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The Bad Busker
The bad soprano busker is back rehearsing murder of a violin for the poor tourists who just want to eat beignets in peace The danse macabre of summer Sugar Plum Fairies melting in June’s heat, squawking like a collapsing accordion another Happy Birthday and then Anchors Aweigh and I wonder if come fall he’ll know… Continue reading
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Three Years August (New Orleans 2008)
Three years August and the storms are being named like epic ships, a doom upon our shore, and I think of the levees still leaking and of the flood walls patched with paper mache, our Potemkin defenses are not ready and we are not ready and the Big One is out there, invisible, a mighty… Continue reading
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Shattered
If I should die now Oh if this moment should indeed prove to be the corner I’ve spent thirty-five years painting myself into think only this of me That one more cheap camera has shattered against the world’s beauty. — Everette Maddox Continue reading
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Ad Odd Fellows Memorial Day
An excerpt of a longer piece originally published on Toulouse Street – Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans. I was born in 1957 and so I am reckoned by some one of the last of the baby boomers, that generation borne by the parents who went through World War II. I grew up in… Continue reading
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Moonlight Over Washi
the words from my pen are the shadows of flowers Soseki Continue reading
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Another Police Riot
The NYPD vomitedout of armored trucksblack as the horses of Lorca’sGuardia Civilformed battle linesbrutality of batonspepper spraybreathing dragoonsthey beat punched kickedthe world’s new Gypsieswho renounce boundariesclaim no nation buthumanity. Todayit is Palestine.Tomorrow they will comefor all the unbelieversthe insufficiently patrioticfamilies of solidaritywho still count dollarsanarchist Discipleswho refuse to produce ID Black Terror of churchesviolent riots… Continue reading
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The Old Man and the R
All I managed so far today in NYC is coffee, the Strand Bookstore (but only the first floor where poetry is), lunch and back in bed in my hostel closet with my feet up. Not ruling out a nap before I leave to meet the kids at 3:00. I am not the mad dog Americano… Continue reading
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The JFK Airtrain
The JFK air train chased by banshees through the small tunnels. No one else seems to notice. This is not the screeching wheel of a subway car but a haunted high-pitched vox humana tritone of torment. I am alone in the crowded car with their howling. Continue reading
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The sound of an oud
“I resolve to see anew, to take sight into my hand to spill the blood of the sacred wounds of witness…” “Fill your pen with love or don’t bother picking it up.” From Piedra by Luis Alberto Urrea It is difficult to bear witness to this world without anger. There are worlds of oppression that… Continue reading
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[ALL THOSE SHIPS THAT NEVER LANDED]
After Bob Kaufman‘s All Those Ships That Never Sailed All those ships that never landed in the Port of Gaza, their cargoes of bread and of medicine for the hospitals reduced to rubble, are now stranded in other ports, empty, bleeding rust. Trapped in a racist nightmare land with no hope of escape by sea… 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 