The City That Care Forgot

The streets of locals seemed a distant reality, 
But it's what I needed, it was what I wanted.
I don my Dean Moriarty digs and step out into the thick cajun air.
I fill my lungs with the poisonous concoction of booze, bums and breasts.
My eyes begin to swallow:
the cobble stone puddled walkways, the old, wrinkly streets, the narcissism of the neon lights, the groups of 30 year old women going on their first bar crawl since college, the tourist pandering of social crutches and animalistic thirst quenchers, the fantastic culture that bleeds through the streets and makes my feet red with each step of jazz. 

I surrender to consumption and rock to the "it" men.
He speaks like gravel and plays his horn like honey.
The trombone spits like a camel,
The bass steps like a drunk stilt walker while the drums pumps water into our veins. 
The beat is maddening... enough to make anyone dance on a broken ankle; everyone was broken then.

While I swam through the dregs of the bottle and the nostalgia with my friends,
I still craved more.
I craved the memories of the ghosts that filled these bars.
I craved to carve a scar in the concrete.
I wanted chaos.
I wanted the world to buckle around me while I sweated whiskey and danced how I deemed fit.
I wanted colors and sounds to come clean.
Come clean to the phat cats and Cajun queens of New Orleans.

Keegan Shaw 5/31/19