Chandler films about New Orleans

9th Ward New Orleans #1

9th ward, New Orleans
chandler
august 95

ninth ward, New Orleans
with her hollow eyed men
mumbling on midday benches, clinging to warm budweiser
her sunken sidewalks
and broken ice-cream trucks
her rusting bicycles that gallop reckless past bars on windows, dingy neon, and empty clothes lines
children barefoot  
women pregnant
you are alive

ninth ward, New Orleans
with her tattooed boys
banging out chaos on drunken gas tanks
and electric scrap metal lies empty in vacant lots
where all music is experimental
all experiments have no control
and no one wanders why nothing is rendered on canvases made of
topless girls
that spin madness into beauty
you are alive

ninth ward, New Orleans
with her shotgun doorways
that open into tiny bars
filled with sweat and Miller High Life
Styrofoam plates of silver dollar sausage, red beans and plastic forks
barstools dismembered
concave linoleum
and living legends that blow tributes to departed trumpets
until hollow eyed men reverberate anew
you are alive

ninth ward, New Orleans
with her thick air, and parched water
her passionate pavement blisters the soul-less
and shoeless black boys ask questions to total strangers
where everybody has a hustle
every hustle has an audience
and no one really says "Good Morning America, How are you?"
where all movement is slow
her exhausted streetcars still stammer out forgotten desire
for:



ninth ward, New Orleans
you are alive.
your sunken sidewalks bloom with prolific purple - invasive beauty buds through your angry concrete - cracking foundations.
your topless girls pierce the body of  night  with jumbled tattoos - radiant in the mercury vapor twilight
your shoeless black boys tap dance beyond the double-barreled despondent
your affluent trumpets hail Gabrielle to come down from his shotgun shack and breath new life into a bored bacchanal.
Desire Street is found, and You Ninth ward, are alive