🌙 Living in the Crescent

It's got big city problems / with small town prices.

I’ve called Austin and New York City and Las Vegas and Dallas and Seattle and Nashville my homes, at one point or another, and I think, in order for a city to be its proper size / it can't be bursting at the seams

scaling the wall of population count for one reason or another, / climbing higher and higher / for whoever’s buying.

We need to be comfortable with what we abandon.

It leaves room to right our wrongs. / To live within our collective means.

I mean, maybe — who knows — what American city do you know that actually lives within its means? Please.

Maybe all we can do is find our collective time.

Nobody embodies that truth / quite like New Orleans.

If only their trees could talk. / The stories they could recall. / The music they'd recite.

New Orleans proves / old doesn't mean fragile.

It shows us how to not be afraid / to fuck it all up.

If it needs repairing — / they'll know what to do.

I sat at a bar on a Thursday afternoon and a guy told me about how he got a hand job at the jukebox / this is clearly not a recent story, he’s been telling this one since the 90s.

2026 could never.

Yeah you right, I don’t think it would hurt us / to flash a tit every once in a while.

Imagine getting told "let the good times roll" / your whole entire life.

Arriving into a world / where that’s already true.

Meanwhile / white people going through their seven stages of grief.

And ever since we all banded together and killed that monolithic culture, / we've been a snake eating its own tail,

fueled by our collective shame / the energetic fossil fuel, if you will.

We prune our own tree / chasing that number one spot,

the peak of the symmetrical mountaintop

that age old fallacy / of self-actualization.

New Orleans knows how to live / among its ghosts, how to party with its demons.

Knows the devil is merely a trickster / and we all know a trickster's game.

We can play that game too.

We.

When do I get to start saying we?

When New Orleans is in my heart / if so, check.

What's next / claiming a zip code?

Who knows if I'll get to punch in 70116 for gas.

But if you want to reach me for now / that's where you can find me.

Yesterday I walked around 70116,

and a man in a lawn chair / waved above his head / to say hello

to me. / Of all people.

I’m a guest in this city that’s shaped like a crescent moon

showing the world a sliver / of what's to come.