songanddancegirl

endless numbered days

scent of old garlic  rancid   ditto old cabbage  wafts up over mean streets

on this crisp morning  -35 with wind  about to begin the final pages of

Murray Stein’s tome on ch ch ch changes  he looks nothing like Bowie

more a jewish Harry Truman  his words re-shaping my relationship to

death  a wizened jungian  Murray encourages me to  bury the corpses of

former personas   before they bury me   who   they bury  down in the hole

in the pinebox   Nefertiti carved head    matters  

you don’t want to be clinging still   to your ingenue  now do you?  Murray

with great enthusiasm  encourages embracing  liminality  that hazy place

between 59 + 79  those 20 yrs. of life  Catherin O Hara  spoke so fervently

about  last week  pre-shortness of breath  in her brown faux-fur robe   her

comb still warm  her lipstick waiting  bed damp  book open  to page 666

Daniel Deronda    a personal fave

my boudoir not much different  silver hairs in comb  nut debris in bed

sticky-salty stained sheets  fuchsia Ugg slippers  warm   Frank Stanford’s

308 page  15,000 word poem   waiting   currently on 4,047th word   this

morning i notice a slight leviathan  levitation  as i walk to my café  trying

not to think about the bullseye  on my back   + btw who the fuck scooped

my parents?  Murray?  Murray?   perhaps you’ve run out of answers

you wretched old jungian you

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..the road is nearby even when you are at home and secured at the hearth..

(Murray Stein  In Midlife  2014)  ie., don’t get too cozy in that bed   mother

actually intuited this  refusing to sleep in her bed for over a decade  when the

Reap came for pick up   she hopped in  spending 15 hrs. taking a final breath –

she showed him!)

Winter 2026  ..imbolc..the seeds are stirring..🌸🌸🌸

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo & El Blues

hola Frida  do you have el blues?  your house is blue

your blues are  azure  cobalt  midnight  mixed with

blood reds  gangrene green  aubergine  once you were

2 legged  riding on Alejandro’s motorcycle  later one

legged  on Diego’s bed   paintbrush in your mouth

libre Frida  from the iron bodysuit  from the heavy bus

crushing  your inocencia  your soon ghostleg  from the

steel pole in your pelvis  Viva Frida!  Viva México!

Viva El Blues!

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Winter 2026  ..Viva la Vida..🦋

i hope the exit is joyful and i hope i never return

(Frida Kahlo 1907 – 1954)

Casa Azul  Mexico City  Frida’s Blue House

snowgirl + husband #3

she arrived with a blue shovel  tiny  tiny shovelfuls

next to BIGMAN  big shovelfuls  she talked incessantly

he shoveled shoveled shoveled  snow blew about them

wickedly  they looked happy together  maybe he began

to love her  snow coming between them  tearing them

apart  I couldn’t see them by the end of it all  just smudges

where they used to be  snowghosts  ghosted  gho  gh  g  goners

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Winter 2026   ..fixty-six centimetres..who u gonna call?

apesie’s suitcase

it was a giant suitcase  i thought i might bring my brother

home in   it would have been prefect for his ashes  but they

went missing  many moons ago

stuffed into a Florida closet  mouldering +amazing grace

gators in the pond outside could smell him  +their mournful

honks  could be heard at Mar-a-Lago  where a crass man sat   on gold toilets

i don’t know   if i might have saved him   i did try to bring him home

so his mama could lay eyes on her jilter’s face  one last time  my bro

the spittin image of his rake father   Charlie the Liar Hearted

Hanna had a suitcase too  inside she kept her grandmother’s bones

spirited out of Auschwitz  there have been other famous suitcases too

Dorothy’s  packed full of unlived munchkin dreams  much like my own

and many a mobster’s  packed full of  chopped up corpses  dirtymoney

+the ingredients  to whip up  a wicked  pasta e fagiol  my mother too

had a smart leather model’s case  packed with cigs lipstick +innocenza

Freda’s suitcase

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Winter 2026   ..waiting for Aviva..אביב 🌸

oh the motherlode

he had black pads on the bottom of his feet  his skin

blueblack  blackest eyes + nails  wetpink tongue  poodlebro

blacksonavitch  was king  especially on a toboggan

also skilled at hide+seek  he had but one hiding place

loyal friend  he’d lead you out of the apocalypse  fierce

protector  of 3 child-captives

a couple of rungs above us kids  on the totempole  AKC

royalty  he’d been on the orient express  with gangsters

why he’d travelled the world over  before his stint on Purdon

Parchman Farm

much like mother  who commissioned a painting by an

aunt’s sister  it was of a black slavewoman  mournful eyes

watery  lumpy cotton shift  hers + blacksonovitch’s ancestress

the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans

poodle with a pompadour

mother too

hair piled high à la

Julie Christie

another paramour of father’s

it doesn’t get much better

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Winter 2026  ..on Parchman Farm when we were young..

