in honor of the city that almost became my home

Ugly Day

Goodbye, New Orleans, goodbye
Salad bowl of jazzy beats and glittering beads
Turned to toilet bowl of raw sewage and
contaminated grease
Displacement, place of national disgrace
Take to your roofs; the dark cloud is upon you
Now you know where freedom's priorities reside
Help is on the way, but not necessarily today
All tied up in oil lies, watch the prices rise
Superman's cape has been stripped inch by inch
By the caustic breath of your elected officials
Are you seeing red yet, through the red tape, Red
state
When the levy breaks and only the rich survive
It's coming for you too, wherever you are
Coming like that dream you can't escape
Casting its shadow on your children
Too short to reach the rising surface
Death floating, bloated, how can we possibly smell
it
When our nose is stuck deep in someone's butt
overseas
The losers of the liberty-game are boiling in the
stew
Goodbye, Mardi Gras, the ghetto blood is upon you
Dancing queen drag your way to the Astrodome
The parade is coming to the Southside in pickup
trucks
Chased from 89th by gators and Lake Pontchartrain
Great Ugly Day, your tears deluge the living rooms
And the refugees are living on the overpass
Waving the shirts off their backs in utter despair
Fats Domino flying away in his black hawk copter
And they say the wicked season is only half over
Do not blame it on anything named Katrina
The evangelical Bozo saw it in the cards
Grabbed the remote and flicked on Jerry Springer
The pump maintenance more trouble than an exodus
The riff raff views the French Quarter from his
window
It fogs up as he spouts his own torrent of
righteousness
Arrest them; shoot them, the wild animals run
rampant
Drown them in their attics, so we can gentrify
Strangle the Big Easy with speech-writers, buying
a little time
Freak of mother flooder dealt with after he bagged
the putter
Goodbye infrastructure your cowboy junky failed
you
Flew over in his airplane and blew you a little
kiss
Chalked up and knocked the sun into the corner
pocket
Too late to pass a measure on the dry land of
Congress
Should have would have could have--but didn't
Birth of a curse, Miss America's water just broke
The dark cloud of indifference is upon you,
Louisiana
Don't feel bad it's nothing but a class thing
It was your choice after all to remain
underprivileged
So you did not see the muted message on high
priced TV
Why didn't you pray for a magic bus meant only for
the deprived
Oh merciful God, why didn't you teach them how to
swim
Hyatt Regency, open your doors to the forsaken
Who can't go home to their Popsicle sticks and
Tonka Toys
Start another war, divert attention from our gore
Sound bytes trivialize overpriced plywood card
houses
Do not dare speak the words global warming
Compare it to nine-eleven, that always works
wonders
The ocean hijacked the Gulf Coast with a rotary
saw
Turned up the oven and the people in the pot
roasted
We would all empathize but we've forgotten how to
cry
We'll have a rock concert instead, a week from
Friday
But unfortunately by then you'll all be long gone
So goodbye, New Orleans,

goodbye,

goodbye,

goodbye


--C. J. Laity
September 2, 2005

I premiered my poem "Ugly Day" at the DvA one year
anniversary poetry bash on September 2, and then
again in the book tent at the 16th annual African
Festival of the Arts on Labor Day. Since then
many have written asking about the poem or
commenting about the impact the poem has had upon
them. Rather than explain what I mean by the
poem, here is a copy of it in its entirety.
Feel free to quote me from it as long as you give
credit, republish it as long as you let me know
about it, and pass it along at will.