songanddancegirl

DEXTER

DEXTER  HARDLY  KILLED  ANYONE     IN  SEASON  7

I once heard a therapist say:  I don’t believe unless you’re psychotic

there’s any wound that cannot be healed or at least closed over with

some very effective scar-tissue    Who agrees with her?     Blasphemy?

Heresy?   Prophecy?   But then she also named her baby   Baby

& wrote a runaway bestseller on healing the  Motherwound

America’s latest mass shooting at a Naval Yard left at least 13 dead

One man 53  had been a shipbuilder for 30 yrs.  crooked grin  lanky

4 kids     In Nairobi this week after the mall attack   a 16 yr. old girl

was afraid to leave the hospital where her sister lay    much of a leg

& lower body missing

In the U.S. it’s a lot easier to ban smoking than guns    And the

I Love Guns & Coffee website has given the Starbucks mermaid a pistol

Wounds & scar tissue conversations moot   as Canadian researchers find:

Once a certain segment of the populace realizes that they can kill bugs

in the coffee grinder provided   they will return multiple times to the

bug crushing station     Apparently sadism is adaptive

At sea the shipbuilder’s ships form an armada   They will perform

counterclockwise circumnavigations in a ritual of undoing eternity

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Fall  2013

FAST TALKING

FAST TALKING   HIGH HEELED  GIRLS

She had cult-ish hair  pawned her crown

Into cheap tricks & rhetoric   A  Fisher Queen

if I ever did see one

Wounds ran deep   Spitting image of cult-ish

haired mother   Wolf eyes belied a sweetness

& a coquetry so seasoned   she unhinged Kings

Met her at 4   she said:  I’m gonna get nadopted

But went home once more  where baby brother

burned on stove   Wolf eyed mother left kids

alone   again

I heard that 10 yrs. later she worked the street corner

where audacious lofters searched for warm brunches

& the Grail    For 30 yrs. I entered a room  spoke an arcane

language   where small P.O.W.’s  greeted me   pre-verbally

An older boy who could speak said: It will get dark Therapist     very dark

The voice still stalking me on the terrace   Don’t talk to me

about  metamorphosis   please

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Fall 2013

BARDO

BARDO  THÖDOL

In a play last night the question

was asked: Would you return to

your body after making the passage

to the otherside   if you had the choice?

The AIDS ridden protagonist struggled

Like Hamlet he had suffered the whips &

scorns of time  enough  thankyouverymuch

With no desire to be plunged back into a

perpetual state of loss    But return did he

Buddhists & Hindus believe that the last

thought at the moment of death determines

the next incarnation  And  Proverbs xxiii 7

suggests:  As a man thinks in his heart  so is he

There is a vast system of ravines & underground

rivers in Toronto  where last thoughts ricochet

landing in the hearts of lost travellers

DON’T GET LOST   THINK BIG     Heaven is close to

Bathurst St.     Wrong turns are   frowned upon

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Fall  2013

BIKO

THE  BRAIDED  STREAM

Stephen Bantu Biko  the founder of

the  black consciousness movement  in

South Africa   died on September 12, 1977

He was 30   & had been shackled naked for

days    No hunger striker was he     Autopsy

revealed brain hemorrhage from head injuries

Died on the floor of Pretoria prison hospital    No mercy

The holy grail of paleoanthropology posits :

human evolution is a  braided stream  and not

a simple  march of progress   In 2008 north-west of

Johannesberg in the Cradle of Humankind  a nine yr. old

boy discovered a 2 million yr. old hominid skeleton  a   transitional ancestor

with a small brain  not much bigger than a chimpanzee’s

Much likely a more humane creature  built for climbing trees

with fierce capacities for compassion  especially for their young

Memorized their mother’s voices  They did not prey on each other

Nor were they prone to: terrorism  mass-psychosis  or torture

Those were simpler times   The Mother-ship hovered    The light

at the end of the tunnel was  ON    And the last one standing had   an alibi

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*in 1997   5 former police officers confessed to the Biko killing

to a Truth & Reconciliation Commission.  The men were never tried.

