Gone Lawn 45 : Richard Weaver

has set up camp in my hippocampus to dawdle with a bewildered man from City X, happy to call his home its. Happy to dawdle in its digs, content to call room service at any hour, and too cheap to tip. Runs the faucets, orders breakfast at midnight and lunch the day before. And did I mention, loathed to tip? Also hums to himself sacred hymns and worm dirges while tapping his setae discreetly against an artery or rubs his clitelum because it feels so damn good. Lately it has been expanding its rhythm section and repertoire. No longer limited to canned studio music, now expanded to live & unpre-dictable songs, songs without hooks, barbed wire or Velcro. Melodies like freshly pressed Gorilla Glue. Or reengineered with competitive loops lapping the auditory field, expanding beyond ripples or rope, no longer content with standard chords, opening into improv, but improv with an attitude, a ‘tude that gets in your face and sez, you’re mine, bitch. Hear me! You hear me and only me! Until your ear canals collapse or a synaptic tsunami takes you under. Hear‽

I am too old to know any better, and listening to Queen Jane Approximately as I type this. Still, I am an avid admirer of Gone Lawn. The sound values. It says send to me. And I have and will continue to do. I don't indulge in rhyme, but I love to slip in internal near-slants. Or become playful with sound-alike words that are not meaningful neighbors. I collected typewriters for a time: each had its own magical creative properties. I also haunted used books stores at any early age and collected various slang dictionaries. I remember one on logging and another on cockney slang and an early Brewer's Dictionary. I managed to get a Webster International which I read the summer I graduated High School and made note cards of all the words I didn't know while trying to teach myself Russian with a 1st year college textbook. Don't ask. I had had 12 years of Spanish in school, which I denied when I went to college and subsequently took a French proficiency. I'm not a word freak. I am a slanguage person. I prefer the humor of American writers who predate Twain. Heresy you say. Read Josh Billings I say. Read Artemis Ward. They are not Twain to be sure. But he knew of them. What more can I say except that I have an ongoing subscription to the DARE. Look it up.