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William Burroughs would like a word (or two)
I remember 22 and I don’t mind dying. I always had one last 1957 silver certificate folded in my wallet, coins for the phone, and the way to the next whiskey bar. Repeat after me: 504-522-9771. Manias magnificent opening night after night. The curtain of purple cannot mute the applause in my head. Repeat after… Continue reading
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This Solstice Night
Jera This Winter’s NightA modern Rune Poem of Jera Call up the sun with bonfire.Wheels turn poorly in the snowwithout encouragement. Let firebring stars down to snowy Earthand to eyes bright with wine.If the Moon is dark be solemn,silently watch the stars wheel.If the moon is bright, turn in dance.Drape the garlanded everlastingwith bright pearls… Continue reading
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Yuletide Miracles
Lifted from an old Wet Bank Guide post, during the Long Exile. But I believe in Christmas miracles. A decade ago, my three-year old daughter fell in love with a character called Rugby Tiger, from an obscure Muppet’s movie call the Christmas Toy. Having Rugby Tiger was her only Christmas wish, the secret she shared… Continue reading
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Cool Runnings
When the ladies at work* put up the question on the whiteboard, what movie makes you cry, I had to jump up and write my name and Cool Running, and explain:.at the last, after the crash, after the final “Sanka mon, you dead”, when what’s Derice says “we need to finish” and they carry the… Continue reading
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Why I did not grow more conservative with age
More on this after I finish organizing my thoughts. Writers are among the most sensitive, most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists. The writer’s ability to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange, & to mystify the familiar—all this is the test of her or his power. — Toni Morrison Continue reading
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Reading Lorca While Thinking Of Palestine
From the “Ballad of the Civil Guard, by Garcia-Lorca. The gypsies gatherat Bethlehem’s portal.Full of wounds, Saint Josephshrouds a young maiden.Sudden sharp riflesring through the night.The Virgin heals childrenwith spittle from stars.But the Civil Guard advances,sowing bonfires.where imagination burnsyoung and naked.Rosa of Camboriosmoans on her doorstep,with her two severed breastslying on a platter.And other girls… Continue reading
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The Whole World Is Watching
Once we were inured to horror by the smallness of our televisions, war a crackling black and white firefight a world away, until the cartoon television generation became their own Justice League and rose up singing, Love, children it’s just a kiss away it’s just a kiss away. They kept the cameras out next time,… Continue reading
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Old Black Joe
“I’m a comin’ I’m a comin ‘though my head is hanging low.” These lyrics were sung in some forgotten cartoon of my youth by a stereotypical bipedal hound dog. Only recently when they popped into my head a couple of times that I discover they were taken from the lyrics of “Old Black Joe” by… Continue reading
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The Fun House of Madness.
In a comment on a post of on Facebook I came up with the perfect description of my nightly dreamscape: A film by Federico Fellini, produced by Luis Briñel, from a script by David Lynch, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Or as I like to to call it The Chase Light Colliope Fun House of… Continue reading
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Heathen
“A heathen, conceivably, but not I hope an unenlightened one.”— Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man 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 