Money Managers in the Dayglo

I am singing

again my odes 

to badness over 

the steel basin

in the tired night routine

singing morphine

morphine a little

before Christmas 

we found a murder

in the news across the rail

road track from us living

in the shadow of the abandoned marine

base our realtor pointed out as fun sight  

a friend from LSU

stared and said his bandmate

had been lost to the base

we read the news

on our phones: car jackings

carried out by babies

no more police

we were encouraged to leave

by friends and family

a naked child of God

broke pots on the porch

our super had us watch

the video her doorbell cam

captured him in with those white

light eyes the night vision lends

we put a shotgun under our bed

and she slept with a knife

like she always did

all of this did not interfere 

so much with the drunks

as the money did

my legs still worked

and I always knew I would never

make it in New Orleans

and not making it in New Orleans

would break some hometown pride

in me and it did and how deadly

wrong I left everyone then in a red

haze of danger in a curse

war with strangers

we’d take my depressed dog

down along the Mississippi

in the revitalized industrial zone

of a ruined bulkhead

of a ruined shipyard

and the runners ran

in two hundred dollar

vintage band tees

the toilets overflowed

in the dark strip of park

I saw needles in the grass

packs of shadow people at night 

money managers in the dayglo

passed us talking books

like an action painting of a cold war

in between our dying love

I lied to the blonde bartender

in the rodeo cover band

of the indie dance giant

in the back of BJ’s

I am not afraid to die

I am from Biloxi