i am not a man i am an animel

i felt the widening of his chest  almost imperceptible

an ancient survival-stance   planted   monolithic-man

u touch me  i kill u   this at a friend’s bro’s funeral

my own bro confronting an animal named  Mel  eyes

glint   jewhate  loud berate  cloaked in seeming humour

Mel’s old girlfriend cowers   used to verbal shredding

public humiliate

the clovenfoot

that’s enough or deal with me motherfucker  bro’s chest wider  

manstance-spreading  ditto silence of the lambs  gathered on

summer patio   he’d kill him  with his bearhands    if he had to

this bro built

for

gladitorial

endeavours

i wish i could do that

five feet four

+there’s so much more

coquette

now firmly dead

who knows

maybe i can

i probably can   i might

i will

mono-mythic poet-heroine

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Winter 2026  ..final year of 60’s.. and stoked..

GET UP! YOU CAN DO IT APESIE !

Saint Zaida

a king among men  a gentle man  tailor  always clean shaven

clean shirt  suit-pants  boxing in the rocking chair  laboured

breathing  we left him in the mountains  at 87  where they don’t

cut pizza   dumbest bastards God ever created

Zaida  humble  what did he have?  a sewing-box  + his gentle dignity

i saw him last night in the street  he was going home  a still warm

corned-beef on rye  for the apple of his eye 🍎 (without kimmel!)

in his pocket   for Freda

mother told us the 10 cent sandwich was better than a lobster at Del Monicos

Zaida’s head can still be seen  in the window on our suburban street  beside a

giant black poodle  named for salami    the glory days!

Zaida’s Star of David

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Winter 2026  ..for Joseph Marlieb+Blacksonovitch..brothers in arms..

..a.k.a…versht/verst..

smell that smell

i was curious yellow  about those blonde-haired-blue-eyed boys

at our largely Jewish school  where jewfros were de rigueur

à la Bobby Zimmerman  and homes reeked of  flunken+ashes

ashes to ashes

these boys were different  one shoved a knife into my thumb  on the

way home from school  father was not impressed  Keith went to juvie

+stuck his tongue down my throat  upon his return  father not apprised

then there was Randy Eames  a blonde godboy  who reeked of danger

+dean   did these boys know of novel ways  to bang  a Jewess Queen

in training?    probably

i never did find out until much later  when confronted with a feral

foreskinned accoutrement  i fainted   but seriously  i did like the

carnal smell of near violence  wafting off of these boys   +i still do

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First days 2026  ..beginning with a bang..

barnowl blues

this wretched domesticity  i’d rather be among barn-owls

than damp laundry  where moths have had their way

unholey  rank cottons  silks   wool eviscerate +webby

one dress  of the thinnest unborn lamb   shredded from

breastbone to hip  moths feasting in my $13,000 cherry-wood

armoire  made by Moe  a white-haired man  with too thick fingers

oh you must do some cherry for the lady!

to replace that  from long ago  rent in a damp suburban basement

by a pencil-thin accoutrement   Paris continues to elude   worms

crawled too  over aubergine wedding suit   holy-holey!

invisible mending made it worse  you simply cannot restitch a

heart   gaping-gash  now can you?  soon a burst-bursa  much like

the one  on an ancient poet knee

woe she be me

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Winter 2026  .. the year of metamorphoses..🦋

reverse-birth

my old bro gave me a book recently  with the following

inscription: Apes  for that special time when you need a

break from reading about…Death!!

it’s all about our rock n’ roll heroes  in the Canyon  Laurel Canyon

where perhaps one of the greatest bacchanals in recorded history

occurred   led by the freak-savant  Phi Zappa Krappa himself

a veritable Oz  filled with 16 yr old  groupie-virgins  sacrificed at the

altar of Dionysus  the smelly goatgod  also a fave of this bro  whose

frequent refrain to this budding child-poet  left much to be desired

you just stink a little bit

perhaps what he missed is that  all or most of the Laurel Canyon

rat-pack  are quite dead  no one escapes the Reap  not even Krappa

have no fear  all of my recent death studies have led me to quite  an Edenic vision

Death is the most peaceful experience one will ever have  bar none

getting there can be tricky  but oh those moments of letting go  pure

nirvana  a going home  the final act of the earthbound manimal

most akin to that first act of blood+amniotic fluid  the circle now complete

hey bro  you can finally move to Montana! a place where reverse-cowgirls

abound  Bardot a recent arrival

instead of incessantly spinning

that tune

as you have been

want to do

since 17

(when i was 17  it was a very good year)

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Winter 2025 -2026   ..time for new material!  RIP Brigitte Bardot..