songanddancegirl

sinister kid rides again (not a short poem)

(the fershtinkin boy)

 

my entire life flashed in an instant  unrecognizable

+doppelgänger   spat out at 70  where is the little  (fershtinkin)

house with yellow walls  +a turqoise bedroom?  where

my thirty something husband?  BIG MAN  BIG DREAMS

GIANT GLUTES   hockey lifer

 

that’s my fave muscle  don’t fuck with it!   

i told his surgeon 40 yrs later

(now an 8″ scar)

spinal-fluid redux

 

where the children  who visited weekly?  the (fershtinkin) boy

running ahead of his parents  wobbly   still wobbly  a filmie

now in his 30’s  my age when i met him

 

WHERE DID EVERYONE GO? 

 

reminiscent of old mother  who said over+over again  Ape where is everyone?

she the last woman standing  ancient crone  it goes fast  something akin to

shock awe+bewilderment  on her face  the Reap hunched+singing to her nightly

O the memory-haze  the daze of being young+vibrant  lean beauty queen

bewitching father all the way to an early grave  we eventually had to place

security cameras outside her door  the Reap’s incessant ringing of her bell

fodder for psychiatric mind-fuck   oh it’s just tinnitus+death anxiety (!)

said Dr. Von Leiff   (the old bitch)  mother dead  within 6 months of these

nocturnal visits

for whom does the bell toll?  shotgun to head for Ernest  to the heart for

Frank Stanford  Anna K by train  Virginia W by river  Sylvia Plath by oven

ok i’ll stop  strange creatures unto death  while in the bloom of life   the

forever putrifacto   (..beings unto death.. Marty Heidegger 1927)

 

i sort of remember the details  but all of a sudden  that life  those former worlds

selves  others  all less here  less contiguous  less real  more phantasm vision myth

did it all even happen??  probably not  mum put salt in her shoes so the Reap

wouldn’t scoop her  ditto the blood on doors of Jews  Exodus:12  so the Angel of

Death  would pass on by   +he did

 

he stopped ringing mum’s doorbell too

she is on a beach in Aruba now

she never writes  she never calls

laissez les bon temps rouler

all of this

is magic against death

all of this ends

with  to be continued

(Frank Stanford  1974)

__

Summer 2026  ..RIP Daddybird.. May 21, 1921 – August 16,1989)

 

 

a short poem about a certain kind of goat

so did your tribe members rape+pillage?

probably not   i was shocked+devastatio

to learn that some of mine kept slaves  owned

plantations  after fleeing pogroms in Europe   (go know)

but your name remains unscathed  +un-repentant

u pure laine

we dirty

escape-goats

(..an ancient ritual..the placing of sins onto

a live escape-goat who carries the tribe’s guilt

into the desert..) 

built any rez schools lately?

atomic bombs?

crematoria?

crusades anyone?

stonings?

face it

this manimal species

is bloodthirsty

+beastie

__

Summer 2026    O, wee, cowering, bloodthirsty beastie..

(Robert Burns 1785 + AAC 2026) 

__

..he who is without sin

let him cast the first stone..

John 8:7

i just wanna write a simple poem without all the hoopla 2.0

Blood Brothers Brewery Blues

we sat ate laughed drank talked talked

ate sat drank laughed sat+drank did we       (repetition hoopla tiresome  yes?)

there is a mashup similarity to our faces

hers his his hers his hers hers other people’s

too  ur ancestors who may have feared death

+life+being forgotten

or

remembered

as a

horse-thief

lothario

madame

or eunuch

__

..you can now and then whittle the little poem..either way

the short poem is the hardest of all forms, past or present..

(Frank Stanford  1974 ..as he completed his 15,000 word poem)

__

Summer 2026  ..go try writing a short poem..i dare you..😱😱

i just wanna write a simple poem without all the hoopla

people think i have a real love-on  for Death

this is not quite true  what i do have  is an equal

love-on  for Life  even in these Y2K post-apocalyptic

times (think  911  Covid  AI  +orange summer skies)

 

this section of Summer is hard  it’s the position of

the stars  identical constellations  of her preparatio

circa 2022  but mostly it is Venus  winking+calling

my name  ape-eeeeal ape-eeeeal  her nickname for me at 3

i was her witness  every morn for 29 days  as old mother

lay dying  i woke at 5:30 am +raced to the reservoir of aged

involuntaries   where they shoved a lonnng Q-tip up my  snout

nurses quipped  oh the model   yes! the fucking model

now hurry up!  you’re wasting some of my final minutes

with her  the hawks  the other inmates  clutching my arms

in the shabbas elevator  which stops at  EVERY  fucking floor

 

Ape  where is everyone?  her dead ancestors hid when i

arrived  (lest i ask what the fuck they did to her way back when)

 

so why do i have a love-on for Life: (in spite of it all)

brilliant suicided poets (hbd 🎉 Frankie Stanford 1948-1978)

