Otis & Marlena – Joni Mitchell – Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Asylum 1977
Marlena under Foster Grants
She’s undercover from the dawns advance
That girl is travel drained
And the neon mercury vapor stained
Miami sky
It’s red as meat
It’s a cheap pink rose
Otis in the driver’s seat
Watches the street lights fade away
On louvered blocks in green sea air
In fluorescent fossil yards
Slippers are shuffling into folding chairs
Freckled hands are shuffling cardsThey’ve come for sun and fun
While Muslims stick up Washington *Otis empties out the trunk
On the steps of that celebrated dump
Sleazing by the sea
Bow down to her royal travesty
In her ballrooms heads of state
In her bedrooms rented girls
Always the grand parades of cellulite
Jiggling to her golden pools
Through flock and cupid colonnades
They jiggle into surgery
Hopefully beneath the blade
They dream of golden beautyThey’ve come for sun and fun
While Muslims stick up WashingtonMarlena white as stretcher sheet
Watches it all from her tenth floor balcony
Like it’s her opera box
All those Pagliacci summer frocks
Otis is fiddling with the TV dial
All he gets are cartoons and reruns
She taps her glass with an emery file
Watching three rings in the sun
The golden dive the fatted flake
And sizzle in the mink oil
It’s all a dream
She has awake
Checked into Miami Royal
Where they’ve come for sun and fun
While Muslims hold up Washington
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on© 1977; Crazy Crow Music
Joni Mitchell appears on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, 1977 – disguised as a black man © Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell appears on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, 1977 disguised as a black man © Joni Mitchell
*
On March 9, 1977, seven members of Khaalis’ group burst into the headquarters of B’nai B’rith, a few miles south of Khaalis’ headquarters, and took over 100 hostages. Less than an hour later, three men entered the Islamic Center of Washington, and took eleven hostages. At 2:20 pm, two Hanafis entered the District Building, three blocks from the White House. They went to the fifth floor looking for important people to take hostage. When an elevator opened the hostage-takers thought they were under assault and fired, killing Maurice Williams, a reporter for WHUR-FM radio, and injuring security guard Mack Cantrell. Then-councilman Marion Barry was struck by a ricochet in the chest, and two others were wounded. “Throughout the siege Khaalis denounced the Jewish judge who had presided at the trial of his family’s killers. ‘The Jews control the courts and the press,'” he repeatedly charged. – Wikipedia
