insomnia

i have been up since 4 o'clock this morning, listening to the rooster mafia intimidate the neighborhood. i am still recovering from this strange new orleans' sickness and am wondering why my body will not let me rest via much needed sleep. and the rooster crows. the rooster crows.
There came a rooster screaming,
Eyes a gleaming
Beating, beating down my chamber door.
how poe might have written the poem had he lived here. i still have not replaced the batteries in my bedside clock and it's been over a month. that is ridiculous. perhaps it was all the excitement on the street yesterday that has me up and incredibly restless. damn, i'm really tired though but i just can't sleep. my dog is up now and that does not bode well for tomorrow morning. i'm ignoring her. yes, i'm up typing on my computer but this in no way shape or form means that we will be getting up this early tomorrow, so put away your dreams of being my furry alarm clock at 5 something in the morning. ugh. i don't think she's listening. sweet dreams all.

it always sounds like fire crackers

it always sounds like fire crackers when they start shooting and so it takes me a few minutes to realize that some maniac is firing a gun into a crowd of people and someone is going to bleed. it was high times on frenchmen street today with people fighting, crying and yelling. at one point it looked like a riot, that was about an hour before someone decided to take things to the next level and open fire into the crowd, shooting my neighbor in the leg. and you cannot help but think but for the grace of god go i...just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you get a ride to the hospital or worse yet, the morgue. it looks like new orleans is well on its way to yet again leading the nation in murders. the sad thing about today is that the ones involved in the fighting are all cousins. cousins. can you imagine shooting at your family? the culture of violence is so pervasive here that it rips families apart. and sadder still was watching the kids walk by the scene and not even look fazed. someone getting shot is the most normal thing in the world. i can't even imagine growing up like that. when i was a kid, i never once saw anyone shot. i didn't see that until i moved here and now i have seen too many. god help us, there must be a way out of this but damn if i know what it is.

capitalism at its finest

for those of you that worship capitalism and long for better trade between the united states and mexico, there is reason to celebrate. as many people know, the drug cartels have all but taken over mexico in one long murderous coup and they are getting wealthy by selling drugs to the good ole u.s.a. see there is fair trade going on. supply and demand. we want drugs and mexico gives them to us. but the capitalist feeding frenzy does not end there, lest you thing america is getting the short end of the stick. no, indeed not, america is supplying mexico with all the weapons needed to gun down police officers and innocents alike. guns equal power and the drug cartels are out gunning and over powering the mexican police and military alike, thanks to america. quid pro quo. everyone gets a little bit of the pie and capitalism continues to thrive. they really should teach this in high school.
disclaimer:
spoke is still sick, so if passages of this blog make no sense, it is because i do not know any better at this time.

sick as a dog

spoke the cat is sick as a dog and therefore missed all the mardi gras festivities. alas. i hope everyone is having a safe and wonderful time of it. and here is to no more shootings!

jindal gets new orleans jilted

jindal signed the science education act in 2008. this allows more freedom in the class rooms for so called alternative interpretations of evolution, cloning, and global warming. the act further gives local school boards enormous power when it comes to rejecting class room materials as well as approving them. this allows for non scientific theories such as intelligent design to seed the curriculum. it is nothing more than a way for the christian right to infiltrate the public school system. it violates the separation of church and state. jindal refused to veto the act, signing it into law instead. that decision has come back to haunt new orleans. the society for integrative and comparative biology informed the jindal administration that they would not be holding their convention in new orleans, in large part because of the this act. i have said this before, i have no problem with a politician holding certain religious beliefs as long as they keep them out of the public arena. jindal is something of a rabid religious man and he allowed his own personal beliefs in intelligent design to cloud his judgment. this is a travesty. your beliefs should not usurp my own especially when my tax dollars are helping to fund the public school system. and now, those beliefs are costing new orleans an untold infusion of cash, at a critical time in our recovery. i am angered and appalled over this situation. make some noise my fellow louisianians. make sure jindal hears your protests. nothing gets accomplished by passively observing.

it is a new day.

it is almost spring and that means it is time for some emotional house cleaning. i swear there is something wrong with me that makes people think that i will just take heaps of steaming shit dumped all on me, smile and ask for more. it is going to stop or i will start cutting away at the cancerous growths in my life. so, attention for all those in my life that demand more than they give, you are now on notice!! i am soon to be 38 and i will do whatever the fuck i want to do. i will fuck who i choose and if i do not choose you, then it is none of your business. i will go where i want. i will set this fucking town on fire and have a great time doing it. so, you can either pull out the matches and have fun with me or go to fucking hell. your choice. i don't care what you decide but i will no longer be brought low by childish bullshit. i am smart. i'm funny. i'm talented. and i can accomplish anything i fucking want to accomplish. so get mad at me if i'm not that into you and do not want to date you. fuck off for rubbing it in my face that you are going to europe. trust me, you will see me there!! screw you for bringing your strung out meth addicted ass to my house. fuck off dumb frat boys that interrupt my tours. go to hell stupid fucking drama addicted women who lie about their husbands and wreak havoc where ever they go. it is a new day and a new me. you can either like it or fucking leave. spoke the cat has just quit caring.

happy valentine's day

i hope it is a sweet one.

