As You Know, Katrina
It was in New Orleans
That he first appeared
He was white, in his 50's
With wild hair and a strange fixed grin
And burn in his eyes
Somehow he was always facing you
He never said much
Just stood there, ticking
No one knew him
We were sitting on the curb
When someone's radio played
Weather
And we didn't pay much
Weather alert
Attention, but he was standing there
His eyes got brighter, his mouth opened
"As you know," he said
"We live in a bowl"
A bowl? People shrugged, smiled
To each other, but he went on
Something about how we knew
About global warming and
Hurricane cycles and the
Corps of Engineers and the
Levee system
No one could laugh, quite
So we went home, or just away
Over the next days
When we couldn't find a car
And were standing, talking, looking
For some wood, there he was
The first wind
Blowing his hair every way
"As you know," he said
"We live in a racist society"
And one old man said all sour
"We know that," but he went on
No stopping him, about how
As we knew
The city, the police, the plans
Were made for certain
To get out
Certain to not
We couldn't get away
But the sound of hammering wood
Drowned him for a while
The next days
Some said they'd seen him
Standing in the water
When you ran for the Superdome
He'd be by the side
"As you know," he'd say
And all about Bush and some
Man we didn't know named Brown
And about corruption
His eyes glowed so you could hardly look
It seemd like his smile
Might freeze forever
People waded by as fast as they could
Making hand signs
And somehow we knew
What was waiting
When we were trying to get out
After the food was gone
People would see him coming
And drive him off if they could
It was all jammed together
As you know
About the weather and crony capitalism
And how
As we knew
We'd never see that reconstruction money
"Stop it, stop" people would yell
"Do something useful"
But it was the same eyes, grin, hair
Always the face
The words
When we got out
We'd meet sometimes at the shelters
"Did you see him?" someone'd say
And someone'd say they saw him
Dead, water flowing through that grin
Or shot at last
Or just gone away
But we knew
We knew he'd come back
Copyright 2005 Rich Puchalsky
E-mail: rpuchalsky@worldnet.att.net
Accesses: 
Last modified: Nov 29, 02005