The Protest - Pre-Deluge

We are the people of the Blackwater
and tainted land.

Disasters send us on pilgrimages
but this the promised land.

Spat from the mouth of the river
a poem of silt and malaria

then muddy blood and muddy roads
Cabilldos, wars, Storyvilles and songs

Pslams

echoed down family lines and brass band
dynasties.

Our story tellers be the music man
and tax rates creates fiefdoms.

In this mystical land we speak
the tongune unintelligible

Edible only to old souls and lost ones
we rise from marshlands

Like ancient stone cities
a chocolate empire

Where desire is a slum
and the muses names sung incorrectly

Melpomone, Calliope
hold waterproof deities
some days hopelessness

In this grave city
with roads shitty swallowing tires and dollars
and the concrete running with beads, blood
and empty handgrenades

scribes sit on memory land and contemplate
the future, in our tongue

weave from the Cajuns, Africans, Natives, and Europeans
this is the mystical city
this is the promised land
the homeland angels guard with choppers
and flaming swords

Where we burn trees and play choppa style
Where jazz was birthed
where bounce crept from between bricks
where fiends flip and hips drop
where cissies strut
and Lady Day sings the nighttime blues

We are born from blues
We are born from memory
we are born from Symphonies
and every block has an orchestra
of brass or chrome
this
the home to wayward spirits
who swim in long tees
baggy jeans, and fitted caps
old school raps and no limit flows
cash, money, dough
alligator heads and praline ladies, black babies
tapdancin on cobblestones with coke cans
cokeheads in office with gambles hands.

Hands on nuts
we look the enemy in they eye.

I look my enemy dead in the eye
Cause we the blackwater people
in our backwater city
beside the river that runs
to an oil tainted sea--

How could they let this happen to us?

This mystical city unreplicated
Impossible to copy, Impossible to escape
Impossible to betray

This is the promised land
always ruined by something
But this land is poetry

Spat from the mouth of the river
a poem of silt and malaria
and ancient magic
and its people are the words
and when read aloud
we say

Fuck You
B.P.

Rashad, 18, Spill Cleaner

My uncle stood with his feet in the waves.
I couldn’t see where his eyes was lookin
cause the water was so vast.
The “nothing in particulars” he loved
to gaze at and think about couldn’t be
seen. Only the silhouettes of rigs
like storm clouds too far away to care about.
the heat was more important, nut
my uncle didn’t notice it too deep in peace
making himself feel older than he was
by reflecting.

Me and my sister ran down to the water
broke the silence like a pair of hurricanes
the peace in his face shattered like a stoned
windowpane, couldn’t hear over the storm we made.
Then he danced in our rain of sand and dirty surf
we kept him young for a few more weeks.

Us fighting on the back seat was the only thing
that wiped his tired smiling away, always temporary.

He dies two months later.

Hurricanes come in from the seas.
Oil turns the seas bloody, rolling on shore.
Oil sits on top the new waterlines.
Homes and bodies grow waterlogged, rot
black and oily on body bags
in parking lot hospitals
beneath sun and above the muck.

Now I stand where my uncle used to,
clean up the spill by
watching it from beneath a tarp
sweating in this hazmat suit,
praying that my gaze is lying
that the oil will get washed away between
blinks.

I want to put my feet in the water like he did.
But they pay me to do nothing.

IV. The Meterologist

The day of what ifs came on the news

80 days into the oil spill,

30 days into hurricane season.

We did not sit on the edge of our seats

we stood on the edges of our chairs

with our heads in ropes

watching the tracking screens

watching the sea give birth to monsters

that we we named.

we walked into the news room with this good news

told the world that a new storm was born

and it was a boy, and he could expect brothers and sisters.

His name was Alexander

and he came to conquer us with his black army,

roused the oil from the murky depth and lead them across the waves

across the swamps and bayous and barrier reefs

up the river, down the block, down our throats

crushed us under his heel.

But one had to wonder if this was murder by nature

or man made suicide.

III. Joyce, 22, Student - New Orleans

They keep bumpin' us against the wall

they keep bumpin' us against the wall

they keep bumpin' me against the wall

tryin' to knock the oil off.

It wasn't much too long ago

that we got sprayed down with fire hoses

back in the day it was to deffer the dreams in our head

now it's to put out the flames in our skin

livin in this oil ridden much New Orleans.

