songanddancegirl

JOHNNY PRESBYTERIAN

JOHNNY  PRESBYTERIAN   A’INT   ROTTEN

I sat at a table today  next to the  Early Instrument Collection

intrigued by the 18th C  leather-bound serpent-horns   But

more so by a threadbare  smallish man    Big shoes  bigger

than his feet   Well kept dishevelment  likely frayed since birth

His not unkind eyes settled on mine    He said: My sister’s husband

beats her every night   Geyser tears shooting out  hit my nose & chin

Too smitten to wipe them  I smiled doe-like in the mist   He said:

Miss  I am Johnny Presbyterian  & I believe we all start as miracles and

end up changing tires    I couldn’t disagree with him

I said:  Johnny if I make something beautiful  will you think it’s beautiful

too?   He handed me one of his boat-like shoes   Take it Miss fer when

begging bowls grow scarce   and lame dogs walk on water

__

Late Fall  2013

R.I.P. LOU

NO   COUNTRY

There will be no port

that will take you

Madwoman

Jew

You are unreceivable

Ungrievable

If we say so you don’t exist

And you there child

Talking to your dead brother’s ashes

No room

Oh and Sally in the corner

of the cigarette burns

etched like stars into your back

We couldn’t possibly

Yo  Donnie

With snakes writhing

in & out of every orifice

We simply cannot squeeze you in

dear

And what of smiling Jerry?

His mother’s entrails

steaming on the floor

Your ship of fools

is forever banished

from our shores

__

Give me your tired your poor  I’ll piss on ‘em

That’s what the statue of bigotry says  Your poor

huddled masses  let’s club ‘em to death

Lou Reed , Dirty Blvd  1988

Spring  2007         Lou Reed  March 1942 – October 2013

AUTUMN COATRACKS

AUTUMN  COATRACKS  FULL  OF  PERKY  HUES

I sacrificed a small pink mum to the one eyed

Buddha in the bedroom   Over the course of

a day it now lay  soft & supine where once

stiff & straight    Surely the golden-boy  with

elongated ears will weave  pink-flower-soul

into grey city sleepers  on edge of polluted

Lake    Especially during ice-storms when every

dream you ever had on fetid days will glimmer  briefly

Before squirrel-rats bury them in your tulip beds

Do not over think it    Just survive

__

Late  Autumn  2013

FASHIONABLY TROUBLED

FASHIONABLY  TROUBLED      FASHION  VICTIMS

Today one of our favourite emporiums of the cheap

fashionfix  asked customers to vote:  Do you want us

to support   women    clean water    the environment   or

education?  There were even glossy photos of happy

women splashing themselves with gorgeous water  in

places like  India  Pakistan  & Cambodia

Trouble is they didn’t mention  industrial safety  fair wages

or domestic violence   Their silence spoke volumes    In India:

A newly wed woman is lit on fire every 90 minutes by her in-laws * 

Just days ago depictions of Hindu Goddesses as battered women

went viral    Lakshmi had a swollen lip  while Durga the Great Mother

Goddess   shed tears from a bruised eye

Some are not sure if this helps the cause of beaten  raped   & tortured

women  in a country where 68% are victims of domestic violence   Perhaps

the cheap fashionfixers might scrap their meaningless vote   display the

battered Goddesses around the globe   & take up a collection for victims

of violence  There is no statistic for un-reported rapes in India  (population 1.2 billion)

where women risk death for doing so

_

Art is not a mirror held up to reality  

It is a hammer with which to shape it    

Bertolt Brecht 

Late Fall  2013           *(Globe & Mail 22/10/13)

GODSPEED

GODSPEED    JOHN  GLEN*

Have you ever fallen in love    with a face?

One that gets inside  your skin    You may

not even know the owner    I  did this weekend

with a dead astronaut named Scott:   red hair

boyish grin   eyes brown   doleful   one lid droops

face spells trouble     He wants    more

Married 4x   pre-deceased by 2 of 8 children

In the early 60’s on his only spaceflight   Scott

missed his landing by 463 kl.    Walter Cronkite said:

We may have lost an astronaut   Earth waited in   solemn silence

Scott was found  feet propped up  floating in the

Caribbean    NASA was not impressed   blamed him

for being   distracted

Scott said:  The view of Mother Earth is addictive

Should you turn your attention to faces   you may

want to begin with children    Faces in the throes of

transcendence    of  a metamorphosis so deep   that

between birth and 13  there is   a brand new being

Forensic artists are enlisted to capture these changes

when young children are kidnapped   so that they may be   found

The human-face a holy-frontier       Godspeed  Scott Carpenter

__

Tell good and true stories around lonely campfires

They say the nights on Mars are cold and long –

(Scott Carpenter   For Spacious Skies)

