I'm in the Eye of Katrina

By Joe Williams III

The water rushed into the Desire projects
And my spirit dreamt freedom
I'm holding on to this floating log
Called freedom
Looking back into the bowels of the slave ship
With tiny pieces of white cotton
Under my fingernails
There's daddy over there
Hanging in the magnolia tree
With white flowers and sweet aroma
As blood flows across Katrina's fury
A fury that tries to wash my sorrows away
Like Uncle Buck who died in Angola prison
Or Little Man killed over a string of Mardi Gras
Beads, as the Black Indians parade the Desire projects
Skinny Minnie cannot sell her body to nobody
Today, cause the water is up to her elbows
Besides, Minnie don't take no wet money
I hear the babies crying under water
Sounds like the scratching of the Hip-Hop
Disc-jockeys, only more misunderstood.
Ain't suppose to build no house on sand,
Or under water,
Or near a broken dam, or on the backs of a broken
People.
I'm so lonely I could die,
I want my childhood back,
Sitting on the railroad track eating watermelon,
Catching crawdads with chicken on a string,
Night time holding my lighting bugs in a mayonnaise jar,
Listening to my momma singing the blues,
And my grand momma spitting out the gospel notes,
I knew the water was coming,
It always did, all my life.
I knew the water was coming
That's why I was always crying,
Always crying,
Ever since I first heard about Africa,
And those slave ships,
I knew the water was coming,
I was always crying,
Sometimes on my knees,
But always was crying,
I been fighting that dirty, bloody water all my
Entire life,
That dirty, bloody, smelly, nasty, filthy, polluted water.
All my bloody life, I been fighting that bloody water.
Why is they trying to drown me, again

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posted 21 October 2005