Dear Katrina,

Your cat 5 winds dance through Bourbon St.
Your water quenches the dry southern streets.
Your strength breaks levies
that protect the sweet bayou.

You divide and conquer a city,
destruction,
corruption,
obstruction,
levies broken.

Divide and conquer a home,
pictures lost,
my neighborhood block;
just replayed scenes,
im my head,
memories.
How things used to be.

Divide and conquer a nation,
rich vs. poor,
government controlling,
media manipulating.
Calling me not as I would please:
refugeess, refugees, refugees.

Am I not an American citizen?
Pleading SOS, please help me!
Save me,
Find, not separate, my family.
Don’t just fly over me!

Where is the money from charity?
To help support, clothe and feed me?
But no, instead, I see FEMA trailers poisoning,
the National Guard shooting people looting,
corpses rotting in Katrina’s waters;
filling sweet Orleans with,
hopelessness.

So you sing, “When the saints go marching in...”, “I'm walking to New Orleans...”,
Please.
That doesn’t do a thing for me.
Not in these Bayou streets.
Nothing will not bring me peace, not now, not ever.

But you know what will?
A drink and some pills,
Make it all go away, erase the memories
of how Katrina abused me, left me for dead.
Everything I own, everything I knew, everyone I know, washed away.
Hopeless refugee, hopeless refugee.

I guess I am what you say I am.
Broken levies, no, that doesn’t hurt.
My life now shattered, no, that doesn’t hurt either.
But,
hopelessness, hmm, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Sincerely,

The hopeless refugee