new orleans love

I don’t belong here

I don’t belong in a suburb in Chapel Hill

I belong in my birthplace

I want to taste sweet crawfish and let shrimp swim through my mind not moving vans

I want to re-visit old locations and remember aquariums

I want to go back to my Marti grad roots

But my New Orleans is broken

And memories leak like the faucets from my eyes as I look at the destruction patterns

It still leaves its mark to this day

And 6 years later Katrina leaves acid marks on my heart

That bitch broke my home and I wasn’t even there

See I want to go back so I can remember

And I stand on the edge of sanity

Because in 2005 I saw my birthplace die

And decided to change the channel

Because I could not comprehend so I decided to pretend

That I was devastated

But in reality I was just living in a house in Massachusetts

And friends felt bad for me but I replied carelessly

Why

Why would you expect me to care for a land that I lost connection to

Before I had time to ask its name

It whispered sweet warning to leave

So we did

We left

And we moved to a new state

I will always hate the decision I made

And the skeletons peer out of my closet occasionally

Because they are crowded in there

See I didn’t let anyone know

But when I began to remember my homeland

I took the burden of the lives lost

And thousands live in my closet

I open the door occasionally.

I look at souls that made no mistakes just had bad timing

And I begin to shed a tear for my homeland

Where I wish I could say I was there to help