Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans

The streets lost their names.

Avenues, drives and alleys,

Martin Luther King and Pinetree

clashed in the wind.

Quicker than one, two, three,

New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward

was unashamedly robbed

of its identity.

But did that really matter

in the end,

when the levees broke,

when the waters took,

Everything?

The hood lost its houses.

Houses lost families.

Armchairs, tables, cars and bodies

floating in the stream.

So survivors fled

away from the flood.

All is gone now but lonesome foundations

left to rest in the shrubs.