Mardi Gras

BAN THE BEADS!

ZULU Parade:

A time to throw

A time to leap

A time to cheer

A time to weep.

As some Hun stomps your arch

A Vandal tromps your toes and

You are savaged by drunken Visigoths

crying, “Mine!  Mine!”

vaulting so high they

block gold Zulu coconuts

and hunks of sky.

 “BAN THE BEADS!”

“I earned ’em all an’ they are mine!”

crows an Elks matron

from Kankakee, shaking her cans.

“Showed everything heck of a lot to get mine,”

slurs Rock, bead-laden stud

with Swartzenegger pecs.

“Honey, took mah first load back to the pad;

and workin’ on my second,”

bleated Little Bo Peep

with detachable boobs

and a five-o’clock shadow.

Mardi Gras Day                                               Jack Beach p.137

(New Stanza)

“BAN THE BEADS!”

Last year

Mardi Gras midnight

Struggling home from my final

            buck-in-bikini fix

            at the Corner Pocket,

I caught this sudden glint

beneath a forest of feet

at Bourbon and St.Louis.

Reaching into the street litter,

I retrieved a string of beautiful

amethyst-and-diamond

(faux of course) beads

which now bedeck the garden entry

of my slave-quarter place.

They are beauty.

They are grace.

They glisten like dew

these rare winter mornings

when fickle old sun

deigns to shine . . .

AND THEY ARE MINE!!

PROSE SNAPSHOT:

(Click)

I’m bucking crowds over on Chartres when I notice this pretty young black lady standing in a doorway. She is wearing a familiar rose uniform and a bevy of Mardi Gras beads.

I surprise her with my, “Hey! I bet you work at the Place d’Armes Hotel.”

“Why, how’d you know that, now?” those amber eyes wide in astonishment.

“I live on the third floor across the street.