A note to myself

A note to myself:

I do not really want to move, because

Every place appears just as numbingly barren

New Orleans calls with promises

Of being mugged, shot, stabbed or cured

I am a man standing in the middle of traffic

Straight up like a cypress tree

Knotty and erect wading in a swamp

Peering at the passers by immune to the sludge

Cascading my ankles, it appears as hardened cement

For the voyagers, I constantly remind myself

I have options I can raise these knees

Step to the left or back to the right

Avoid this highway of numb

Choose either unknown

Part of me is trying to keep venturing left

To see my New Orleans back from beyond Ignatius’ wasteland

Fear clumps to my heart like caked mud

A crawfish hole towers for anything to claw its way out

In time, for a spring season only to be boiled alive

As if any of the colors will be promising

Back and forth faith undulates like the waves to a Grand Isle dock

Salt water oxidizing the implants in my skull

Android thinking placates my humanity slipping into an underground

Of roots, wandering roots stretching for a substance

Inside the current environment avoiding the reality

That walking out of here may only be a fantasy

It rains every afternoon in summer, the heat boils over

Humidity thick in the sky like a rice pot

The pressure burst my pod years ago, splat mush for carrion types to scour

Thoughts scurried like grubs and worms to wiggle under earth

But all I find is this cement hardened like a ceiling

Can not breathe when it rains, and it always rains

Pours like a fender to the face, a tire to the pectoral

So many crawfish should have never tried to cross the road