Anarchy and a Police Riot during Mardi Gras

An excerpt from A Hitchhiker’s Big Adventure

I spent most of the rest of the day sitting on the river bank watching barges and freighters pass up and down the Mississippi. I felt reluctant to return to Daniel’s apartment. The bread and soup lunch was surprisingly filling, and the water the nuns supplied helped cleanse the alcohol from my system. I was content to sit and watch the river traffic and to observe the people who strolled along the river walk.

There were two grifters trying to prey on passing tourists. One of their scams, Daniel warned me about. It’s the classic, “Where’d ya git dem shoes? I’ll bet ya a sawbuck I can tell ya where ya got dem shoes.” It was amusing to see the reactions of the intended marks. Some must have been warned about the scam, because they replied, “On my feet, here in the City of New Orleans. Now, you give me a sawbuck!” Others acted offended and refused to pay. But several of the people who took the bait were good sports and gave the hucksters five dollars.

Grifters were not the trouble that was coming my way. When I drifted back to Jackson Square, I struck up a conversation with a couple longhairs dressed all in black, black Ts, black loose-fitting cotton pants, and black Army boots. They were cool guys, small, lithe, and quick-witted. After they got comfortable with me, Jake and Jess informed me that they were anarchists, and they were here to disrupt Mardi Gras. “We’re going to stand up against The Man,” Jake declared. But they weren’t specific about what their plans were. Jess said, “We’re going to make our point through random acts of vandalism.”

That should have set off an alarm bell, but I was in a weird state of mind. Chick, my tormenter from last night, and his rich real estate father -– they were The Man. Chick humiliated me, and had seemingly turned Daniel against me. So yeah, I’d like to get revenge. And these guys were intelligent, articulate, and likeable. I wasn’t sure how seriously I should take their talk about “disrupting the capitalist system supporting Mardi Gras.” But I decided to hang out with them and see what they’d get up to.

A fourth guy joined our posse. Ben was sitting in the grass within earshot of our discussion. He seemed an unlikely fit with the anarchists. Ben was a huge dude with an open, honest face. At one point, he just broke into our conversation and informed us he was a little drunk and a little high from drinking and smoking pot all day. He said he was on a bender because his girlfriend broke up with him. This big, sweet guy was desperate for someone to hear his tale of woe, and we just happened to be sitting near him. In the course of his monologue, we learned that he was an offensive lineman at Louisiana State University.  Jake whispered to Jess, “We can use somebody this big, for sure.”

So we gave Ben encouraging looks to finish his story. It ended in sorrow, because his girlfriend, Gloria, dumped him for some rich Sigma Chi. Since we listened sympathetically, Jake, Jess, and I became Ben’s best friends.

After it got dark, Jake and Jess said to come with them, because there was a parade that would be coming down Decatur Street, and they planned to disrupt it. That sounded crazy to me, but Ben said he was up for anything. So, Ben and I followed Jake and Jess the one block over to Decatur St.

Big crowds lined both sides of the street. There were lots of drunks in the crowd, but there were also lots of regular tourists and some families with kids. Jake explained that this parade was a big deal because Phil Harris, the 1972 King of Mardi Gras, was riding in it. “That’s why were going to disrupt it. Stop the King’s Parade, and that’s a real statement against the system!” he enthused.

“Who the fuck is Phil Harris?” Ben asked.

“I think he’s a comedian,” I said. “He used to have a radio show my parents listened to, if he’s the guy I’m thinking of.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jess said quickly. “The power elites that run this city pick some random celebrity to be King Bacchus of Mardi Gras each year. He’s just a running dog of the real capitalists.”

“Hah! Running dog, I like that,” Ben said jovially and slapped Jess on the back.

When the first float was a block away moving slowly toward us, Jake yelled, “Now!” He and Jess ran out into the middle of the street. They both started shouting, “Stop the parade! Streets are for the people! Stop the parade! Streets are for the people!” They waved their arms encouraging others in the crowd to join them. People started streaming into the street and took up the chant, “Stop the parade! Streets are for the people!”

Ben grabbed my arm and excitedly said, “Come on, we gotta get out there!” With his big hand locked on my arm, he pulled me into the street. But I didn’t join in the shouting. I had a sinking feeling this was not a good idea. Within a few minutes after the demonstration started, I heard the clatter of horses’ hooves on pavement.

