Bible for the Lawn (Swimming to the Moon with Jesus v. 3)

 

Just a closer walk with thee

Grant me Jesus if you please . . .            

              

Backstroke, sidestroke, butterfly, crawl

Swimming to the moon with Jesus

Lawdy, don’t that just cure it all?

 

 

 

 

LET US PRAY

 

 

 

(blonde blue-eyed Germanic Jesus please hear my prayer):

 

“

The performative aspect of living in the love of god, like swimming to the moon on a gossamer tissue, like living in the USA, it’s hard. Swimming through a darkness enveloping, bleeding dry tears, What the fuck is anyone supposed to make of this? Germanic Jesus, can you fix this shit?

“

 

(sez Our Lord)

 

 “The moon is the big white everything way up in the sky. That much is clear. Darkness is what you swim through to get there. Consider the moon, consider the darkness. The moon is out there. The darkness is medium. Swimming is involved.

 

The moon crumbles away when called to answer on this level. The swimmer as self accumulates garbage like barnacles on a ship’s hull. Swimming is the process of dilution, the inverse of money accumulating money. White queens with cellphones dial 911 and cry THE CHILDREN, the fucking children

 

which maps like

            the moon – out there

            darkness – the medium

            swimming – process, debasement, death

            the swimmer – a sap

            the children – an imaginary nothing

The white queen conjures a moon from her speed dial, it’s as bullshit as any other moon, transcendence here, transcendence there. The rocks under your feet tell you that the road is a negotiation, that swimming is de-evolution.”[1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] It’s really pretty simple, when you get down to it: living for that thing out there, you are fucked. You are probably fucked anyway, but still. Turn the process to negotiation, that’s how the state runs. Name the price, define the terms. As if it is your price, as if they are your terms.

 

Point at the moon with your left hand. At your right, a symbol benighted with corrupt investiture (say, “the children”). One as imaginable and unobtainable as the other. The investiture of the white queen, fear, freezes time and invests empty and absurd symbols, creates her children. And we see the problem right away: death spawn. The shit is dead. The shit is death. The moon, the children, the transcendent ineffable frozen like a statue of Apollo, and dead, dead, dead. Dead as the dream of a crystal city on a hill, dead as the consolation of order by law, dead as founder’s intent, dead as white dreams of America that you have been sold like subway tokens to a better world, dead as a heaven that exists only in books.

 

RONA Fragment #4 v.2

time, day, what is that?

 

lie across

  the bed at angles

in states of undress

 

& listen

to noise

 

 

 on shuffle

 

 

 

Sun sketches the house next door

in glaring relief, so it’s day,

early-ish day:

a little later clouds will show up

to wash time

off the neighbor’s siding.

 

random.

meandering.

walks.

 

 

 

divide the infinitely divisible into chunks

 

 

indeterminate timelessness

 

pomegranate, tequila, and simple syrup

spell an endless parade of bourbon & sodas

in the kitchen washing a stray plate

 

a moment

sudden

 

crystallized

 

 

I become inexplicably emotional

& cry during a Bob Dylan song

I’ve heard passively for 40 years

 

the rage I have lived with since the age 16 feels now diffuse and unearned,

even if circumstances suggest the opposite

 

           

 

 

 

 

flit

 

 moment

 moment

 

incredible

& subjective

 

vision

           

 

 

            is this the world now?

            is it even different

            in any qualitative way?

 

 

Götterdämmerung

 The Third Reich played itself offstage

with Götterdämmerung Act 3,

Brünnhilde riding into the flames, 

Valhalla ablaze, fade into nothingness.

The American Reich responds

with the Benny Hill theme,

blood spattered everywhere

from the slaughtered 

black, brown, yellow, indigenous people.

Power Rankings: Repping Indiana Pacers Jerseys, 2020-2021 Edition

 These power rankings are not solely based on the abilities of the player, though that factors in.

