songanddancegirl

i just wanna write a single 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

(pre-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?..

 

 

what is the scent of absence?

Paris by Yves Saint Laurent

Paco Rabanne

Toe Jam Football

falling stars streaking thru the sky  in daylight? !

asteroids? comets? the end of days? apocalyptic

crazed dreamscape  long streaks of light  like

lysergic trails  seen at 14  frog blotter in burbs

walking home at dawn  teen warrior minted  in

david fuchs bedroom  long haired freaky people

need not apply

morning after the dreamy light shower  newsflash

daytime meteors !  the Arietids peaking  like me?  50

was the ultimate  still robust-vibrant  a rock n rollin bitch

for you   now penultimate    powers simmering   in the

crucible of ape

 

stew of old jew

eye of newt

flowerpower interruptus

don’t despair rebirths do happen  right up to the last

second  +afterward too  martino a brand new babe

with a brand new bladder  not the frankenstein one

from the florida cancerward  father married!  looking

dapper  in a wedding suit

mother in capris  cardi  +cig  ohhh so Audrey

luminescent-incandescent  +waving   Hi Mum!

swoooosh   flying past   bumps my head   now

windshadow💥streakinglight

i’m slowly getting used to being here without you     (is that even possible?)

you can’t imagine how different it is  how it feels

from 30,000 ft   above our city   the first time

returning after you died  so EMPTY   now 4 yrs

later  the strangeness commonplace  ingrained

a motherstain

..the work of grief is to face the reality of the absence..

__

Spring 2026  ..you want more..

 

 

 

 

 

 

the motherlode of marian apparitions

i watched her coiffure  the toilet paper ceremony

mahogany skin  burnt cinder of a woman  clothes

meticulously placed on fence  suitcase on the brown

sodden ground  soggy rivulets  sacred substances

monsoon rains for days  she remains encrusted

muddy+golddust  like Frida K.  when she lay under

the bus   crucifixion thru pelvis   future gangrene

waiting in the wings   27 doves crushed  along with

Frida’s right leg

golddust woman in park finishes her coiffure  places

a checkered jacket over her head  sleep of the near

dead  for 3 hours  as poet in silver pants + Jackie O

tee  tries to give her some dignity  by not watching

someone’s  motherdaughtersister  hobbled

 

but is that even the case?

 

she is always smiling  + has a kind of  flotsam-freedom

hey  i don’t need your dignity handouts   comfort queen 

but wait!     she levitates

are those doves?

is that a leg?

is this marian?

Frida?

Frida?

Freda?

__

Spring 2026  ..mother sighting trinity bellwoods park today..🧚‍♀️🧚‍♀️

 

 

THE BIG PINK🌸🌸🌸

..all your sorrows have been wasted on you

if you have not learned how to be wretched..

Seneca

 

who among you is not tired of wretched? what would

i be without my grief  my cancer non-interruptus speak

my failures  marriages  quagmires of human stain  stink

my pink?  we don’t wear pink!  my old mother was want

to shriek

 

so it was blues all the way  gloaming hues of periwinkle

lilac-mauve  cobalt  almost descending back into cancer

cobalt-60 gamma-rays  turn hulk-like tumours  into dustmite

 

NO!  WAIT  YOU HAVE  ALMOST  ESCAPED

there are a mere 3 weeks when pink is  BIG + fragrant  later a

rotting pinkstink in local park  but for now  lush heavy blossoms

of every demeanour cling  in fragile moments  leading up to corruptus

so why not revel in what you still have time to be?

a washboard player  like Chaz

oldest point guard in the wnba

alien abductee (can u be the same thing twice?)

raving extrovert (a fate worse than death)

uh oh here comes the Reap  +a bird has just shat on me

but seriously  the end of spring pink  heralds the autumn winds

in between  why not make something new of wretched?  old sinew

black lung  spirit sprung  from 56 cm of yellow snow   go ahead

GLOW  GLISTEN    RESIST   

 

i may never go back to being death’s barker

fuckthereap!

..all who are 

faithful

follow me..  

(Mordecai 475 BCE  The Book Of Esther Ape  2026 AD)

__

Spring 2026 ..this is a happy poem..can you dig it?..