West River Parkway, Minneapolis, March 12, 2012

            —Stevie Wonder on the car stereo

more wetland

than river or

stream

our own bodies of rivulets and

capillaries

isles and

islands of organs

kidneys lungs

even skin

“heaven help the black man…

            heaven help the white man if he turns

                        his back away”

                                    —Stevie Wonder

the distances

of us, my daughter,

bridged by water

like these running

to New Orleans

& I know so well

those nerves

beside your mouth

that gnarled

sickness

I have been there, too,

                        & with you

            each time you

go there

“signed

            sealed

                        delivered”

but you

have always come through

shocked it into

happening

at the moment

of crisis

            & do nerves even matter

            at that point

I have failed so many times

            drenched

                        drenched

                                    these past

                                                weeks

but I, too,

have turned nervous

ticks and twitches

into small

triumphs

the philosopher Kant

speaks of the

sublime

as the realization

of our powers

to conceptualize

nature

this river shows me

he goes too far

            but he has a point

you & I together

in some ways

mightier

than the slow water

            “…superwoman…”

                       

Review of Concert by Syl Johnson, Soul-Bluesman

by Steven Sharp 

November 21, 2012

Syl comes slinking out of his dressing room wearing some sort of a pseudo military uniform. He apparently deems himself worthy of a sergeant's rank, because that's the patch that's on his arm. His band follows past our table. It consists of two female background singers; three horn players, among them the great Chicago baritone sax-player Willie Henderson; a cool old Hammond B-3 keyboard player; drummer; bass player and guitarist. They are all older black people and obviously all soul music veterans dating to the 1960s.

They take the stage and goof around, getting plugged-in and situated. They seem very up for the show and loose. Then Syl starts talking about the history of soul in this initially disjointed rap that seems to indicate the night has the potential to go off the tracks before it even starts. After maybe 5 minutes of his "summary" of his career, he introduces the entire band before they even start playing. Underneath his military jacket, Syl is wearing a black T-shirt with white writing that says, "Is it because I'm black? SYL JOHNSON." He is also wearing a black do-rag beneath a black leather baseball hat. He is skinny.


History lesson and introductions over, Syl busts the music loose. In all my life and countless shows, I have never gotten the shivers like I got them from the first notes that band hit. It was unreal. They were so hard, tight and funky, and SPACE, in Evanston, IL, sounds so good, I almost melted off the barstool. From there it was his hard Chicago soul classics from the 1960s like "C'mon, Sock it to Me," then down to Memphis to touch on his HI Records years with Willie Mitchell, including his composition "Take Me To the River," which has been covered countless times, famously by the Talking Heads.

Syl's quirks manifested themselves throughout the first set. His guitar strap came undone and it took him quite a while, and a lot of fiddling around, to get it back on. Then he said he had only two CDs left to sell that night, and he sat on one of them while he played.

At one point after the intermission, during "Monkey Time," a blond girl in the front row shook her hair into the candle on her table and she became a funky version of Gene Simmons as her hair went up in a ball of fire probably three-feet high. Some guys around her put her hair out and everyone was in shock. I thought she would be maimed for life, an ambulance would be needed and the show was over. The band didn't even stop playing— although the female vocalists looked very concerned! When the band realized she was truly OK, Syl started singing teasing lyrics about her hair being on fire! She didn't even leave the show. And for the rest of the night the whole place reeked of burned human hair.


Near the end, Syl addressed the earliest point in his career in Chicago, when he backed Magic Sam, and he played some amazing blues guitar on two Sam classics, including "Easy Baby." He is a spectacularly gifted blues guitar player, although he initially said he was just a singer who also played guitar. He later had the crowd in stitches when he talked about how he could be the poster boy for Viagra. He want on and on about his belief, talking about "SIDE-EFFECTS, my SIDE-EFFECTS!!!!!!!" with visuals added, so he was sure we got the point.


Syl showed what a great singer, songwriter, guitarist, harp-player, showman and band leader he is. He's a treasure of American music. I'd say he is Chicago's Ike Turner and that's the highest praise I can give a guy like that.

