MAD
HE WENT MAD IN A PARADE AT LIBERTY & IBERVILLE
Today is the day in 1907 when Buddy Bolden was committed
to the East Louisiana State Hospital for the insane Entered at
31 yrs. Carried out in 1931 Coffin sent to Holtz Cemetery
New Orleans Travelled through Baton Rouge +Slaughter to
an unmarked grave
No Huck Finn glory of lighting out for new territory
Mississippi his river Styx Buddy rotted 24 yrs in Stygian
swamp State hospital opened in 1848 by 1861 36 girls
mostly under 12 Causes of insanity listed largely as: unknown
2nd to that for many loneliness or failed solitude
During the Civil War impossible to get food+water there Buddy
died 17 yrs. before the Medcraft Shock Machine purchased He was
there for: guard rapes lack of heat +hard labour Saints posing as
humans Ditto those murdered on the London bridge Saturday when
3 men with long knives stabbed people randomly shouting:
This is for Allah!
New Orleans cemeteries are places of great beauty Hundreds of milagros
+mementos dot the landscape At the tomb of: The Society for the Relief of
Destitute Orphan Boys 1894 dozens of toys +chocolate bars The high water
table strips flesh quickly Generations stacked in perpetuity until all the dead
are one dead Witch’s brew Stew of fetuses +granddaddies
There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me
Nowadays we are all exhausted No longer know the difference between loneliness
+solitude Most of us made mad by addiction to connection on screens Longing for
the savanna +a bit of wildtenacity The stuff that gets us through the birth canal
Through the hard passage where remnants of our glory days hang to dry on fragile
bones +disappearing memories O won’t you take me back to New Orleans
__
SPRING 2017 110 years since Buddy’s admission 24 yrs. in captivity RIP
songanddancegirl 