought to have coined the term Sunday Neurosis referring to a form of depression resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over. Psychology Wiki. Saturday’s are my least favorite day of the week. Allowed to just sit and drink… Continue reading
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The Old New Orleans
I was locked out of Lakeview NextDoor for three days after I called out a woman who said the poor services at the West End Walgreens was likely due to “corporate DEI” goals or quotas, I forget which and can’t see her post again for three days. My first comment was, “wow, did you really… Continue reading
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Re-reading Hopscotch in the 21st Century
In Defense of the Kindle When I first read Hopscotch in mass-market paperback edition late in high school in the 1970s, I was taken by the combined celebration and critique of mid-20th century bohemia. I was drawn to it perhaps because I was also reading the Beats, and learning of the early folk scene in… Continue reading
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Age 13.
Headphones. Sticky Fingers. Dreaming not of Farrah Fawcett but of Nico and Marianne Faithful.“It’s just that evil life has got you in it’s sway.” This explains so much of the last 50 years. “Wild Horses… Continue reading
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I was cured, alright.
Last Friday night I drank one cocktail (a bit strong) and one dropper of my THC tincture. When I went to bed I was looking for something to read and opened John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, and it clicked for the first time in years. I wrote a half dozen lines, finished them the next… Continue reading
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Do Not Go Gently Into That Future
“Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, fields eroded, streams polluted & mountains overturned. Continue reading
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And now, for something completely different.
I just wrote what I think is a thoughtful, coherent political think piece of 691 words. It is the longest thing I have written in the last several years. And I have a lot more to say. The secret to returning to a life of writing is to start writing. So I am going to… Continue reading
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Ten Years After
It has been four months since I stopped Risperidone, the drug which lobotomized the creative part of my brain which danced hand in hand with Bipolar Disorder. And I have not kept this blog up, which is not a good sign. And I still struggle to read serious poetry, which was at the center of… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and minor poet in and 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 helped inspire Treme, and Toulouse Street, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His poetry and other writing has appeared in the New Laurel Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Rumpus and elsewhere.
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Well Bottom Blues 