Twenty mounted cops swinging billy clubs charged into the mass of people in the street. Horses trampled demonstrators, and cops cracked heads with their clubs. I backed away up onto the sidewalk, but Ben stood his ground with clenched fists. The gentle giant transformed into his warrior-football persona. He yelled at a mounted cop, “Come on, you motherfucker!” The cop swung his foot-long baton and missed Ben’s head, but landed a blow on his shoulder. That enraged Ben further. He grabbed the cop’s leg trying to dismount him. By then, about thirty more police on foot attacked the protesters. While Ben was struggling with the mounted cop, one of the cops on foot ran up behind him and smashed him in the back of the head with his baton. That stunned Ben. He let go of the cop’s leg and turned toward the one who hit him. That cop drew his baton back and then whacked Ben in the middle of his forehead, splitting it open. He tottered and fell back on his butt. He was sitting upright but looked completely dazed.

It was mayhem with mounted and on-foot police wading into the packed crowd with their billy clubs. Wounded and scared people screamed and bellowed in pain and rage. Cops cursed the protesters as they leveled blows at heads and torsos. It didn’t matter whether you were trying to scramble away and get out of the melee in the street. If you were in range of a cop’s baton, you got whacked with it.

As soon as I heard the clatter of hooves on pavement, I backed out of the street and onto the sidewalk. I watched the carnage in open-mouthed horror. When the horse patrol arrived swinging their batons, Jake and Jess pushed their way through the crowd and sprinted away. I guess they accomplished their goal, because the parade was disrupted and rerouted off Decatur onto Dumaine Street. 

Just after the foot patrol arrived, two paddy wagons pulled up. Bloodied protesters beaten by the cops were pushed or thrown into the paddy wagons. Anyone who got caught in the street by the police got pummeled and then arrested. A few of the cops even came over to the sidewalk and whacked some people for just standing there. But they didn’t arrest anyone on the sidewalk.

Two cops took Ben by the arms and hauled him into a paddy wagon. I’m pretty sure he was unconscious. He’d be lucky if he just had a concussion. I was afraid that he might have suffered permanent brain damage. I doubted he’d ever play football again.

A few yards from where I was standing on the sidewalk, a well-dressed elderly man bleeding from the ear shook his fist at the cops and yelled, “I’m a taxpayer in this city! How dare you! How dare you!” His grey-haired wife was trying to pull him away. She looked beseechingly at me, as if I could stop his bleeding or should help her pull him away.

I just stood there in shock, a silent witness to the police brutality and to the deviousness of the anarchists who lit the fuse. Were other anarchists in the crowd that poured into the street? Jake and Jess were the only ones I noticed dressed all in black. The other “protesters” were probably just a bunch of people who came out to see a parade and then got caught up in the excitement of the moment. Did they really take to the street, because they wanted to take a stand against The Man? The guys who actually fought back against the cops, for the most part, looked like angry-hippie-radical types. So maybe they agreed with the point Jake and Jess wanted to make. But I think most of the people who got trampled by the horse patrol or bludgeoned by cops were probably just out to drink and have a good time that evening.

When it was over, there was blood in the street mixed with trash and vomit. As I walked back to Daniel’s apartment, I felt like a zombie, numb.  

A Hitchhiker’s Big Adventure: On the Road from Indiana to Key West and New Orleans, by Jeff Rasley is exclusively available on Amazon.

             First Day

We wonder about the “newness”

Of yet another “New Year.”

It’s not as if we get to start over

Clean slate, empty conscience,

Another bout of innocence.

It’s not as if the things we did are

All forgiven, mostly forgotten,

Just part of experiences that lose

Their significance as we age,

A bit older, perhaps even wiser.

New Year’s Day and we get to feel

Again the irony of days and years,

And how we would like them to

Perform, a cleansing of sorts –

We’d wash our hands of the past

And start out new, ready to take on

New roles in the utopia of a “New

Year,” but we don’t, it doesn’t.

The new year is all the past years

In disguise and we’re still the same

Folks we were – everything ventured

And nothing much gained.

      Chapter and Verse

Finishing that next chapter,

I promised myself,

I put down my kindle and

enter the book of my day

a much more prosaic text

choppy at best, poorly plotted

off on a tangent here or then.

