AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

Lady’s word harvest this morning . . . 2.22.2022

February 22, 2022 No Comments

Lady’s word harvest this morning . . .

Some Moments Patched Together

Cleveland for me was the visceralness of crawling on hardwood floors as a baby, late night Shaker Heights apartment stairways – being carried up thumb suckingly asleep – orange lights streaming past dirty car window – the orange Bug with a hole in its floor through which you could see the swish of Saturn rings of salted gray road blurring by and imagine what rust must lie beneath the salting away car. Cleveland for me was Dee Perry, the voice of highest civilization – art and culture coverage. Or boogie in the silver car – Paul McCartney’s “I Love You” and “Staying Alive” and police lights.

When Mom and I were mid daylight returning to find two teens lurching away from stealing the battery from the silver car and Mom’s hot anger, the excitement of riding down Martin Luther King Drive and Dad’s stories of warnings from there, lifeguarding at Edgewater and getting beat up in basement of Shaker Heights High.

Parties where I met a jungle of gigantic adult legs in the pungent haze of undergraduate smoke, Mom parting curtains of their adoration of me to the spare room with a mattress on the parquet floor where I was put to bed, settled among adult things on clean sheets, wondering at Mom’s vicissitudes of high octave laughter behind the beveled panels of a glossy white Georgian door.

Even the daylight out with Mom was exciting midnight and always culture – the squirrelled winding road of MLK with its brown sea fans of tree branches creaking in the shuddering excitement of their candid regard – our shuttle passing under the ring stone of overpasses, bracelets on the legacy of early century greenway. The old homes of Liberty Row, Gordon, Rockefeller, Wade, Ambler Drive, Shaker Heights Tudor, stands of daffodils in springtime.

– Lady, 2.22.2022

polaroid air pulsing forward like liquid thrushings of an ultrasound’s fetus

February 21, 2022 No Comments

“. . . polaroid air pulsing forward like liquid thrushings of an ultrasound’s fetus. . .” — from Lady’s pre-dawn word harvest this morning

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The key things I remember about the aftermath of the mid century are the corduroy of my fingerprints sweeping the gritty velvet of dust off Lemon Pledge polished matte walnut finishes. Always more dust to give Grandma something to manage – her dominion less CBS at night – through she watched it. Grandma had the knowhow of her threadbare cotton rags and dessicated cabinet. Lysol for the floor, vinegar on the window.

The sober face of the black and white kitchen clock – abstract mustachioed visage – faithfully ticking its whiskers onward – polaroid air pulsing forward like liquid thrushings of an ultrasound’s fetus – the quantum messiness of the analog pocketed into digital packets of forward progression.

Grandpa’s tobacco hand drank coffee stained depth from a milk glass mug and read The Plain Dealer on a white formica table. His bifocal’s rectangular reflections studied the steady black and white code of newsprint and levied a kingdom of well-considered judgement. Iron steamed condemnation over liars’ crinkly wrinkles and curated truth’s earnest linen.

Liars know better than to posture what they do light of the Waterford bowl of wax fruit, the New Deal and Boy Scouts, the Greatest Generation’s post-war sepia, the plight of the Jews, and our all-seeing God. The end point of the dialectic is obvious to all like the cauterized stamp of Grandpa’s cigarette butt.

The world in all its Dizzy Gillespie gleaminess had gone to bed into the blacks, browns, yellows, oranges and beiges of settled shag. The origami of Jazz from midnight pianos unfolded into the Rorshach bewilderness of a transcendent Klein painting. The balm I’d fallen into on a whim was somber ceiling plaster rosette watching. More dust, evidence of the real, on waxy patina of a striated ribbons of Better Home and Gardens plants, their assigned placements.

– Lady, 2.21.2022

u got time, i got rhythm rhyme shuffle . . .

February 7, 2022 No Comments

u got time, i got rhythm rhyme shuffle . . .

Jesus Walking on Water – Violent Femmes
If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time – Lefty Frizzell
Law (Earthlings On Fire) – David Bowie
Trailer Trash – carolesdaughter
Fantasy Island – Clinic
Never Say Never – Romeo Void
Because The Night – Patti Smith
Beezlebub – Beats Antique w/ Les Claypool
M – Music I – Inside C – Curved E-Entrances – Terry Riley
Lost Highway – Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys
The Collector (and the Art Mob) – Terry Allen
Eternal Consumption Engine – Primus
Bow Legged Daddy – Maria Muldaur
Deep Dish – Ani Difranco
Restin’ Bones – Primus
Backlash Blues – Nina Simone
Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On – Leonard Cohen
Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues – Larkin Poe
Bang Bang Boom Boom – Beth Hart
Rehab – Amy Winehouse

who knows where the shuffle goes . . .

February 4, 2022 No Comments

who knows where the shuffle goes . . .