________________________

Steven Sharp is a blues and rock critic whose interviews with B.B. King, Johnny Winters, Jimmy Dawkins, and many, many more have appeared in Living Blues for decades. He has also published widely in other contexts. He has appeared in AlteredScale.com 1, AlteredScale.com 2, and will appear in issue 3.

Overture: Chorus by Jack and Adelle Foley

OVERTURE: CHORUS

that the hummingbird’s wings are of a remarkable rapidity he had noted often

            nothing could be done the shift of his breathing         had to begin

12 o’clock and he still hadn’t had a                dermal sensation

            the block of the governor                         is therefore revealing

the muck of the plains            living blues              a means of reversing

                        whereof is so manifest

such crooked crooked pathes, such ways this palace hides

                        wit and power, to study the travail

new adventures list he undertake

                        the way and its power                        leading to the outside

in the eyes of the law                                  a long time, & ideas rise up

            toward toward gratification                inhaling     exhaling      rise & fall

I name that audacity               with him a hundred fold          intellect does, & the soul

                        I name that audacity whose courage unmanned

                                    in the form that is

with the heavenly heart              excitations unbounded

                            INDOLENCE                                 indolence and distraction

directly the roots of                            towards punishment, towards

THE ORIGINS                        

AND HISTORIES                    simultaneous with:                  who can tell in such matters?

OF CONSCIOUSNESS                                                          he blackened his face, his bowels

DISPATCHED FROM THE EARTH BY HIS BROTHERS

HE BEGAN TO                                                                       star of the magi: regeneration

BREATHE AGAIN                                                                   temperance: self-control

FOR A LONG TIME NOW I HAVE FELT THE VOID            a peculiar token

LIKE THE PLAGUE

                                                                                                                        a power

creating in the soul a craving of           the greatest force         wild animals

size of the altar           indispensable for those who are to apprehend his meaning aright

our most logical form the syllogism                like consternation spread

has the greatest force              and the big hat with the turquoise-inlaid eye

at the bottom of her soul                    “Look! Niña! It is the general!”          on the vermin of

the house         holding back   the lymphatic milk of fishes               made in silence

through the way          more literary than music though so-called “music”

the swarming “population”       lo for this little while                       sugar curse Eve fish-hook!

from the freshness of my eyes           little boat and a smell of

the revolver

ready

            come oh bird settle a moment

                                                            EXPERIENCE ANYTHING a bullock wagon

the tramp of feathers the thunder drop the white snake

for a long time now I have felt the void like the

plague it is the

revelation        a formidable call to the forces that impel the mind

we do not see it as it is but as it has been fashioned

                                    moving heads on rollers

                                    animated hieroglyphs

                                    a disinclination or resistance

rolling eyes, pouting lips, muscular spasms

mirrors, shoots, sources,         (limbs!)

in a pier is burning (east, east is burning!)

the old man drew, in a black spirit, hugely, against,

in the flickering light, again, against,

in the earliest march, courageous,

far more astounding    astounding —

the days in which

sweetbriar, nebraska                                                                            began to rivet, it

                                                                                                            shared persuasion

at the spring at sunset                        simultaneous with:                     no sight of the highway

                                                                                                            for a long long time

the knight in disguise                                                                          your sweet dividing

                                                                                                            informs the statement

                                                                                                            endlessly there

who knows                                                                                          its effect to force

                                                                                                            since pleasure’s divided

the would-be merman                                                                          remove our ideas

                                                                                                            offspring of a union

the foolish queen                                                                                 amphibians reptiles

                                                                                                            forced to rise

                                                                                                            at a height above

adventures while singing                                                                     hot winter’s weathers

                                                                                                            the book of breath

when Peter Jackson preached in old church                                        opes his eyes

                                                                                                            a break of Yoga

factory windows are always broken                                                    that old old man

                                                                                                            he draws, in a black spirit, hugely

“this is the price I pay

for the light I shall someday see”