addiction

i believe one of the most painful things to experience is watching someone you love destroy themselves through addiction. today, a good friend of mine stopped by my house and i had to turn him away because he refuses to get sober. i stood on my porch; looking at him, at his rotting teeth and jaundiced skin and i thought, he is going to die soon and there is not a damn thing i can do about it. the only thing i have any control over are my actions and i choose; painful though it may be, not to watch him slowly kill himself. i have to protect myself. he has put us all through enough already and the only thing he can see is his next fix waiting. he does not care that i broke into his house once; after he had gone missing, fully expecting to find him over-dosed and dead inside. i think the hardest part is the death of such potential...to be able to look back and say, i knew him when. i knew him when he was painting, writing and making music. i knew him when he was beautiful. i no longer know the man i just saw on my porch. i do not recognize his thinness, the way the skin hangs from bone. all the creativity has left him. he is not the man i once loved and the hardest part is coming to terms with that. he looked jaundiced and if in fact he was, he is dying. he is physically dying but my old friend is already dead and has been for a very long time.

pot smokers' call for action

apparently there is a pot lobby and it is calling for the boycott of the kellogg company in protest over their decision to drop michael phelps after he was photographed taking a bong hit. this makes me giggle. i'm giggling right now. first of all, who knew that pot smokers were motivated enough to form a lobby, much less organize a boycott? of course this means that many of the kellogg munchies will be missing from the couches of stoners everywhere. my god, what will they eat? in all fairness to my fine toking brothers and sisters, kellogg is being insufferably hypocritical. they did not drop phelps in the wake of his drunk driving conviction and drinking while behind the wheel is a far worse example to set than relaxing with a joint. at least we know that with pot smokers the only thing in danger is the package of twinkies. let's cut the poor guy a break. he was not for busted using steroids. pot is no performance enhancing drug. personally, i think the kellogg company should roll with it. go ahead and put the picture of phelps taking the bong hit on their cereal boxes with the caption, "when the munchies hit, we have you covered." their sales would go through the roof. and after all, money is the american way of life.

meditations on poetry that will not improve my mood

Desert Places
by: Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

you ever have one of those nights?

in fear of the police

it is enough to be afraid of the drug dealers and freaky psychopaths wandering the new orleans' streets but it is unbearable to also fear the cops. i remember once, before the storm when the very well armed drug dealers were sitting on my porch and the police threatened to arrest me, going so far as to push me into the wall of my house. whose job was it to get armed thugs off my porch, mine or theirs? when i visited the station to report drug activity, the police responded by letting the very ones i called about know that it was me that ratted them out. that was potentially two slugs with my morning cup of coffee. in the post-katrina landscape, we have police officers brandishing guns at schools and roughing up second line brass band members. the police wonder why the community won't cooperate with them. at the very least, they seem lazy and inept to protect us and at the worst, they are the bete noire of the city. now we have a 22 year old man shot 14 times in the back during the early morning hours of new years' eve by a gang of plain clothes cops. the young man had no criminal record and was in possession of a legal gun. i don't know what went on in the dark hours of that night but i do know that if several men in plain clothes were approaching me, i would be very afraid. i do know that getting shot in the chest can spin a person, causing bullets to penetrate the back but 14 of them seems excessive. riley called it a gun battle, saying the man opened fire on the police first. well, i will agree with him that 14 bullets constitutes a gun battle. maybe he fired on them first and maybe he did not. it was new years' eve. perhaps the sound of firecrackers startled the police into thinking he shot at them. maybe the firecrackers made him think he was being shot at and he returned fire. we live in a war zone and the mounting fear makes us all trigger happy. did these plain clothes officers identify themselves as police? could he hear them or did he think he was under siege from a gang of thugs? we may never know what happened that night but the thing i keep going back to is 14 bullets in the back. 14. did they retrieve any bullets from his gun? was there powder residue on his hands? can you prove he fired? it is this type of occurrence that spooks us even further here in little mogadishu. because when they are shooting people in the back in the french quarter, you desperately want to believe that the police are not doing the very same thing in another part of town.

the crow

i saw a crow perched upon the railing of my neighbor's house and if i recall correctly, that is a harbinger of ill tidings. edgar allen poe was thrown into a fit of fear once the raven came a rapping, gently tapping at his chamber door. all ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens. they can be magpies and rooks as well. a gathering of crows is called a murder and that should give something away as to the place they hold in our collective psyche. i did not stop to ask the one perched upon the railing of my neighbor's house if it had plans to leave anytime soon. i was afraid it might quote, nevermore.

safety tips

many of these are common sense but it never hurts to revisit the basics.
1) do not walk at night alone, especially while intoxicated. there is safety in numbers.
2)walk in the middle of the street. you are more visible to passing cars and less likely to get cornered in the dark.
3)walk quickly and with purpose.
4)pay attention to your surroundings. do not talk on the cell phone as this can be a distraction.
4)listen to your gut. if you feel something is not right, then it most likely is not right.
if you should find yourself alone, drunk in a bar, and without cash but afraid to walk home, there are options. i am not a huge fan of the guardian angels because i believe they are not properly trained to function in the capacity they they are attempting to function in and that is scary but they will escort you home. the number for the guardian angels is:347-582-4777. another option is united cab. you can create an account with them that you pay once a month. if you are without cash but need a ride home, you give the driver your account number and settle up at the end of the month. the number for united cab is 504-522-9771. i think this is a great option and it ensures that you will never be caught somewhere without a ride.

be safe.