lyric essay
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Teach me to dance again
“I advance slowly, a dead man, and my vision, no longer my own, is nothing now: it is merely that of a human animal who unwittingly inherited Greek culture, Roman order, Christian morality and all the other illusions that make up the civilization in which I live and feel.”— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet… Continue reading
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I Ask The Trees
I ask the trees how to grow old slowly I see my face in a century of live oak barkRemain evergreen they say Welcomebirds & weather each season equallyStudy deadfall what rises out of it thrivingThe most ancient live oak is not eternal Continue reading
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It’s All Too Much
At last my soul explodes! “Anywhere! Just so it is out of the world!” — Charles Baudelaire You were never meant to hold that much without breaking, the ad for some tincture promising happiness said. The fan of folders overrunning your desk, incessant instant messages, discordant chorus of desk telephones, flickering fluorescent overcast. It’s… Continue reading
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The turkey don’t get no respect
September’s Prompt from Field Generator:Write a one-page monologue generated from a single found line (spoken by a character on a TV show, an influencer, a minister, a child, something overheard at a restaurant, waiting in line at the post office, etc.). Begin the monologue with that sentence, then follow your personal inclinations and poetic imagination… Continue reading
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Surrender
I was always troubled by the title of the beautiful John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana collaboration Love Devotion Surrender. Surrender was never an appealing option for me. I burn with a defiant Promethean fire only death will extinguish. And yet as I grow older, surrender calls me: not to the feet of the tin idol… Continue reading
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Safe As Milk
Gay zoned, a particular space in the friend zone in which she says, I loved my gay friends. It was so safe there. You could be yourself. You could be sexy without worrying about someone trying to get into your pants. She said this after I confessed again it wasn’t her cheek or forehead I… Continue reading
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My Five 5 O’clock Shadow
Why I go back to the park sometimes at 5:00 or 5:30. We’re good acquaintances. He sometimes visits the bench where I read earlier in the day, or salutes me with his head when I pass. He’s not giving up a good, shady spot if it’s just me. He only startles and bolts if I… Continue reading
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Ekphrasis: The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa Through the lens of imminent disaster Fuji—the anchoring backdrop of ten thousand pastoral moments–—is a disinterested bystander. The mountainous water towers over the iconic peak and the doomed boats. The sailor’s backs are turned to the crest of threatening fingers, their hands clasped in muscular prayer… Continue reading
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Drifting Into Brautigan
The more time I spend walking in the forest the further I’m drifting into Richard Brautigan. I don’t fish but I like to watch the herons do it and I sometimes write about it, too. He’s tonic to the orchestral noise blaring at what might be the last Fourth of July. It’s all John Phillip Firework patriotism here… Continue reading
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The Only Worthy Lotus
Walking is meditation if it is morning chorus and kaleidoscopic green. Not stillness. Not silence. Not transcendence. Follow instead the breath of everything. I don’t want to escape this world but instead to live deeply within it. I don’t want to approach the lotus unless I can wade in to admire it. Walk widdershins around… 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, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, 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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