      _________________

and what if my body die

of this small inland town

BUT

draunk in tears no bird great beds of poppy only asleep dissolved

in thunder jars no guardian nine times battered to wear & weaving

oh keep him safe reveal him whose he was and who he was with the peak

of the mountain & his bones were boulders the Egyptian asp ship onward she

bore a child (clop-clop of horses) stored assembled and disassembled

                                                                                                                        the

startling impact of their loud bursts of noise as they arrive

   at unpredictable intervals of the stream—

the lines which spread                                                the theater’s alchemy

at night, anyway

                                                                        in a tight

net

                                                                                    the huge

when I saw that the light appeared I was astonished

   & again fell down, fell dead away

this is indeed the spirit of wisdom, the Eastern source

                        preserving their antiquity

for none of the pleasures I have is equal to what is given me

            the lines which spread                        the theater’s alchemy

some of these seem much older than was thought

                        God’s “immanence” or “indwelling” in the world

a particularly searching theory of the Shekinah

                                    the King on his throne

followers developed in great detail

                             most shameful sinners, burned

the process of creation burns, there are 2 versions of it, in Genesis,

                     in short, before all else, entirely practical

                                    works of the Chariot

my hopes for the theater are, strictly speaking, “idealized”

                        logos in vacuum

            innermost joy                          bound by love

these are the                manifestations

                        the next morning I communicated to my teacher

                                                                              lines that spread

_______________________


Jack Foley’s radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard on Berkeley, California radio station KPFA every Wednesday at 3; his column, “Foley’s Books,” appears in the online magazine Alsop Review. He has published 11 books of poetry, 5 books of criticism, andVisions and Affiliations, a chronoencyclopedia of California poetry. In 2010 Foley was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed “Jack Foley Day” in Berkeley. A webfestschrift celebrating his life and work can be found in the current Tower Journal: www.towerjournal.com.
Website: www.jack-adellefoley.com/Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Foley_(poet)#Biography 

Adelle Foley is a retirement administrator, an arts activist, and a writer of haiku. Her poems have appeared in various magazines and textbooks. Along the Bloodline is her first book-length collection.

Obedience In—a—Sense by Dan Ryan

Ah, my generation

America went to Viet Nam and

had a war

just for us

Ah, my generation

not the “me” generation

not the Woodstock generation

we are the Viet Nam generation

the wounded generation

the traumatized generation

the disillusioned generation who

continue to breath napalm and

piss agent orange

a generation defined by

an exercise in greed that

never needed to happen

from which nothing was learned

Ah, my generation

my fucked up, fucked over generation

spaced out on drugs

strung out on

the vulgarities and obscenities of

a violent, racist culture dependent on

a war-based economy for

the economic and political survival of

the Great Republic and

the sacred American Way of Life

Ah, my generation

We were bred and born – conscripted

really - did we have a choice?

1945 to 1954

innocents obediently raised on

the mythology of

the benefits of

a meat and dairy based diet of

white stream history

the self-serving lies testifying to

the sense of entitlement without

responsibility

guilt or

shame

the unholy holy agenda of Manifest Destiny

the requirement to equate invasion

occupation and

murder

with patriotism (whatever THAT is)

Ah, my generation   

believers who became non- believers in

anything institutional

utter contempt

disgust

mistrust from which

most of us never recovered

a generation that came of age and grew old in

an age of disbelief

solitude and

profound anxiety

Ah, my generation

Ginsberg howled for Solomon

I howl for us

__________________________

Dan Ryan will appear in AlteredScale.com 3, out in March, and he is a regular contributor to this blog.

After spending an extensive number of years attempting to save the world from itself while living in Olympia, Washington, I follwed my sweetie to Minnie's Apple Crisp in July, 2012.  Determined to approach life from a more obtuse angle, I am now a thoroughly committed Zen slacker, practicing guilt-free attachment to hanging out in coffee shops, reading all the wrong books, writing poetry, and enjoying other sensual pleasures with my partner. Dan Ryan will appear in AlteredScale.com 3, out in March. 

Bug Eyes by Sheri L. Wright

(click on photo for a more detailed picture)

photograph taken with a Cannon Rebel EOS
__________________

Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of six books of poetry, including the most recent, The Feast of Erasure. Her works of poetry appear in numerous journals including New Southerner, Out of Line and Chiron Review.  Wright’s visual work has appeared in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review, The Single Hound, THIS Literary Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Blood Lotus Journal and Subliminal Interiors. In 2012, Ms. Wright was a contributor to the the Sister Cities Project Lvlds: Creatively Linking Leeds and Louisville. Her photography has been shown in many exhibitions and shows in and around Kentucky.