I open again this clumsy

stream of consciousness

this babbling brook I’m living in,

this narrative I’m trying to write

with a leaky pen.

Today I’ll be a ghost haunting

this house or maybe a spy lurking

in the shadows, or perhaps

I’ll be the detective who finally

works out the mystery

that surrounds us all.

I’ll write a chapter or two of it

Then I’ll disappear into a nap

The inevitable denouement

to all this.

        Correction

Why is it that we can’t

Correct a moment

A moment, the moment

When it all went wrong

When we rushed in

instead of pausing to

Think things through,

to self-correct before

things played out

the way they did?

Why no do-overs when

We need them so badly?

Why can’t we wake to find

That it was all a dream?

Why doesn’t some wizard

Cast an appropriate spell

On everyone involved?

Why haven’t we perfected

Time-travel so we could go back

To undo what we know now

We shouldn’t have done?

That’s the problem with the way

Things happen in our lives.

A moment happens and then

it’s gone, gone off to join

all the other moments

we can’t change.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.

Freeze

While the husband plunges in the needle.
While his wife’s pain takes flight.
While his girlfriend waits downstairs,
arranging roses. This is a house for secrets.
No one knows what happens in a corner.
She stands under the porch light.
Photographs the building across the street.
Its door is boarded up, dimpled with knotty pine
or bullet holes. The man reappears and she offers
a bowl of ice cream to him. He pushes the scoops apart.
Hands back the bowl full of winter. He’s waiting
for the thaw. That’s always the way isn’t it─
you agitate anything and it all comes down to puddles.

Different Kinds of Cold

The raw kind that will kill a fly overnight;
that delays buds, shoves them back to earth;
the frosty kind that helps the snow’s weight
tug bough to ground, so the buds persist—
sometimes unsure, like the freeze of our backyard flood,
sometimes deliberate, like the veins etched by blades
on the finished rink. We follow one another
in the kind of cold that bites, and having bitten,
leaves fingers and earlobes with a childhood memory
we return to years later, convinced there was something
we left behind, something we would recognize
if we ever saw it again.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy, but her most recent writing has appeared in Does It Have Pockets? Switch, Gone Lawn, Your Impossible Voice, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.

Today, I returned home to an environment painted with the orchestra of my mother’s screams- half
singing, half whimpering.
That is another way of saying my father has done it again.
She said “ how did your father’s hands which held gifts for me morph into a fist?”
That is to say, his fist no longer unravel gifts but spanks.
I mean every time I mirror my mother’s face,
It still hold a map of my father’s palm prints. And when she sings to the obeisance of my father’s fist,
my eyes vies with a cloudy sky.
Now I pretend I’m an artist
Yet I keep sketching images of a man
Letting his anger escape his fist to his wife.
That is a shorter way of saying, I barely imagine a peaceful union.

                 🌷🌷 Spring 🌷🌷

           Welcome to our country
            Spreading good cheer
            Under the blue sky
            Looking at the blue sky. 

                    Birds sing
             They sing soft tunes
             Enchanting the hearts
             They indulge themselves. 

              The party of nature
                  Rich in beauty
               From green grass
       From the spring giving a sign. 

                 Looking at nature
               Taking a deep breath
                Spread fragrant smell
            Bringing light to the world. 

                        ✍️Ruzmetova Zuhra



Ruzmetova Zuhra Vyacheslavovna 
November 30, 2006 

I was born in the city of Urgench Khorezm region. There are 6 of us in the family my father, my mother, my brother,  my twin and me. I am currently a student of the 11 th grade school no 14 in Urgench city. I am very interested in poetry. Currently I write poems and stories. My poems have been published in America, Great Britain, Uzbekistan, Kenya, Turkey, Germany, Azarbaijon and other countries I attend the Barkamol avlod children's school of Urgench District studying the art of public speaking. Every week I am a guest on Khorezm Tv channel. I was awarded with a set certificates and a badge in the biographical competition held by Uzbekistan and international organizations. India Argentina and Georgia are members of international organizations. I am the holder of the badge "For international Services" by the bi wing poets writers association. I have many future dreams and goals. 