Pink Floyd

chickenballs+pineapple sauce

(post-pescatarian hell..i miss those balls more than life itself)

giant poodles

horses

oreos

my body  so far un-slaughtered

my freedom (only just another word..to the free)

Nina

the Fridas

the Chucks

and a cafe named Envie  down in New Orleans  where the spirit

of Frank Stanford  Delta Poet Extraordinaire  mingled so deeply

with my juices  a returning brother  gone to buy music at LMF(AO)

did not realize i was now  +would forever be  Apenfrank  

 

my voice deepens  ditto my southern twang  a nubbin grows  i am

the sister with hair of a cajun whore  now i glide down the Mississippi

in  The Great Preparatio  for over yonder

__

Summer 2026  ..l’chaim

RIP Frank Stanford  Subiaco Cemetery

August 1/1948- June 3/1978

 

 

 

 

 

 

To The Manor Born 👑👑

i am a beauty-junkie who grew up in an ugly

subpar-suburb  where the only beauty for miles

was to be found:

in the ravine  verdigris + crevace

at Bonnie Freedman’s house

oh   +in my mother’s face

yet despite the Jag XK-E   +263 dolls from her parent’s

world travels  there was always sadness about Bonnie’s face

a Peanut’s slash  for a mouth  later thru a windshield  still a

fine-boned beauty  slash that much deeper

i proudly wore her go go boots  on a family pilgrimage  to

father’s office  at Woodbine Racetrack  this nouveaux riche

burb  a place of  social climbers  +backstabbers  of ungainly

women  in mou-mous +kitten heels

sending their daughters out into the world  catty+petty

bourgeoisie  while i toiled 5yrs in the library  U of T

ditto Bonnie  Sorbonne  (17th century furniture)

these days  Jewish geography is played by 70 yr olds

recounting my mis-deeds +high school haughty  while

i remember a few names  + rare acts of valour:

father’s jump

out of a moving car

to walk a blind man

across the street

this amidst the onslaught-er  of envy  that special sauce  of

ungainly daughters everywhere  especially the local b.j. queen

now a commercial lawyer married to an ex  who must still have

the shriven penis of the syphlitic damned

 

hey sister

antibiotics

are your friend!

Summer 2026  ..catty shmatty..the pen is more powerful than the sword..

The Übermother💥

her first sunrise at 93  and  final sunrise at 98   in the same bed

the latter  as she lay dead  amidst the great separatio of  body+spirit

the first a miracle  of shock+awe  Apes i thought it was a spaceship!

Übermother now flying high over  Old Montreal 

urban gutters

pervs of St.Urbain

backroom selling of prettygirls

 

i would have done anything to get out of there

 

she so beautiful  they would point on the bus  her mother

kept her in a wheelchair  though she could walk +dance +strut

crippled her up   but good

what could a poor girl be in 1943?

secretary

shopgirl

clerk

maid

model

dancehaller

starlet

prostitute

wife

mother

her crutches fell away  at 98

Queen of the Overworld

flying solo  +bodyjettison

my heavenly doppelgänger

but let us step back 50 yrs   as i lay in my de-flowered virgin’s bed

marriage upon me  the next day  in diaphanous ecru silk  from Milli’s

i have never been married in white  marriage #3  in aubergine  14 yrs later

avec  Thierry Mugler  glass slippers

1976  a young Übermother enters my room   i hate him  says she

(referring to father)   +turns on her heel    girl-weeping ensues

teen marriage lasts a mere 24 months  though we linger 4yrs longer

the carcass of Huck  bobbing in the creek nearby

where at 10  just 9 yrs prior  there resided  frogs   a seppukued gopher

ducks  boy criminals  the ghost of a long dead grandfather  along with

Claude  the runt of a poodle litter  buried in tinfoil  on a freezing morning

the marriage/mirage   not at all what i expected

__

Summer 2026  ..who u calling a confessional poet?

..these poems are not about me..

they are about you..

 

the girls of trinity bellwoods park & their summer boobs

fuck dese girls in my park  who stroll over  within inches

of me  they stretch like pretzels illogic  legs akimbobimbo

elastic+pliable  a decade or 3 from  piriformis rot

 

(weaver’s butt eh  it’s a syndrome fer chrissakes)

don’t be such a bitter-little-pill  poet  you can still touch

your toes  ass riding high in April  shot down in May  but

seriously  there are numerous stances  you can no longer take

you can no longer  fake it til you make it   you’ve made it  and

it tastes like: the road  freedom  decay  brownspotted +decimate

 

no it does not!  

it tastes like warm milk

lapped off of your mother

 

in 9 months you will receive your  CPP BIGBUCKS  the ones

husband #3 forced you to wait for  until 70   so he could cavort

with his cheese-y girlfriend  on your nickel   Bitondogirl   who

lives above a pizzeria   seriously

 

(you cannot make shit like this up)

 

now back to the leafy park gentle reader

where yogagirl is writhing   and

charliehorsing her way  to hell

oh the divine retribution

of old haggis mcbaggises

everywhere

__

Summer 2026   ..piriformis syndrome can kiss my skinny white ass..

