There's No Way Out This Sadness?

                                By Rudolph Lewis

Rivers, lakes, and oceans, we’ve had

aplenty & bayou blues & camelbacks

A Canal Street of tourists & low wages

cultural colonies of Zulus & Mardi Gras

Indians, they too were in abundance like

banana trees in narrow alleys & dreamers

But flood waters washed away Treme

& Piety, the play on Desire & Gentilly

Now speculators in Benz & Lincoln ride

now by abandoned houses on empty streets

N’awlins, there’s no way out this takeover

*   *   *   *   *

posted 23 September 2005