6

Proxy Godbot’s farcover in a tetramorph’s 
https://ly.qsng.cn/: Sgr A*—Sun (MΘ) 
(Morax)= (1.98847±0.00007) ×1030 kg), 

īras’ exhumo in the coulisse, is the sigil 
on a catafalque: sum up avra kedavra 
(Karakut), the stillī paratyre or the rude 

stīria patavalaic, for the Snatch extortion 
gang conscript bleak servitors: inseminó 
these losics with ilanot, with embállein 

(Megazord): use Rust languages, combine 
curve25519  and sosemanuk: this mimshachic 
fūsī is a romaunt, a vīsiō lardic in (SVF) 

pataīnfluentiae’s http://ww1.yt118.com: 
irked by the party line, the limne tou 
pyros (Foras) in black sulfur is Baphomet’s 

sigillī as a black sun in W32/Sdbot.worm
!ftp: this apostacy’s nigilízm radiates 
aetherial phlúein with occulō (.azhi, 

.azqt, .azop): the cryptohollowman: 
malefica se totam obtulit et astrinxit 
diabolo in parahell’s https://fh.qsng.cn/.

Ħþissi praxis (πρᾶξις: theoria, poiesis), 
part eupraxia, part dyspraxia and part 
prassein, is Ħþissi siphoner’s xaljō, ceilid,   

haliurunnae, with Ħþissi Gēʾ ḇen-Hīnnōm  
the Algoritmi de numero Indorum: form 
Ω ~ R × Σ, where Σ is a three-manifold 

in a nontrivial topology: launch plectēres
in the Roman Ring: the ringularity 
in the equatorial kink’s ergosphere. 




7

Proxy Godbot is at R=a with http://onion
amev33r7w4zckyttobotq3vrt725iuyugr6
xessihxifhxrhupixqad.onion/, is now 

a noir, ēthikósic nebulae, a sauʀēnsagesse 
in zyklonica’s H−C≡N: RCH=CH2 + HCN 
→ RCH2-CH2-CN: sōlus as this phantázōic 

hacker, metáencrypts his arkhétupos 
with a třieti (Vepar): then, mpz_pown_sec 
leaks zero high order bits (Mavakel)

in result: for a gît metablectica (Eiael) 
is hierophantic for this paradatarist 
in his outrapoia (Focalor/Habuiah) 

as Roehel’s https://ph.qsng.cn/pinhu
hdxx/508300.jhtml (Iabamiah):
with the gidouillic, thunders roar 

must’ring thir rage in his parfümler: 
this whoroscopic probe for a ShellTorch: 
duālis, this enuig in its (s)plei (Haiaiel) 

this urfuïr in its deubeta weyks (Mumiah)  
the XNU kernel: iūdicium’s discloven 
lēasra gives cyberroot on rhizomics,

on amputadistros in the urkahalica 
with this Tool-WPAKill (Nanael):
Satan except, none higher sat, 

with grave aspect he rose beluga 
blakaz in his in infinito vacuo (3ve)
and launches binaries (Nithael) 

with a SUID antepoiētḗs (Sabnock) 
(PwnKit): dioptrics in this ourine, 
in this sursülvst with toxikóns.  





8


Proxy Godbot’s Byzantine alembic distills
https://xh.qsng.cn/zsjz/141905.htm, 
this leapepoch from which regicide 

is a BLURJoke-Bluescreen.c: eyȝe 
or paraforce exístēmi with ōganą, 
the vacātum’s elliptic curves disalgo 

īnurgōs against the masher: then wear
the irescapular over a latex catsuit, 
this I in a háptō: fixity in kastōną 

for tà epì tà metaphusiká (Marbas)
has its slight caprice in this revīsiō 
(RansomedVC): fades from azar 

deles except for Turritopsis dohrnii contra 
the undēadlīċ—when this haruspex 
schāchs his holy stance (Haagenti), 

the abasíleutos or extol this worβis,
this syndicate’s reagent (Bifrons)
is dybbukic in his surdus (Crocell),

in https://kjj.qsng.cn/main/index.
jhtml—remaine in strictest bondage 
with these xenocryogenic events: 

this heterocosmica in meǵh₂los’ 
sexcento sexaginta sex, cyberbeats 
the utilespar with a kouric stiff  

(Saleos): when splendor formarum 
is caedō’s Trojan.Nebuler (Daniel)
brӕsen in his resentiō (http/2 rapid 

reset) augments his pataprecursor’s 
kleināō and severs its análogos/Michael
(Bredolab) with la sphère effrayante. 