 

 

 

 

 

shake rattle und roll

i just can’t seem to shake it  no matter how

hard i try  maybe i should stop trying?

let it all

sink in  and down  and out

roll with it

fer chrissakes

 

memory-lobotomy anyone?

 

the tall smokestack  reminiscent of ?

why does an urban hospital

have a smokestack anyway?

 

what are

they

burning?

  

souls of the operated

and

the sainted ones

who

didn’t make it

those jagged telltale scars

on heads  ✖️☠️✖️

i tried to look away

hey

i just can’t seem to shake it

3 am  stretcher races

the ballet

to get you onboard

so many lines

attached to you  who

has been

fished out of your life

 

now a manfish

on a line

my mother is a fish 

says Vardaman Bundren

as his mama lay dying

(William Faulkner 1930)

 

a tall east-europe man

with slittyeyes

heave-hos

the sheets

and lifts you

off the stretcher

 

you rise

like

Jesus The Magician

we race to bowels

of the hospital

where resides

the MRI  monster

 

there an ancient

grandmother

slackjaw +police

is naked

sometimes

screaming

 

don’t look

don’t look

 i tell you

 

i just can’t seem to shake it

 

..i don’t know why memory won’t go away

it hangs like a bloodsucking leech out of

the bottoms..

(Frank Stanford  Battlefield  1978)

do i have the blues?

my life smells

like

the blues

reads

like

a broadway play

bleeds

like

a new tattoo

adulthood is not

for everyone

hoodwinked+hoodoo

hood of Reap

comin fer yous

 

STOP TIME!

(Frank Stanford)

13 minutes

pre-pulling the trigger)

 

puer extraordinaire

his ticker full of bullet holes

adulthood an imposition

 

childhood dies on a clock

 

longest moments

of my recent life

watching my

old mother

watch the clock

 as she lay dying

the clock ticking

toward my departure

leaving her alone

to contemplate

the moment

I’d return

 

YOU’RE LATE!

 

 fuck  why can’t I seem to shake it?

__

 

Summer 2026  ..for the risen..

shoot the messenger

..the truth when you finally chase it down

is almost always far worse than your darkest

visions and fears..Hunter S. Thompson

was i born a Cassandra or was I groomed?

that sounds semi-creepy  except that yes

i was groomed  in the trenches of my family

an exhuberant/aberrant  family of origin  that’s

what we called it in therapist school  +of course

all  the rap ists   born Cassandras

truthysoothsayers  one+all  reviled too  if  they

don’t like your jibjab  awful close  to the bone

we hone truth  exposé of veins  of the nittygritty

under the flap  where grieflovehaterageliesflies

+rotting brisket remain   like in a draincap

 

for you novice therapists  there is a flap  zippered

+camouflage  in women: under the left breast  or

its remains

in men: it resides on the side the rib was taken from

Adam  to create Eve  or was it Eve’s rib that made Adam?

 ..behind every great woman..

prick me + i bleed  into your flap  all over you +the

floor  truth is a messy business  +highly theoretical

to some

 

there are degrees:

she is the only woman i ever loved 

i jilted the one  before her  a plump-pudding

of a deli-queen  her father owned Moishes 

 

i never had sexual relations with that woman

finger wagging pencildickstabbing liar  poor moni

 

true confessions

i love money

+beauty

+the zigzag

9 inch scar

on your leg   spinal fluid refill

 

is this true jew?       (who you calling a jew?)

true blue

 

they cannot

undo

unscrew

unsee

unsew

you back

together

 

Aprill  

they’re going

to cut me

from stem to stern

 

word

__

..i love all of your jagged scars  (all 276 of them across 4 bodies)

they are more beautiful than once pristine skin  any day of the week

Frankenstein has nothing on yous..

__

Summer 2026

..ok enough with the truth already

hands up if it has set you free..

  

 

 

what is the shape of absence?

bubba’s chicken pluckers

white ashes with bits of martybone

mother’s yellow cats-eyed sunglasses

in New Orleans after Katrina coffins floated out of

shallow graves  the bodies freed  some danced the

bamboula   some continued on to Zion

maybe that will happen here  up on Bathurst St.

where in your coffin i placed the above noted items

somehow in my shock i forgot i’d never see them again

or you

i will dust you off dear  you’re probably a bit damp too

and hungry  don’t ask  we’ll go for lobster  the world now

less motherless  + me sporting your mouldering yellow

sunglasses  Welcome Home  Mummybird!

__

Spring 2026   ..how ’bout watering the goddamn grass at the cemetery?..