Midnight Blues in New Orleans

Midnight Blues in New Orleans
 
Degas in his studio
Paints the NOLA cotton exchange
While sad clouds drift
Like floating islands of Bible belt dreams
High on the calluses of blues guitarists
Wailing like the ghosts of Hades
That haunt Claiborne Avenue
Like a hobo with his stove pipe hat
With a bottle of Port to welcome his ship
When he rises from his entombed dreams
 
Where Jelly Roll Morton was heard
Playing on the victrola
When the scent of whisky poured
From windows to the midnight voodoo
Of a lady arrayed for the evening
Like a Parisian mobster’s wife
But only the blues to line her purse
Whose nest is a shotgun house in Treme
Where roses climb the steps
Like little hearts
Whose petals are strewn on the sidewalk
Like orphaned notes in a Cole Porter song
Sung by street buskers
Among the looters of heaven