RIP 1925-2013

Fall   2013      *Scott Carpenter to John Glenn at lift-off  1962

HANDS

HER  HANDS  WERE  IMMORTALIZED    BY  STIEGLITZ

A woman has just stopped   She has walked by

at least twice for the past 6 yrs.  each time I write

by the babbling brook    She yatters somewhat

pleasantly as the best poem I have ever written

is carried into the brook   by the breeze

It is now making its way down to New Mexico where

I would love to follow   But alas I can never re-trace    Georgia’s

steps   too many scorpions & spiders   They even close

a highway for the annual Tarantula crossing   (Google it)

But do not despair  you may participate in the dissemination

of my 2nd greatest poem   It will crawl up your pant leg   get

inside your skin   There will be no antidote or Epi-Pen    And

one day soon   my hands will be photographed for the      Smithsonian

__

*(eligible photographers may send samples of their work to:

pleaseimmortalizeme@rogers.ca)

Fall  2013

MAN

MAN  IN  THE  MIRROR (ED)    FRAMES

When I gaze out my bathroom window

I see the CN tower   and  a man

A deadringer for Hemingway   into his

2nd Blue by 9 a.m.    He leans on the fire-escape

in crude deshabille    Most certainly one of

the  great deceivers   I wonder where he was

at 15       Where were you?

I was searching for water beneath the Antarctic

ice shelf   where  unborn rivers   run free

__

Now in the middle of the journey of our life

I came into myself in a dark wood

where the straight way was lost      (Dante Alighieri  The Inferno)

Fall 2013

K.WEST

THE  DAY  K.  WEST*     BECAME   QUEST

Let’s call it atavism  This return to Ziggy      40 yrs. later

My brain hurts a lot  (more)   Never thought

I’d lose so many people   Remember Starman?

He died waiting  for all the nobody people to

become  somebody    And my magnifiers aren’t

even strong enough to rip off Bowie at his best     Bear with me

Who could be more trapped than a 14 yr. old

in suburbia  coming upon  ZIGGY    A few girls my

age went off their heads   Later it was encouraging

to hear:  You’re okay as long as a second ego  DOES NOT  appear

(a very smart analyst said  in my 32nd year)

The moments of  the now & then & yet to be

are woven into a  past-present-future  brew

Where the re-curring deja vu  becomes your   curtain call

Something about:  A  ravine where a priest with blazing blues

pulls a still beating heart from my chest    

Now tell me yours   because you have been implicated

from the start    Of course you have the right to remain

silent    Everything you say  may change the trajectory

of your curtain call    It was after all  on April 4th 1994

that  Kurdt Donald Cobain said:  I miss the comfort of being   sad

__

Fall  2013     *(K.WEST – the sign over Ziggy’s head  on the album cover 1972)

SPIDERS

SPIDERS  FROM    MARS

Louise Bourgeois the sculptor  (1911-2010)  spent so much

of her adult life in analysis she was said to be famously troubled

Perfect epithet for the modern famewhore   Fame now a birthright

Airtight liberation from the quotidian    The famous reportedly don’t love

(And they never forgive)  

In 2008 Louise B.  finally gave us an  Open Door    Liberation? Or cheeky portal

to another kind of entrapment   Freedom after all  is  Super-myth   the  GIANT carrot

One Buddhist monk has even declared:  You cannot be free until you are free of the

desire to punish    And there is someone I must forgive by 12:01 a.m. tomorrow  

Which will be more difficult?   This   or giving up life as I know it for life on Mars?

Nearly 97,000 Canadians have applied to join  Mars One  which will establish a

permanent human colony by 2023      I would simply rather be famous

__

Fame, bully for you, chilly for me
Got to get a rain check on pain (pain)
(fame)      David Bowie

Louise Bourgeois   Open Door

Fall  2013 

CONFESSION

IN  THE  TIME  OF  MY    CONFESSION

If the thing you said you were going to do does not materialize

And should it be found to have been meaningless

And everyone gives up hope

And the Curtain-Raiser leaves the curtain   at half mast

This is  PROGRESS!  

You might leave the stage   forever

And follow the dark haired cigarette smoking man you have

seen in the courtyard  every day for 6 yrs.    Go on   Follow him

To a place where nothing much will happen unless the

Curtain-Raiser finds the will to resurrect Spring

And the imponderables come to a grinding   HALT

You knew all along that he would lead you  OUT

He looks slimmer this Fall  & not as worried about

dandruff or his smell

__

There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names,
And he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same,
There’ll be a golden ladder reachin’ down.
When the man comes around.      Johnny Cash  The Man

Fall  2013