Janitor Of Lunacy – Nico
Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb – Charles Mingus
Torches And Pitchforks – Cracker
I Saw A Cop – Jill Sobule
Salivation – Terry Allen
Wild Side Of Life – Hank Thompson
Moanin’ – Art Blakey
Sun and the Moon – Clinic
I Walk The Line – Johnny Cash
Dissolve / Reveal – Tom Verlaine
Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer – Morphine
Peroxide Beach – Sloppy Jane
Walking In The Rain – Grace Jones
Rumble Of The Diesel – Les Claypool
OD’d In Denver – Bill Callahan & Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Eyestalk (Gurkaran Waraich) – Love
Chinese Mike – Tuxedomoon
Wet Dream – Wet Leg
Tits On The Radio – Scissor Sisters
Jesus Was A Social Drinker – Chuck Prophet
Bedbugs & Ballyhoo (Transformed) – Echo And The Bunnymen
Piano Sonata No. 1: III. Allegro con brio – Steven Beck
You Will Never Work In Television Again – The Smile
Different Trains: After The War – Steve Reich

Word harvest 1-31 2022

February 3, 2022 No Comments

Word harvest 1-31 2022

2022.1.1 – The siren of flashing lights
2022.1.5 – Seems I’m inclined
2022.1.5 – Think I’ll toke this town
2022.1.7 – I’ll huff
2022.1.8 – Dead Man’s Curve
2022.1.12 – Coffee in
2022.1.13 – Sunday Sermon
2022.1.14 – We speak half truth at best
2022.1.15 – Grey sky
2022.1.17 – Ground white
2022.1.18 – 56th year of weed
2022.1.19 – There’s these Texas rabbits
2022.1.25 – Did two armed robberies 1970
2022.1.25 – I’m thinking
2022.1.25 – Digging bones
2022.1.26 – Old bones
2022.1.27 – The 4 C’s
2022.1.30 – The trouble with subtlety

~ ~ ~

The siren of flashing lights
race across the bridge
in fog
playing hide and seek
with empty trees

No coyote howls
in silent harmony

~ ~ ~

Seems I’m inclined
to work the word mines
for the weird mind

~ ~ ~

Think I’ll toke this town
stone by stone
it’s 4:20 somewhere

~ ~ ~

I’ll huff
and I’ll puff
and I’ll toke this joint down

~ ~ ~

Dead Man’s Curve
tells me all I need to know
about life

~ ~ ~

Coffee in
coffee out
weariness continues

Writing words
across the sky
for the underground

Twixt nothing’s something
and now’s then
tomorrow’s sorrow

As for mirrors
I choose the edges
of the bevels

~ ~ ~

Sunday Sermon

God & the FBI – Janis Ian
Hell on Heels – Pistol Annies
Nasty Gnostic – Critters Buggin
Bad Karma – Miley Cyrus & Joan Jett
Devil’s Got Your Boyfriend – Tracy Bonham
Dig, Lazarus, Dig – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
If Jesus Drove a Motor Home – Jim White & Aimee Mann
Walking Into Battle With The Lord – Chumbawamba
The Snake and the Moon – Dead Can Dance
Ritual Fire Dance – Manuel De Falla
Mexican Radio – Wall of Voodoo
Holy Ghost – Violent Femmes
Soul Kitchen – Patti Smith
God’s Back Pocket – Hellwood
Beezlebub – Beats Antique w/ Les Claypool
Nice ‘N’ Sleazy – The Stranglers
Karmacoma – Massive Attack
Wide Wide River (Of Shit) live – The Fugs
Sinner! – Jim White & The Packway Handle Band
Jesus Was A Social Drinker – Chuck Prophet
Sex And The Church – David Bowie
Heaven And Hell – Willie Nelson
Female Jesus – Johnny Dowd
I’m Clean – Priests
Bark Like A God – Sloppy Jane
Get Right With God – Lucinda Williams
Holy Mackerel – Les Claypool & The Holy Mackerel
Slow Steady Salvation – The Grassy Knoll
Doubter Out Of Jesus – Chuck Prophet
Devil’s Radio – George Harrison
To Zion (Radio Edit) – Digital Underground
God Was Drunk When He Made Me – Jim White
Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo
Necessary Evil – Debbie Harry
Thank You Lord – Hellwood

~ ~ ~

We speak half truth at best
knot not
quirk quest

We’re born little
keep crawling
to Big Nap

~ ~ ~

Grey sky
cold wind
hard ground
one more rock
one more hill
in run round sun

~ ~ ~

Ground white
heart dark
where light?

~ ~ ~

56th year of weed
30 years 9 months no alcohol
22 years no speed, cocaine, needles

~ ~ ~

There’s these Texas rabbits
that breed like rabbits
till too many per square footage
whereupon nature steps in
and they develop a nervous condition
start doing strange stuff
dying off
until there’s not enough rabbits per acre
and they heal
and they breed
and . . . well, you know

Been looking around
see a lot of rabbit ears lately

~ ~ ~

Did two armed robberies 1970
got $64 in first
10.5 months in second

~ ~ ~

I’m thinking
all the saucepans of the world
come from Sausalito

~ ~ ~

Digging bones
in the boneyard
giving up on finding flesh

It takes songbird
and the songbird’s shit
for song to sing

~ ~ ~

Old bones
lowered in hot tub
pure pleasure

Descabbing wounds
while soaking battered body
in salt bath

~ ~ ~

The 4 C’s . . .
cardiac, cars, cancer, Covid
life uneverlasting

~ ~ ~

The trouble with subtlety
is they don’t hear
the fuck you