RECOVERY: LIL JOE WASHINGTON

1. There is dilapidation.  Bikes without wheels. Cars bleeding into the lawn dyeing each blade of grass crimson at the tip.
2. E L V I S flashbulbed onto the red brick wall in the backyard of the Continental Club here in Houston, Texas.
3.  Boys with no heart but an excessive amount of teeth. Roaches crawling out of sun bleached cans  of Lone Star what are you gonna do about it roaches like the opposite of soap coming up from the drain slick as oil.
4.  The blues dancers in front of the stage seeming oddly urgent. Like I need my body to become  yours. Like I need.
5.   Toys no one keeps. 
6.  A single shot and the birds scatter and I am all of them.   
7.  A tradition.  Like dying young.  Or sleeping somewhat disinterestedly with all your friends. Patio furniture run amok.  A single sweet note emerges from the cacophony as Lil Joe feels something and you do too.
8.  To want nothing more than this.
9. It’s almost atonal it makes you wish you’d paid attention to music theory (“this is why people are sad” “this is why people come together” “people come together because they’re sad” “this is the rule of fifths.”)
10. “The important thing is to have a sense of humor about it.”
11.  On a flight to Tokyo they ask Lil Joe if he wants the chicken or- and he interrupts “I DON’T EAT POSSUM.” I was told this at an awards show years ago and all I remember is eyes bulging like they were full of too much. Like they could burst apart at any moment they could spill all over the fucking place. 
12.  Have you eaten your own heart yet or are you waiting.
13.  “Little Joe was steady talking about how he needed to get him some favors from a woman if you know what I mean.” 
14.  The last of the Third Ward blues legends. Held together by twig magic. His skin sort of gummy and not right like when you first pull the bandage off. That sort of shine. His shins thin and stork-like. He could break at any moment.  That's what it sounded like "like snapping apart and back" "or something like that yeah." 
15.  Plucking aimlessly. That hard yellow Texas shine. This song is about a girl that skins her knee and now you can see that she is full of wine. This song is about a girl with nothing in her apt but burning tires. 
16. A gas station ballerina.  “Tie your wing to mine and kiss me already.”  Days that paint their eyes closed.
17.  Cat’s cradle except you’re playing it with lit cigarettes and sucking on your fingers and crying w/o feeling.  Cat’s cradle except you’re stretching your own guts into the air & stretching them into shimmer. Cat’s cradle except you don’t love me anymore and I’m feeling the bad feeling it good.
18.  It all comes together. It’s all torn up and fringed. You can’t seem to brush the soot from your hair. Something in the attic chewing up the wires. Someone's falling down the stairs and it sounds like a piano breaking every one of its fingers like this note this one right here this is my last note. 
19. “We drove up to his house, no windows, translucent trash in the yard and chestnut horses lying around with their insides torn out.”  The only people that can talk about the blues honestly are wolves.
20.  Take me out of the cardboard and set me on fire.
21.  We're standing outside looking into the darkness and you say, "you could get lost out there you know," suddenly you have my complete attention. The chorus is a footpad. The verse. Biting your fists.
22.  “You have to be quiet because I killed my parents.”  You have to be quiet because this is the last song you have to be quiet because I have 2.3 kilos of rose petals hidden on my person and I’m afraid to wake.
23.  Hovering around his bourbon like a hummingbird around the feeder. Plays the guitar with his teeth. With his crotch. With a real fuck you what have you got.  Passing around the rotten straw of his hat for a dollar.
24.  So You Want To Sing The Blues, So There Is Predation, Music That Cries Because You Can't, so you want to convey meaning and  not detail, so you want to hear about Juarez and Tokyo, so I don’t care, no one does, so the darkness knuckles you, so your words are are crumbling at a touch, 
25. “I said to Greg "this is where he lives"? Little Joe said "Thank you" and disappeared off into the darkness of the house."