Something Rises Up – Sarah Menefee

something rises up
New Orleans, September 3-5, 2005

something rises up out of muddy waters
out of the rot that festers
in the world’s eye
the bravery of my class the disinherited
that nothing can drown: not the affectless indifference
of the ones unfit to rule: whose power is not
any power at all
whose hearts are corpses
how putrescent their filth!
humanity must push against its bilging flood: past this collapse
been going on a long
long time

***

we’re dying here! we were better off
in our drowning homes
in our poor obliterated neighborhoods
where music once had its home
and soul: where joy was found
in hell’s despite: where all that’s real rose
in brassy blast of jazz
than in this heat and sun: in this stink
forced into exile as the homeless always are
with camps under the freeways dying there: from all quarters
of stolen job and home: on this black
blood-drenched land
black and poor’s the heart and soul of all
my class of poor of every origin: here we are
with no escaping: our rebellion
gathers from below

is this how revolution looks? here it is
it doesn’t get much nakeder than this

I invite President Bush to come down here
he’s so concerned she said: to spend one night
in this filth and heat: beside the old
who are dying here: by the swollen legs
of everyone’s grandma in her wheelchair

‘shot down by a Guardsman trying to get help’
‘shot in the back’
‘this could be Baghdad Iraq’

***

there’s no stadium big enough
to lock us all up: Falluja comes home
lives hanging on: new-born lives in arms
ripped by the maelstrom: when push comes shoving

shelters bloat into monster camps: remember?
separating families down the river: not so
long ago: not so
forgotten
down here where music rises from the real
rolling on the river
scattered to its heartless winds

***

at night in dream
I want to restore the simplest things
wherever they’re taken away:
a cup of coffee: a clean pavement to walk over
in the sun: some human angel
directs it: maybe come over from Cuba
where two million people were moved
from Ivan’s harm last season
along with chickens and possessions

and not one dead
what is the excuse?
what justification?

ask someone in a line
they’ve been standing in for twenty-five years
in the wind: ask the corner exile
‘where you from? was there ever a place called home?’

men with guns
separate families: into this hell of waiting

our heroes in their frail boats
who go about the shattered city rescuing the sick and old
are called looters
the toxic flood

left hand right hand: what a joke
the people want to help but those in power don’t
and when it comes again?

***

at gunpoint the poor are moved
from one fetid concentration camp to another
mass removal while the vultures wait
to grab and raze and profiteer
as they do always: ‘capitalism is
barbarism’ said Hugo Chavez recently: said
‘capitalism is diabolical’ of this: offering help
poor to poor: barbarous how
we count the corpses of it: the old and sick
and young: the new-born: always the poor
with no wherewithal to flee
with no trust that all will not be stolen
as it will be stolen: on Labor Day we see
the slow and breakneck catastrophes
roil around our ankles
reach our knees

move over:
make room in your doorway
now who will make our Fat Tuesdays
and ceremonies of joy?

in my dream I have joined
a rebel band: I leave the perfumes
of my vain life behind me
because I desire
some collective: old
fool! to go with others
toward some common good: it’s the people’s army
that hasn’t yet come: this is my
labor day

we see signs in the weather
which way the wind is blowing so to speak
and it is objective: a material thing
and we here on this coast
are all talking earthquake
and we are talking the storm
of displacement and evictions
that’s always blowing and blowing
in this heartless order
a terrible man-made wind
that separates infant from mother
kills the weak and old and poor
and steals our home

so now the troops have come
fresh from slaughtering poor people over there
they occupy
they go from door to door