resistance
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2025
On The Centennial of Benito Mussolini’s Assumption of Dictatorial Powers in 1925 let us string piano wire like holiday tinsel and hang memorial ornaments to resistance, dangle the masked fatigue green monsters by their ankles while singing the carol of the partisan, crack poppers heard round the world and wear paper tricorn hats of Lexington… Continue reading
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Reading the News at Breakfast
they break us like eggs to feed their insatiable hungerleaving us nothing—just their careless mess expecting us to clean up in quiet obedience it’s time to press theiruncalloused hands into the fire untiltheir grasping fingers sizzle like bacon Continue reading
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The Price of Humanity
I am increasingly comfortable with the karmic cost of my unbridled hate for MAGA. My father was not a bad man; certainly not an evil man. I wish for everyone MAGA from Trump on down, all of them, what my father wished for the Nazis in Belgium in 1944: in service to the ideals of… Continue reading
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Shin Féin
Shin Féin, literally We Ourselves or Ourselves Alone, was raised as a cry and slogan my friend Ashley Morris on his blog after Katrina/The Federal Flood. He was the man who first said Fuck You You Fucking Fucks. John Goodman’s character in the HBO show Treme was based in part on Ashley. It was clear… Continue reading
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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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Jump
Don’t move left or right. Don’t creep like a pawn. Move like Knight rampant. Move like a Queen. Continue reading
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A poem is only non-violent
A poem is only non-violentif its edge is dull. No roseshere at the razor wire frontierof a future built with bones.There are no butterflies on the wire; your lover’spastoral visa is cancelledno dreamscapes; only nightmares.You can run to the lyric gardenbut you can’t hide. They’ll comefor the lovers and poetssure as Winston Smith. Your MasterCard… Continue reading
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It must be made over
“We must realize that the world as it is isn’t worth saving; it must be made over.” Continue reading
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History II: Revenge of the Stupid
There is nothing quite as vacuous Americanas the remake, the failure of imaginationafter the MBAs and the accountantstake control, repeating the same stories over and over like a time-tested lullabyuntil everyone is sufficiently asleep. Are you ready for the AI directeddo-over of Kent and Jackson Stateor for Detroit 67 and Watts 68?Japanese Internment? Operation Wetback?The… Continue reading
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Pas Ton Dieu
Perhaps your god but my gods are not masters. Odin gifts poetry and Thor protects. They inspire but do not govern me. Your god demands you kneel. My gods expect me to stand. May the friend of ravens cast Gungnir over MAGA so his friends may feast. May Thor stand beside us with Mjolnir as… 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 