We may know the sound of unbroken belief
with a bucket of seed and the pigeons beside us.
And we slide down the wet stones of the street
to a little cafe named for the goddess of flowers.
There the 8 Ball lines up with the Lucky 13
and Snake Eyes and Diamonds and Demons in Chains,
and the Angel waits for St Ann to begin
with her masque made of sorrow and her laugh made of sin.
So when I die...
please think of me down Royal Street
with a Brass Band and the 2nd Line beat
through the courtyards in the Marigny
and lay me down my soul to sleep.
with a bucket of seed and the pigeons beside us.
And we slide down the wet stones of the street
to a little cafe named for the goddess of flowers.
There the 8 Ball lines up with the Lucky 13
and Snake Eyes and Diamonds and Demons in Chains,
and the Angel waits for St Ann to begin
with her masque made of sorrow and her laugh made of sin.
So when I die...
please think of me down Royal Street
with a Brass Band and the 2nd Line beat
through the courtyards in the Marigny
and lay me down my soul to sleep.
20 comments:
Beautiful, beautiful!
WOW, who wrote this? I think it's going on my tombstone!
Just wanted to drop a note to you, commending your recent posts on levees.org. We are most definitely on the same page. + anyone who makes reference to "Gravity's Rainbow" elicits my support! hope to hear from you, i lived in New Oreans uptown & then in lakeview. jerry@wolfrealtor.com
(now in alexandria)
Jerry Newburger
Thank you, Leko.
That is the last lyric of the last song I wrote before the flood.
You are most welcome to put that on your tombstone. What an honor. The song is copyrighted.
Thank you, John. Such a compliment coming from a poet of your caliber leaves Editilla speechless. HA! Imagine that!
And, I would also like to thank Oyster, The Big Molluski, for citing our lyric and linking on Your Right Hand Thief. I cannot adequately describe how good it feels to be considered worth a link by one of my very favorite bloggers.
Today is Lundi Gras, and my 50th birthday. It is a very special day for me personally with the St Ann parade. It was after I had thought Krewe du Vieux was enough to fill my soul when I walked with St Ann the first time.
Alas, though my own fault of mental illness, I cannot seem to make it back to New Orleans. I cannot seem to do anything but destroy myself and nobody needs that, so this may be my last birthday. Frankly it is by the grace of Providence and obviously extremely Virtuous Karma that I have made it this long. Editilla is quite ill and I simply don't want to grow old and die anywhere else.
The rest of the country is Fucked (see above comment).
I have been asked to post the whole song, of which the above is the last lyric.
The first time I performed this song in public I dedicated it to Ashley Morris and that still holds.
1st Lyric:
I can smell Jasmine
covering this morning
like a wide cotton bedsheet
of white class lace.
And I taste her breath of coffee
and cigarettes and Mary Jane
and Bloody Mary coughing
on the banquette by the gate
--of this courtyard in the Marigny
I lay me down my soul to sleep
but the heat won't let me.
So I lie
awake
and dream
(2nd Lyric)
of a dog park
well, a bald green lot
with two trees beside the coffee warehouse.
You can see the bags loading in from the dock.
You can feel it on your skin when they roast it up.
There the people gather
with their very best friends,
and drink in the shade
and talk with the wind,
while this flat bywater sunrise finds them laying down
their entire lives.
--There was a time
when all these houses built from barge wood
by strong men with right livelyhoods
while they flooded in
from the river.
Geez, I'm sorry to hear that Editilla--the New Orleans Ladder is always special to me. The country is pretty much f'd up at this point, I will agree. I'm giving that lyric a shout-out on the Banjo later this afternoon when I post Basin Street Blues.
Happy birthday, & wishing you the best.
Happy Birthday Editilla!
Happy Birthday, sweet man. My thoughts are with you and I'll say a little prayer for you tomorrow when I walk in St. Anne.
Happy Birthday Editilla!
We're all mentally ill, especially the people who know they are not. Some call it delusional reality, others more simply "getting by".
Don't make us come up there. What are lyrics without the guy that makes the music?
You got us slabbers all worried Bro.
sop
I didn't know you wrote that song and that it was for Ashley. It is sadly beautiful. From the palaces of the heart come these words. Peace
Thank you, Sop.
This was a close one, I am hoping a near miss. Crazy can be fun and even useful sometimes, but it is when the movie gets too many plot lines going with too many actors that the Body can't balance the chainsaws. So the DisEase comes from deeper in, closer to the Mind. It goes both ways you know: Thoughts outward Experience inward, yet the nature of Feedback illustrates that resonance (or dissonance), Tension and Compression, always and only co-exist --all the way to the atomic level and then cellular. So my illness has come from the inside outward. Fortunately you and Doucy have helped me get my Mind more settled so my Body can deal.
We are getting back online today. You know it is some thick shit when Editilla doesn't climb the Ladder every day --on Mardi Gras Day no less! Whew.
What I euphemistically and pseudonymously refer to as the "back hand path" is simply viscerally deep longing for New Orleans, our City of Living Metaphor, on what has become a Very Long Road Home.
While I do not know and do not say that returning to New Orleans would help me Live with myself for having abandoned her helpless during the flood after the levees failed, I do hope to have the chance to take my last breath there, where the you can taste the air and our beautiful city holds us all in the sounds of ReBirth.
Thank you, Marco.
Indeed, I finished that last lyric upon Ashley's death. I am not one of those close nolablogger friends of his, but did share some brews at the RT2 party, immediately connected. It was the first time since the flood that I have been around a group of more than 6 people. I call it "tongue-in-light-socket syndrome". I'm much better now and can make it though long check-out lines, but at that time still carried several weapons in public.
Anyway, he walked up to me with an Abita and said "I see you are the only goober here with a computer." And handed me the beer. Then I proceeded to unload all this about that first year out from the flood, about that first week and all sorts of crazier than thou shit. I mean really unloaded to this perfect stranger. I had not even really caught on to his blog. At which point he just laid a hand on my shoulder and said, "Yeah. I know what you mean about all that. But what if our fucking Saints move to San Antonio? That'll be the final ass fuck." I remember thinking, 'If this is what a blogger is then I'm in goddamn'.
And we launched the Ladder the following November. During those first 6 months, Ashley helped me immensely and often online to learn how to do stuff with a computer. I had never really conversed with anyone like that. Before the Flood, I would go to the Alvar Branch Library to check my email once a week. That was it for me and 'puters.
But more than anything, Ashley showed me that it is alright play rough with those fools who would attack our city and the people returning to set her right.
Then he died suddenly.
So yes, that very last lyric is definitely for him, and everyone who ever met Ashley Morris.
I hope to never forget that name or the heart and attitude that drove his love for New Orleans, Sinn Féin.
I never met the big mon myself. He was a true New Orleanian, made of the true stuff. What amazed me was his breadth of knowledge about so many things from ice hockey to history to whatever.
I hope your healing has begun from the inside. It's a life long fight. I know/feel something about it, but only so much as is granted me. I wish you well and hope that you do return to your great city soon rather than later.
Aw, Mon, da'Healing has begun.
WE Are Not Alone
Sinn Féin
Thanks again, Marco.
Yay! Levees.org pulled the offending misstatements.
Thank you levees.org!
Whew!
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