cryptic envelopment
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Conquer the Impossible
It was impossible to make it through the tragedy Without poetry. — Joy Harjo 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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We Live in Smoke
we live in smoke not as the ancestors did old stories around the fire passing a pipe, the dark flavor of roasted meat we suck the unburnt carbon of our world as if we each just lit a cigarette Continue reading
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Debussy
Reading Federico Garcia Lorca in the woods. 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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Everybody Loves Rilke
Them: Rilke. Me: Really? Everybody loves Rilke. This seems to be a universal phenomenon. It’s like the attachment you still have to the first person you fucked with mutual pleasure as a teenager. A lover, not a girlfriend or a barroom romance. I get it. He speaks to the soul with an overwhelming and fluent… Continue reading
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Weight of Witness
I DON’T KNOW HOW MANYSOULS I HAVEFernando Pessoa I don’t know how many souls I have.I’ve changed at every moment.I always feel self-estranged.I’ve never seen or found myself.From being so much, I have only soul.A man who has soul has no calm.A man who sees is just what he sees.A man who feels is not… Continue reading
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Agoraphonia
Trying to read Bernadette Mayer’s Agoraphobia over lunch in a crowded food court is like a holiday in schizophrenia. The sentences run like rivulets after a wave back into the ocean of voices echoing off the walls & I can no more find the sense of it than I can explain the mathematics of fractals… Continue reading
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How do you love this world?
How do you love this world? How do you, after you’ve ingested all its cruel lessons, all the poison and disappointment and rage and betrayal of it? Is it accomplished through religion? Do you pray without ceasing? The oak tree is always praying. But how do you love this life? How do you honor this… Continue reading
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Mary Oliver
To: The Algorithms Re: Mary Oliver Yes I love poetry and Mary Oliver writes lovely poems but constantly popping her up on my timeline is like suggesting I practice relaxation breathing in the kitchen as I make a cup of tea while the house is on fire. 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 