What must Mardi Gras be like?
Is it revelers pursuing yet another Krew’s ostentacious float? Is it music pouring out of every open door and window? Or crowds of tourists casting down or tossing up sets of beads? Is it influencers drawing onlookers with the lure of lavish costumes? It it a mysterious alchemy of all these things?
Whatever it is, the festivities carries on right up to the last minute of Fat Tuesday. But at midnight, police bullhorns announce the arrival of Ash Wednesday. The party is over.
Perhaps Mardi Gras is the reverse of the traditional New Orleans Funeral procession, during which Mourners process in tears to the cemetary, as a marching band plays a dirge. Upon the procession’s return, however, the band strikes up a wildly upbeat tune, and the processors dance and sing their way back.
Fast, then feast? Or feast, then hangover?
piles of dropped beads
the gray light of another
“Trash Wednesday”
for dVerse Poets’ Tuesday Poetics: Mardi Gras Mambo (pubtended by Amaya)
Real Toads’ Tuesday Platform (imagined by Sanaa Rizvi)
and Colleen’s 2019 Weekly #Tanka Tuesday #Poetry Challenge No. 127 #SynonymsOnly
Frank J. Tassone 
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