Where's My News; Monkey Time; Homily; 5K Readers...

Music Bed: "Stroll Variations 2"

I'll do a fresh episode this weekend, but right now here's one of the adult poems from my "Erzulie Freda" CD. The music was created using the free program Poodles and Flan Vol. 1. Oh yeah, the CD is available at CD Baby...

This episode has my poem "Clinic Under Siege" in honor of Dr. George Tiller, murdered by a right-wing coward. Also, my new book page at Authonomy.

A little soapbox rant for a progressive TV channel and some midi noise...

Ok, I've restored the balance between my two podcasts once more, and taken some of my storage space back.

SL shows 171,175 & 176 are now being stored at Internet Archive (where my first 60 shows are archived).

Anyway, I'll report something from my La Vida Loca tomorrow...

Time to put this personal cast back to use. Say, 2 - 3 times a week with various stuff.

Stay tuned...

It's been too long...

Anyway, this poem is from a cassette EP I produced back in the late 80s/early 90s called "City Shamans."

I signed up over at ccmixter this week and posted this old favorite poem, and the next day it got a hit. A cat named duckett mixed it with "stay alive perc loops" by: Sweet_Noise, and "Ladies Love It" by: Bucky Jonson.

duckett says "Well, this was another one where I just guessed at the bpm and it seemed to fit nicely… I know this is loop-city, but I just thought a tinkly, swirly, clockwork feel worked for this, it’s just one big pretty loop really. I loved the pella; I have stopped, and noticed a bubble…"

--------

d'you ever stop to notice a bubble?
the delicious acophany of melted rainbows
madly encircling its globe?
recombinant, glistening,
burning itself into gray skin.
exploding into evaporated shards.
scattered breath mating with
the afternoon sun.
- LW

On Sept 30th, I was a member of a "Writer's Panel" on the last day of the Podcast and New Media Expo, along with fellow podcast novelists Evo Terra and Mur Lafferty, and Tee Morris of Podiobooks.com. The event was an episode of the writer's podcast hosted by Matthew Selznick.

This was my first time hanging out with other podcast novelists, and i had a great time. I waited until Matthew released his podast episode before I put up my completely unedited audio from the panel.

Photo by mrsonion42, at Flickr

In 2004, before the stolen election, I put out a CD of political poems with simple backgrounds, "Monkey King." Next year has another election to steal, and how much else has changed?

Here's the new promo for my podcast-only novel, "Banjo Strings."

Also, the tag line and the first 2 paragraphs of the novel:

...An epic and graphic tale of antebellum ghosts, ancient scandal, supernatural spies, and a den of iniquity amid the Red Maple and Magnolia trees...

~~~~~~~~~~

"Augustus Wainwright was having an old familiar dream, of when he was thirteen and caught the dark chocolate upstairs maid smoking in his mother's bathroom, her private sanctuary. He'd fancied that gal all summer and now he had her, close enough to touch. His face stretched into a goofy grin, he ordered the maid to his room near the back of the mansion. He bent her over his desk, slid down her panties, undid his pants and just watched, breathing in the faint new aroma, entranced by his first real look at a woman's vagina. The best part of the dream came when she, realizing her position and resigning herself to it, reached back and took matters in hand. He shuddered in anticipation, and then an irritating noise, an itch he couldn't scratch, ice-picked its way in from...where?

He looked up, out through the window, where he expected to see Mother bent over the azealas in the garden, instead, he saw her standing, wearing an old-time plantation ball gown, passionately kissing a shirtless, barefoot black man. The noise scratched itself into a banjo being tuned, then strum. It jarred him awake. He heard a murmur behind him on the bed, sat up and looked over to see Rebecca Sandiford, the girl from last night's party, curled up beside him. Damn, he whispered. She didn't leave when the cops ran everybody off. Downstairs, he heard a banjo being strum. He blinked his eyes, looking over at the clock on the nightstand. 3:02 AM. "He'll come at three in the morning, the day after your birthday." Auntie Aggie's words spilled from his lips, underscored by the banjo..."

This is my St. Patrick's Day poem. One year in Chicago, there were more celebrations of Gaelic culture in February than in March, so I penned this poem as a commentary, not a protest. Last year I featured this poem in my podcast Sundown Lounge in March, and this year I'm proud to play it in The Patio. The background music is "Rockin' Landlady," an excellent piece by Pubside Down, a great band based in Switzerland.

This is one of my old favorites...
The idea for this poem came from a poem by John Sinclair (White Panther Party founder and MC5 manager), on the Delta blues myth of the crossroads. I just made a poets' version of the mythology (and by the way, it's not the Devil a bluesman hopes will visit and tune his guitar, it's Papa Legba...)
This version of my band Brass Orchid had the same lineup as in the Estelle's gig, with the addition of a concert pianist who moved to Boston a few months after I recorded this over a rehearsal take. We used to rehearse at her place, playing next to her baby grand. It was so cool...
[One last thing: One of my musician buddies said he never liked the arrangement because the piano didn't fit, but I liked the opposing tension of her improvising with the other players.]

In the mid-90's, I experimented with various version of Brass Orchid, my poetryband. This version (bass, percussion and tenor sax) played a feature gig at Estelle's, one of the hot poetry saloons on the corner of North, Damen, and Milwaukee Aves., the apex of Wicker Park when the poets ran the corner. This was originally on 4 track tape, so it's a bit noisy, but I don't mind the "el" rumbling in the background, or the crowd noise from my poet friends in the audience of the small bar. The stage itself was so small we barely fit on it, but that night, the band was cooking...

The poem is "Terra Cognita." I posted a copy at my MySpace blog - http://blog.myspace.com/sundownlounge.

From my pirate radio days in Chicago. My weekly program, "The Rent Party," was a mix of jazz, blues, improvisational rock and open mic poetry from the local venues. I also read William S. Burrough's "Naked Lunch" from beginning to end in installments, free and uncensored. Here's the excerpt included in the Guerilla Love Radio compilation...

The political poem I wrote shortly after the aftermath of the tragedy...