Watching the aftermath of Katrina, the throngs huddled at the Superdome, the lack of water, of food, the racial makeup of those who had been left behind, was very traumatic for me -- I had never seen anything like it in America. After a few days of watching I wrote this to put down in words for all time what I was actually seeing on television. This was published in the Haight Asbury Literary Journal:
Dark Rapture
There they were, in the rounded hold,
In the dim violet light,
Human leftovers
In the late August heat,
Marinating in their own shit and piss.
It was as if there had been a magical
Second Coming,
Scripted by Hieronymous Bosch,
Crafted out of storm and flood, with
The rich and white being saved, and
The poor and black left behind
After two days without
Food or water a woman
Held up her sweat-drenched
Baby for the camera.
"He's getting hot," she said.
"He's not waking up easy."
And the quaver in her voice
Spoke of fear beyond words.
Over there on the makeshift gurney lay
The motionless old black woman
With the parchment skin, her head
Tilted at an odd angle to her frame.
Maybe she wasn't even dead.
Maybe she was just resting.
Which was more than you could say
For the shrouded figure
In the wheelchair
Near the turnstiles.
Someone had had the
Courtesy at least to drape a sheet over him and
To scrawl his name on a piece of paper
And stick it in his lap.
Cable TV showed him sitting there,
Day after day, a corpse in a wheelchair
Rotting in front of the Superdome,
Waiting for the City of New Orleans, or
The State of Louisiana, or
The United States of America, or
Perhaps all three in dazzling concert, to
Finish their emergency planning
Scenario studies and implement the
Final short-term plan to restore order
To the dying city.
A doctor did a walkthrough afterwards
With a TV journalist. The doctor had been there
On the first day after the flood, one of the precious few.
He told of the eerie cries he heard as he
Moved through the vast darkened dome and
Its teeming wraithlike creatures.
"Doctor, doctor over here, doctor, doctor."
The hundreds of elderly, infirm, stressed,
The sick without their medicine,
The babies without their formula,
The addicts, murderous without their drugs.
The doctor walked with the journalist
Afterwards, through the now
Empty and ruined dome, musing.
"The children," he said, and paused,
Remembering. "Some were playing,
Running around between your legs.
Others were seizing on the floor."
He spotted a little red tennis shoe on the
Shit strewn carpet and carefully picked
It up with the tips of his fingers and
Placed it on a wrecked table nearby.
Then he spotted another one,
A tiny yellow tennis shoe.
And he picked it up, too, and
Put it on the table right beside
The red one, a mismatched
Pair, an exhibit perhaps for some
Future Postmodern Holocaust Museum
For all those
Who doubt or deny the truth of the
The great abandonment,
The Dark Rapture of ought five,
When the rich and white were saved
And the poor and black left behind.