1. Malcom Brogdon, #7
2. Myles Turner, #33
3. Justin Holiday, #8
4. T. J. Warren, #1
5. Domantas Sabonis, #11
6. Aaron Holiday, #3
7. Jeremy Lamb, #26
8. Victor Oladipo, #4
9. Doug McDermott, #20

[puddles amplify holiday lights]

puddles amplify holiday lights

shooting stars, ricocheting

across the parking lot

bouncing through gray turning black

I’m slogging through

a wet Christmas

Tuesday night so warm

I peel off a light jacket

three days before Christmas

I’m told the days are getting longer

Anderson texts from the desert

a celebration of the return

of the light

soon, Daytona and lent

Easter and pitchers and catchers report

madness, thunder, derby and beyond

reaching for warmth

before retreating from the heat

the year tumbles forward, lopsided

a raining new year

a Christmas to smother the soul

Power Rankings: Lager

 On the positive side, the craft beer boom really pushed the quality of American beer to new heights. On the negative side, the trendy obsession with boutique hops led American beer makers to HOP THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF EVERYTHING CONSIDERED A BEER. Here is the in-house power rankings for the simple, clean, golden lager:

1. Asahi (Japan)
2. Braxton Garage Lager (Covington/Cincinnati)
3. Founder's Solid Gold (Grand Rapids)
4. Taj Mahal (India)
5. Kingfisher (India)
6. Gravely La Bamba (Louisville)
7. Rhinegeist Cheetah (Cincinnati)
8. Negra Modelo (Mexico)

That California Jangle

David Crosby's tone-deaf comments upon the death of Eddie Van Halen reminded me of my long-standing annoyance with the solipsism of 60s/70s California hippie culture. I remember in particular the front porch hangs I used to have with Elijah Pritchett, and how our mutual animosities to that hippie culture came to be animated primarily by one band: The Byrds.

I also have to admit that my first interest in rock music was The Byrds, from a band biography and four song seven inch sampler I got from Scholastic Books when I was in grade school; obviously the book was deeply sanitized to the point of not at all being useful as a story of the band, but most of the band's music goes down pretty easy, so there wasn't much need for sanitizing that, save holding off on some of the band's more obviously druggy songs (though it really seems "Eight Miles High" was on there . . . but of course, that was a song about flying in an airplane lol). I don't remember exactly what was on the record, but one song did stand out: "Lover of the Bayou". That one was dirty.

Anyway, it got me to wondering if I was just done with The Byrds, so I did what it is I do: put together a giant Spotify playlist, based on fan's favorites from the band, and immerse myself in it until I figure it out. This was, in fact, probably the first band I did that with, many years ago, when I joined Spotify not too long after its birth. The playlist was just over three hours to start (three hours is kind of the magic playlist number for me, because that was my average DJ shift on WQAX back in the day). Unlike the Bob Dylan playlist that I have been working on this year, which started out at just over six hours then was lightly trimmed back to about five and a half, the Byrds playlist was cut down to under an hour and a half after I lived with it for a while. A lot of The Byrds's output leaves me cold and bored; some I consider downright repulsive (Crosby's "Triad" immediately comes to mind). The sheer length of the playlist was overwhelming to me as well: I could never handle that much Byrds. On the other hand, once I got it to the point that it would fit onto a 90 minute tape, it became a useful playlist, and one I listen to a fair amount. I emailed Elijah to let him know of my work, but he remained unconvinced.

To be fair, I did have to follow it up with a Minutemen playlist when I listened to it last Tuesday.

Anyway, here it be:

And yes, "Jesus is Just Alright" is on there. And yes, I'm still down with "Lover of the Bayou". And yes, if this band disappeared into the mists of time, I would barely miss them. But here it is.

The Byrds Power Rankings: Most Overrated/Underrated

1. Graham Parsons/Gene Clark
2. David Crosby/Clarence White
3. Sweetheart of the Rodeo/Younger Than Yesterday