Fall  2013

DIPLOMACY

DIPLOMACY  BLUES

The dragonfly lands on my writing paper

matches my outfit   red-wings    The sky

hydrangea     It won’t get more maudlin       Stay

It feels like we are hovering on the precipice

Obama stammers   now grey & bent   He of the

mythology: No red States  No blue States  We are

the United States      No you’re not

I want a list of names      Now  scatter

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Fall 2013

RIP

CHILD  BRIDE    SANAA  YEMEN

Rawan died at 8  after her uterus was

ruptured on her wedding night  Betrothed

to a man 5x her age   No Action was taken

against the man  14% of Yemeni girls are

married before 15  and 52% before 18

At my office in the trenches of humanity

I was asked to bear witness   Girls & boys

much younger than Rawan became child

brides & grooms  in Toronto   in large numbers

As I looked into their eyes many appeared to

be staring into space  as if half asleep or absent

And I hoped that like  *Shmuel in Auschwitz

these children: were able to convince their souls to 

not live inside of their tiny bodies, but to slip away

and sail to the door, and rise up into the sky

Clamouring to get out only made it worse

One boy often said: Therapist you can hit me

with the biggest stick and I won’t feel a thing   Go on   Try it

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Fall  2013   *The Boy In The Striped Pajamas  John Boyne 2006

AND SHE DOES NOT

AND  SHE  DOES  NOT    LIGHT  UP  A  ROOM

9 a.m.

She worked for years at the  Toys R Us  warehouse

People said she’d been to university   was married

owned a home   When her husband left her  she went:  

(storyteller makes a circle motion at her temple)

11:11 a.m.

The morning radio show explores  meta-morphers 

game-changers   One who left radio after 7 yrs. to be a

work-from-home TV critic    Talking-head said:  Wow!

Changed your life now you’re cool   Neat!   (not poetic license)

2 p.m.

The happiest girl I have ever seen walks by at the

Royal Conservatory     18    braces on teeth   pink case

for flute   blonde hair  semi-wet   smile of one who has

no Judas  no mortgage  no circle at temple    

May she stay free   steer clear  of trite radio personality

who does not know the difference between:  revelation

& mental masturbation  A modern day anchoress who sucks  & blows

but mostly sucks

11:11 p.m.

Happiest girl in world plays her flute  cavorts with Pan

at Pagan gala on Cherry St.    Woman with circle at

temple is cured     Radio host is the Fisher Queen

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Fall  2013

DESITIVELY NOT

DESITIVELY  NOT  IN      KANSAS

The nice man at  Jacob’s Hardware Electrical & Plumbing

410 Queen W.  asked:  Where do you go when you click your

heels together?  (poet in pink metallic brogues)  Arresting stare

You know where    Jacob Hardware man: Can I come with you?  

Arresting smile & trip over raised strip in floor   Don’t know where

I’m going anymore   Your faith is better than a wooden clothes dryer  

(get ’em in chinatown sunshine)     Now fix that f***ing  floor!

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(Desitively Bonnaroo 1974. Mac Rebennack  with Allen Toussaint and The Meters)

Fall  2013

DAISY

DAISY  DOES      HURON

reed thin lips  no smile  cold-blooded reptile

full make-up by 9 a.m.  tommy hilfiger redux

daisy buchanan at 60    heritage village on  Great Big Lake

husband large  affable   deeply tanned     i want a  REFUND

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Fall  2013

IT’S ALL GREEN

IT’S  ALL  GREEN        TO ME

One day the gardener said:  (in his best Charlton Heston)

Ma’am that tree is dead   then he stared off into the distance

It was time to leave our High Park street   One neighbour a

reputed war criminal    another  dead on his porch after 4 yrs.

of merciless cane-banging   11 years have come and gone and

a gaggle of geese make their way South  honking like Illinois Jacquet 

I am trapped  in a green village  on a blue LAKE (with a trampoline for the grankids)

While   at a concert 2 nights before   Patti Smith  screeched and spat  & then spat

some more:  Say No to Syria   Say No to Obama    Edward Snowden is a Nigger

The world is a noisy place    A new pedagogical theory says:  Everything is better

in groups          Shoot Me

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I like to watch Eve.   Chauncey The Gardener    (Being There  1979)

Fall 2013