poetry
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The mind of Mark walks in the park
The ghastly drowned all float face down except for sweet Ophelia. Continue reading
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Smells Like Late Capitalism
Duck and coverHave anotherIt’s your favoritecherry flavor Have anotherthere’s no work hereone more day spentdrinking cheap beer. It’s your favoriteCome and take itsoda waterthat’s been snake bit Cherry flavorfactory savorturn the world offduck and cover Hello. How low. Hell no. Let’s go!What’s that? Black cat. Boss fat. Take that!Wrench in. No spin. No sin. We’ll… Continue reading
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My Lost Years
This poem by Charles Olson so clearly captures my lost years, when poetry and I were strangers. The dose for bi-polar stole the lightning from my mind where poetry is born and I walked among the the dead of spirit. La Chute my drum, hollowed out thru the thin slit,carved from the cedar wood, the… 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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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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NaPo WriMo Day 2; War Day 27
My Radio Is Bleeding My radio is bleeding heinousnews of war and ethnic cleansing.Once this nation and its allieswent to war to stop atrocity.Now it cowers in fear of lobbyistswho insist it endorse the horror,as the innocent inmates huddlein the concentration campawaiting death or ethnic cleansing. History did not start in October.A few of us… Continue reading
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Letter to myself
I wonder what sponsor counseled the guy whowrote me the apology letter for fucking my wife.It started I believe that night in the restaurant barwhen I couldn’t take her or another drink andleft them alone with a pitcher of margaritas. I’m sure she must have written but I don’t rememberreceiving or reading her letter. I… Continue reading
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Ghazal for the Lost
I first I called this a ghazal because of the form, but then I said, this is not an amatory poem for the absent beloved. Until I realized it was. What is this land for which my grandfather weeps into his tea?My plot is cinder block and corrugated tin. The door has no key. What… Continue reading
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Three Years August
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 wind,… Continue reading
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Is it speaking?
Excellent poetic advice from Julia Bloch from today’s Poem-A-Day “Valley Oak.” I laid the stems of letters across wet pages. Does itsit right at the hip? Is itin key? Is itmimetic? Is it lacy or sparking?Is it speaking? 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 