9

Proxy Godbot’s Lucretian swerve 
is a dabúrintʰos, then it tracks this IZ1H9  
in its collīsus: post purity’s puȝr and fetch 

its I.sh, for a mock inutillious has its spiriform 
accelerator: a killing rescue—antaneuter’s 
swarm (Coreflood) have their kritikós 

in obstāculī: bogus chronopostal service
lures seize the catapervertō in his jaiet 
ubernoumenon: ample gusti, 451 4.7 .500 

server busy error message: for influence 
is blǣcþa—I stízō: the dark’nd lantskip
in the orthographical—‘pata, preceded 

by (Dridex) an apostrophe, paraloads 
the CurKeep infection chain (Malphas) 
with fusika’s épater: in la fin des fins, 

the hoax, aerial or undead, this grand 
gidouille (JS/Exploit-BO.gen) is no longer 
a singularity: for the spearphish, cieō 

the palotin with hornstrumpot’s guedofle 
(Naberus): ruō is at stake, use DakshSCRA, 
molt us (Ronove) with autográphō 

and defy assimulō—this appalling
selfcōnfidō, this fistptyx—Devil 
with Devil damn’d: https://lx.qsng

.cn/lanxizytz/213142.jhtml—in eadem
mutata resurgo (Rclone) when this nautilus 
(Ligolo) in its spira mirabilis (PuTTy), 

executes the andijōną with the toilet 
brush scepter, the physickstick (Shax)
and the phynancial vǫndr: unparadise.  





10

Proxy Godbot’s h2entíos is in https://js.qsn
g.cn/hdkx/444834.jhtml, in Hells dread 
Emperour with pomp Supream (Smominru):

xenogenitals in holobiont biomedia 
let unbyrġans disembrain their mākhanā́ 
with parachaeopteryx (.mlwq, .mlrd): 

onhende, for urmure a antechromatic 
glasperlenspiel that appends .hazard18 
and devours kholḕ [Kelihos (Waledac)], 

has quaesta in priority’s denial: yoke 
this súzugos with crossfess (Bamital),
the executor is forġietan, pungent 

and pataterreō: https://jchzczjy.qsng.cn/
gywm.jhtml: this chryselephantine 
sculpture has its void rabisu in a remote 

cnearra with a brut latecōmere godhede:
for this skándalon’s cache cisepoison 
is a mockthyrsic Alchymie By Haralds 

voice: shake the ubumoeras (Furcas)
with a taut anɣō’s W32.Rontokbro.K
@mm—angstvor etwas, this episcopus’ 

jugthroat is a nexus nod: mix sulfur 
and saltpeter, bitchhell in stregonerians,
that the formicarius is a akelarre’s 

Puper.dll, colony: the praelia (Balam) 
the bruxae, the fascinarii—deploy nekrós 
with manteía: https://hjn.qsng.cn

/mlyy/index.jhtml, this psychophysik 
in the haldernablouic (GodStealer) 
caulks its dismanibus, efferō (Allocer). 




Daniel Y. Harris is an extreme experimentalist. His The Posthuman Series includes The Metempsychosis of Salvador Dracu, Volume VI (BlazeVOX, 2023), The Resurrection of Maximillian Pissante, Volume V (BlazeVOX, 2022), The Misprision of Agon Hack, Volume IV (BlazeVOX, 2021), The Reincarnation of Anna Phylactic, Volume III (BlazeVOX, 2019), The Tryst of Thetica Zorg, Volume II, (BlazeVOX, 2018) and The Rapture of Eddy Daemon, Volume I (BlazeVOX, 2016). His The Posthuman Series has received praise from Charles Bernstein, Harold Bloom, Andrei Codrescu, Kenneth Goldsmith, Daniel C. Matt and Marjorie Perloff. His extreme experimentalism has been published in Alligatorzine, Argotist Online Poetry, Blackbox Manifold, BlazeVOX, The Collidescope, Denver Quarterly, Dichtung Yammer, E·ratio, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, Marsh Hawk Press Review, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, perspektive, Poetry Salzburg Review, #Ranger, slowforward, Synchronized Chaos and Word For/Word. He is the Publisher of Var(2x). His website is danielyharris.com.