The blackwater rolled in

on the floodwater high tides

spilled over the levee sides

and the oil swam above water with us.

Our eyes saw the water lines,

old and new as the sun rose the next day

and the sun saw the oil supplies

heat rose, I watch the flames grow

as my auntee house burns

grass dyin, birds fallin' from the sky and power lines

like the clouds cryin and it's death outside

knockin down the door

smoke risin

it was a year for crematin, the ground too soft to

bury the dead in, too unpure to grow souls in

and we too poor to afford the caskets and the family tombs

we too poor to afford the evac buses and the cars and the hospital rooms

all we got is where we was born

for what that's worth.

Now we all oil barons.

II. Gregory, 32, Father - New Orleans

You try to scream

but terror takes the sound

before you cash it.

Haha.

The oil man came to town

on a water truck, said he had the tanks sealed

oil leaked, now he fucked the water up, oh lawd

when I see that green truck

throat burnin, hopes up

now crushed caused they fucked the water up

I'm standing in line with the black-faced, pale skinned

bodies shakin' like dead leaves in this water line

B couldn't foot the bill so now they pay us with this life line

Clean water

More valuable than the billions you can barter

Mr. Obama bitchslap 'em but the Man held his hand

this is the best of the plan, but the plan's flawed

couldn't leave my homeland of New Orleans

so I'm livin in the muck with my kinfolk

Look down the line

I'm starin in iodine colored eyes

my baby holdin a pelican doll

brown feathers gone blackened

cracked lips water sensin

now tremblin' at the lack of a drink

ahead and behind grown men cryin'

grannies dyin'

this city is a cemetery

sufferin' the five year curses

the five year dooms

the 4 year terms

the red-tape blues

Woe is me and woebegon

woebegotten

alive, but body rottin and rotten

in the city that forgot to care

in the city that care forgot

take heed to we the misbegotten

Fuck this line.

I. The Narrator

We drink black water
eat black fish
black birds on the skyline

black waves in black lagoons
black streets
black street signs

black bodies movin in FEMA
look up at the black sky
tinted with the oil fume

fire plumes, smokin skulls
smokin tar & oil balls
out of pelican skulls

black times ahead
oil barons high, poor falls
stock fall like gallows

On this oil plantation
and the billionaire pirates
cover the coast with whip scars

black hands reach for black cash
disaster zone with the black masks
black body bags

petroleum poisonin & red flags

Decades pass, oil poisoned river
citizens in black camo
black soljah rags

breathing black gas
drinking black water
black joke, have mercy

poisoned Plaqamines, St. Bernard Big Easy,
where it ain't easy
down here in Louisiana

home of the newage
Black Water Mercenaries.

The Introduction, or What this is

The Oil Spill has been getting to me lately. It’s not just the spill itself, or its existence, or the other bullshit surrounding it, so much as it is the disaster potential the spill has. I wanted to write about it from the first day I learned of it, but I couldn’t find the words to talk about it in the present, and I figured by the time I talked about it’s occurrence it would only be therapy.

So, I decided to write about the Oil Spill in the future. My intent is to give the oil spill’s potential impact a portrait. My intent is to give a reader a glimpse of what could be, so that it can be prevented. And in the process burn away the fears, cynicism, and so on that I’m feeling.

I’ll be writing a series of storytelling poems about the oil spill, set a few years into a future where the 2010 Hurricane Season and the Oil Spill collide, leading to a mass spill across Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. BP, unable to pay citizens for the damages, has been charged with leading the clean-up process for the disaster. They provide our water, food, and they contain and clean up cities and areas affected by the storm. In the midst of this, people are struggling to survive the fumes, the rot, and the inevitable problems that come with a disaster.

As our people usually do, there are some of those who stayed behind to guard their homes or couldn’t afford to go elsewhere. There are expats who’ve come to assist with the clean up, meteorologists trying to keep the clean up effort ahead of the coming hurricanes, and other characters that I want to portray with my words. I’m going to write this out until I burn out.

If this catches on, I hope other artists with a way for words or art will join in on this concept and create things around it. We have the same potential to save our homes as the oil spill does to destroy them. I’m gonna try to contribute something to saving home.

So. Here are the first two poems of the series. Excuse the title if it’s kinda corny, it’s apt to change.

Peace,

Dane