No Mardi Gras Without Soul

—for Tonya Maria

I am torn by joys & hopes
rung in on New Year’s Eve
Nagin asks us
to remember the dead
while daily he betrays the living
He’d get his butt kicked
in certain Houston zip codes

At Palm Court in the French Quarter
jazzmen open their horn cases
for 90-dollar-a-person suppers
—haute cuisine, all-night bars
steamboats & courtyards
the lowering of a giant gumbo pot

Down the road on the corner
at Claiborne Avenue a Red Cross
truck hands out 200 meals a day
New Year’s in the Big Easy
is a white festive convergence
man in a black & white shirt
a second-line fringed umbrella
a bearded cowboy
in colorful shirt, an empty beer cup
marching with The Pussyfooters
majorettes in colorful wigs
and pink outfits
topped off with frilly boots
scores of (yes, white) onlookers
in shades of glee and inebriation

Oil and gas companies have returned
A merchant marine strolls
down Bourbon Street, says
“It looks like Hurricane Katrina
never came by, looking at the faces"

Is this a holiday guilt trip
a makeover for non-residential squatters
of no-bid contracts with a giant party
to make it all better, culture
in front seat, politics in back?

Can we have a Mardi Gras with
King Zulu—white men in black face
Latinos dressed as Mardi Gras Indians?

Tourists cannot tell
the difference: culture without color
King internet cakes & Chinese beads
It’s crystal: rebuilding is dangerous
Building condominiums overlooking
weeping willows
is a more well-crafted illusion
of turning sorrow into joy
death into life than public housing

Foxes guarding the hen house
say “it’s all going to be all right”

We’ve a different message
for this madness:
“Show me you want me
to come home”

Fly Boy, let them come
Flag Boy, let them come

To be on the battlefield on
Mardi Gras morn you got to sew
to enjoy the holiday
You can’t have Mardi Gras
without old black men
tacking quilt pieces on floats
without black seamstresses
without young women
making hotel beds
washing restaurant trash cans
caramel players of jazz coronets
without invisible sanitation workers
cleaning up the drunken mess

No Mardi Gras without
Big Chief Monk Boudreaux
& his Queen, The Uptown Rulers
The Wild Magnolias & The Dirty Dozen

Sign the petition, No. We will not
celebrate homelessness & misery
There’s no spirit without soul