Remember New Orleans?

So as many of you know I went down to New Olreans over Spring Break to help out with the Katrina relief effort going on down there. My campus church (IlliniLife Christian Fellowship) and Samaritian's Purse partnered in order to give some of us the opportunity to volunteer our time and hands. It was really intense - in all senses of the word. While putting some things together for the "debriefing" newsletter that is going out to all the stakeholders, I came across a poem I had written right after we got to the camp. I thought I'd share it with you guys. Here's a little glimpse of what it was like down there ... at least for me.


On First Impressions

Dirty.
Dilapidated.

Scratches of paint conspire with
crumbling billboards
and depressed dusty
brick buildings.
A hazy grayness seems to have
parachuted over the city
and hovers there – a dome that
traps the breeze rather than freshens it.
Vibrantly bedecked houses
kneel on their lots – no longer homes;
worn, wrinkled, withered these
homes have become a broken line of stragglers
waiting, waiting, waiting – for what, they don’t
even know, just waiting for some kind of
attention, affection.
Abandoned.

Tattooed with hastily sprayed numbers, their
contents, their frailties, their pain, their
casualties have been revealed;
accused, alone.
Ashamed.

The still frames in my mind are just those.
Still Frames. Frames of images catalogued
among the others. I feel humbled, insensitive,
untouched because of my constant
exposure to an album of images that
bombard me daily; movie, advertisement, internet,
where do I file these new pictures?
Haven’t I seen this scene before, somewhere?
Surreal.

Dilapidated. Abandoned.
Ashamed. Surreal.

This is Day One.


3.18.2006

(ps. so I couldn't get the formatting of the poem exactly right on this thing, but we'll have to let it go...)