Here's a poem I'm working on about New Orleans. I'm going to print it whole here & when I'm in

New Orleans the next several days I'll try to get photos to match the different stanzas:

Haunted in New Orleans

His memory follows me past the Jackson Square fortunetellers

huddled in lawn chairs behind their card tables.

St. Louis Cathedral tones the quarter hour.

It follows me in the dark and cobbled lane

as I head up to Bourbon Street,

There I drink a fluorescent pink Hurricane

from a giant plastic cup,

still, I can’t shake him.

Along Bourbon the crowd jostles me.

I don’t resist and am carried along.

Neon shouts:

“Exotic Sex Acts . . . Men & Women”

“Big Ass Beers to Go”

“Unbelievable Female Impersonators”

I stop at a take-out window for another drink.

Swept along by the mob again,

the drinks finally kick in.

I swim through zydeco, jazz, and blues.

Revelers dance on tables.

A drummer sits in a high window,

his arms moving like a psychotic windmill.

I stop at another take-out window

for drink number three,

one last attempt to wipe my memory clean.

I’m caught in a gumbo of music and lights

A stranger grabs me,

spins me around,

kisses me and says,

“This place is great!”

I’m pushed in the direction I just came from,

I don’t care, and if I did, would it matter?

Passing the Lucky Dog stand,

I turn and weave towards my hotel.

Once there, the bed is big and empty.

I fall onto it spread like a starfish.

Floating on the waves of oblivion

I drift on their surface

until there is the nothing I’ve been seeking.

I fill the days with tours and beignets,

the nights with alcohol,

as tired of my own thoughts.

as I was of him after twenty years.

At the rear of a gift shop on Basin Street,

there is a voodoo temple.

A clerk with dread locks leads the way

past display cases of candles, bundles of herbs,

and a population of voodoo dolls

laid row upon row on dusty shelves.

Red curtains blunt the sunlight.

Scent of herbs and hot wax clog the air.

Candles illuminate Priestess Muriel.

In her head-scarf and matching caftan,

She sits at a table to the right of an altar

crammed with African statues porcupined with nails.

I share my dilemma.

She makes me a gris gris bag.

Into the little red pouch

a penny so I’ll never be poor,

red beans so I’ll never be hungry,

cracked corn to connect me with Mother Earth,

rosemary to enhance my attributes and strengths.

She takes out a plump blue candy heart,

cuts it in half,

spits on the severed sides,

sticks the heart back together

and pushes a pin in to unite the halves.

The heart is whole again.

Priestess Muriel puts the heart into the gris gris bag

and ties it shut.

She places the pouch in my palm

and folds my fingers over it.

Looking at the altar, she murmurs an invocation and says to me,

“Nowz, Honey, don’t chu open dis

or aaaallz da good I dun yez will dispear.

Nowz yur heart be whole agin.

Looks to da future

but not so far dat chu miss da now.

Go out dere an’ prosper,

chu be done now wid dat man.

Chu be free,

free of dat man and his memries.

Show Muriel yur danks,

chu be free.”

I pay her and start to leave.

She calls out,

“Honey, if dat man shows up at yur door,

don’t open it.

But when he walks away roll an onyun after him,

and he will neber return,

mmm mmm.”

Back home in L.A.

I check my machine to see if he’s called.