Stars Over The Mississippi

Raindrops spice the windows of
a Greyhound bus pulled up to Ray-Anne's Quickie Mart
in Bernard Parish.
Baptist static fizzles along the swamps
til we hit dry land, til we hit
the vagabonds' paydirt.
Cow skulls are tied with velvet ribbon on a
clapboard house in the French Quarter-
the devil's welcome mat.
The night is 95% humidity and 100% whiskey
Purple fog smothers the rooftops.
Serenade in d minor,
a melancholy key,
gurgles through the stagnant air, the soundtrack
reverent,
adoring lust.
This is more home to me than my mothers womb.
When you smiled I couldn't tell who owned your eyes
God or the Other Guy.
It was too close to call.
My friends take refuge in
some Gen Y vampire bar
underneath a boarding house.
Now they know what Harvard students never will.
When you tread the muck of life and heart daily
there's more to relate
than a blue veined monarch in some book-lined tower could ever know.
He has less to say, but more time to say it.
A bad photocopy taunts me from a drugstore window.
I have never seen a statue of the Virgin Mary as alabaster white,
as drenched with purity,
as glow in the dark.
There's something askew and endearing
about drawing the future with blood red crayons,
darker in some places than others,
a little knot here and there for texture.
If you supersede the ghosts of Manhattan & forsake all bullshit,
there are some truths left to be experienced.
Riding the streetcar at 4 a.m.,
making love in a borrowed bed,
the stars above the Mississippi
and you.

-Jade Blackmore