DESCRIPTION:
Saturday, November 5, 2016, we had a ball at New Orleans' Louisiana Music Factory. Great musicians--Kidd Jordan and Carl LeBlanc and then Roger Lewis, Kirk Joseph, and Mario Abney--joined me in performing poems and songs with improvised music.
Here is one of eight that we'll be posting. Thanks again to the mighty community-and-global resource that is the Louisiana Music Factory, keeper of so many flames! Video by Maryse, another enduring light!

The Dreamers and the Believers

One languid, lambent evening
In New Orleans' Riverside Park
Behind the Audubon Zoo
The Dreamers and the Believers
Play in their wheelchairs
With Angels in the Outfield
On The Field of Miracles
And as for Orson Welles'
Meeting the bravery and beauty
Of fishing-folk in northeast Brasil,
"It's All True.".
Logos tell the teams' shared identity:
BISCIS
(Brain Injury Spinal Cord Injury Survivors).

Pre-recorded music
Plays from a table behind players' fans,
The compact grandstand and wire-mesh fence.
Bouncing, the catcher/Home Plate-Umpire
Dances even as she fields pitcher's throws,
Kicking left, kicking right.
The Base-Umpire,
Too, comes from the Touro Hospital staff.
He strides like a drum-major,
Leaps and flourishes, loving this theater,
One thumb up and out or
Hands sweeping across his waist for "Safe!"

Batters rise from their chairs:
Batters who use one hand,
Batters who use a tee,
Batters whose sidelong stares
To family convey
Whole novels of longing.
They rise to batter's box
With assumptions-of-stance
That may include waggling hips like Babe Ruth
Or Beyoncé.
More than a few, athletes from youth,
Then smack line-drives.
They smack--they smack--line-drives
Out onto the Field of Miracles ,
Between Angels in the Outfield
And even rainbow-arcs over the fence.

Spectators jump and clap and shout and whoop!
"Whooh--ooh-ooh-ooh!"
"You got it! You on it!"
"Go, baby! Go, baby!"
Different generations of music
Play on with a bounce that's also
Agreeable to the catcher/ Home-Plate Umpire.
And all these sounds and actions
Ask for you--and you--and you--and--
"They all asking for you!"--
As November's crescent-moon over the unseen
Mississippi
Shine's like a cat's cut-diamond eye.