today like everyday

... walking toward the light
on st. claude avenue i heard church bells
ring twelve o' clock amid hurling cars
and the banter of crackheads
leaning in shadows.
i was walking away from a show
at Cow Poke's feeling lonesome
and so made a great gesture home
staring wide eyed into everything
on the ground and beside me.

someone had left out a crusty box
full of clothes and room furnishings,
letters and old porn on the sidewalk outside
Cajun's Bar. i grabbed a clean blue collered
shirt in the bottom and resumed walking.
there were ex-patriate middle class
runaway punks sitting and drinking outside
of Hanks on Port st. and thugs with fat assed
women hanging on their shoulders in the parking lot
blasting Little Wayne through bass speakers.
a brown tabby cat ran bright eyed and heretic into an abandoned home
across the street staring at me as if i should
know something
while another runaway grabbed cardboard
out of Hank's dumpster.

St. Claude avenue is a large two way street
with long bodies of grass seperating each direction.
everyone smokes cigarettes on st. claude
and everyone is weary of either getting shot
or fucked with some way.
i find it an avenue beautiful usually just wanting to
get home, pick up groceries or find a show at some
bar. the avenue is beat beyond repair.
three out of every home or business per block
is either abandoned, squatted or under repair.
and the cops drive by flashing red white and blue
hailing down and up the road pushin sirens
in our ears. the trains are loudest and most modest.
they roll in and out of the military yard
on Press St. goin real slow and patient.
although last year my friend Patrick told me he
was heading home to his squat near the tracks
when he saw a gangster jump out of his car
after bein in hot pursute by the military police
and he ran straight in front of a passing train
dieing, instantly in front of Patrick about twenty feet off.