Ode, La Nouvelle Orléans

MY ASS aches, and a hazy dumbness pains

My sense, as though Absinthe I had drunk,

And emptied some new shrimps to the drains

One minute past, and Canal-wards had sunk:

'Twas a celebration of our academic lot,

And being too reliev'd in our happiness,

That Thou! Light-winged Drink of ease!,
In some perfidious plot
Of Lafitte's mean, and Abitas numberless,
Screamed our success to the tops o'trees!

O for a moment of clarity! that hath been

Unaffected by barmaid of Orleans girth,

Her lids darkly-lined above eyes of green.

Dance, and 80s songs, and stories of mirth!

And of bathtub full of ice - it had seen no mouth!

Yes, a bathroom -- the likes we’d never seen—

With pee of others lapping at the brim.

Of a liquor-pained South!

O! Night of drink, Orleans unseen,

And pole by pole, left Bourbon Street dim…

Hungover! the very word is like a knell:

A morn knock that pull’d me from my stupor’d self!

Adieu, beignets! You who did treat us so well

As Orleans is famed to do [deceptive pelf!].

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive blues fades

Past near Metairie, past the voodoo stream,

Back home! and now, stories buried deep;

But, next post, all in spades:

I’ll tell of visions, of a waking dream.

Our next memories? abroad! Stories cannot keep.

In the Cause!

Dr. T. Shandy