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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
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Washed Away
Jimmy Reiss, a prominent local businessman and then-head of the (New Orleans) Business Council, told the Wall Street Journal that the city would come back in “a completely different way: demographically, geographically, and politically”, or he and other white civic leaders would not return. The Bricks laid carefully byCreole craftsmen demolished,replaced with mock historicalstick and… Continue reading
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Becoming
“I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”– Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Continue reading
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We are here to laugh at the odds
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own… Continue reading
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The Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness
The medication for REM sleep disorder, what leads me to occasionally smack Patrice with my left arm as I reach out to catch a baseball or assume yoga positions while asleep, foregrounds my amazing Technicolor dreamscape which I jokingly refer to as the Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness. It is overriding another medication… Continue reading
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Why Not A Dryad?
Why a water nymphin this featured fountainand not a dryad in this colonnade of bearded oaks old as Moses?There are pools in the wood.Just ask Acteaon. Continue reading
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Museum of the Broken Heart
Apologies to Andy YoungYour poems. of course, are brilliantMy star, right now, is not Trying to read another’s grief fine lines on dull paper through the fog the smoke of a nation in flames I think instead I’ll gather up all my Everett Maddox to read by the sports TV light at the bar around… Continue reading
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The Agency of Chaos
A. I would not be here if I had not started my medication. B. I would not be here if I hadn’t stopped my medication. Both things are true. (Pages of examples, good and bad.) Continue reading
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Enemy of the Wrong People
I’ve never requested my FBI file but I’m pretty sure it goes back over 50 years to my freshman year in high school. Our service class was a comparison between the US and Soviet system. And there was a model UN. I was assigned Taiwan, and decided instead in 1971 to represent the People’s Republic… 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 