songanddancegirl

TIPITINA’S

STANDOFF  AT       TIPITINA’S

It was long   & white   & silky    Stretched on forever

Well at least until the V of her dress revealed a hollow

also perfect   silky      It was rhythmically moving    up&down&up&down

Gyrating may be too strong a word       OK      Let’s call it a saw-off

All of this against my husband’s equally long (not so silky)  back

as we watched George Clinton’s bacchanalia  unfold below   at

Tipitina’s   (501 Napoleon Ave. New Orleans LA)    With Soul-Sister DJ

on the floor doin things I shan’t explain  (involving crawling & spreading)

I did not know whether to take Silky Back Woman outside   or applaud my guy’s

staying power   He leaned on the rail like he owned it    Hockey-hard body groovin

to George C.    I knew in his heart he was transported to Lakehead U.  where he

reigned as  THE BLONDE    So mostly I just kept my clenched fist in my pocket

waving it only occasionally   cowardly    at the silkiest back I have ever seen

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My heroes had the heart
To live their lives out on a limb
And all I remember
Is thinking, I want to be like them

Crazy  Pat Green/Gnarls Barkley

Late Winter   2013

APRIL 2014

SCENT  OF  APRIL      2014

The woman who sells me perfume is

tinkerbell-tiny   & smells like a wise man

from Marrakesh     When she hugs me

Embrace Of  Said Wise Man    clings for hours

Yesterday my  OUD  went missing     Pre- Xmas

shoppers commiserated    and I was released from

perfume-shrine into LBS of slush   now sweating

profusely     I need to speak to the MYSTIC  I cried

When there on the corner of Wellesley & Bay  a 15 yr.

old girl    dancing like Beyonce´   bewitched sluggish

Torontonians   made you feel like you might survive

made you feel like you were almost alive  

Made you feel like the billionth Canadian winter might spit

you out  ALIVE     on the other side    When the new-you

will glide  along lilac scented streets  lips  Radiant Orchid

Pantone’s colour pic for 2014

_

We are ever dying into one world    and  being born into another

Henry David Thoreau

The transfiguration of Georgia May Jagger

& Aprill Atkins Cameron  Spring 2014

Winter Solstice   2013

LBD

NOTHING  COMES  BETWEEN  ME  &  MY  COMRAGS  LBD

Where this dress has been   & has not been:

Quivering on the floor   I shan’t say more

Crunched behind a pretty hipster on an elevator

carrying a box of rich-girl cupcakes    16 vanilla in

neat little rows   She winked and said:  

Eating one may change a life

You mean like asking Mr. Tolstoy for a re-write?

We are at Indigo headquarters after all    where a

sign says:  Ask And You Shall Receive

PLEASE LIFT ANNA FROM UNDER THAT TRAIN!

Not yet on the  Book Tour  where the Tokyo crowd will

throw rose petals & raw fish   And I will never know if it’s

yesterday or tomorrow   This dress has not been on Letterman

yet     Will it ride up & pull a   Margaret Trudeau?  Or flutter  in

the breeze   a la Marilyn Monroe’s?

All of this is hard to know  stuck here in the throes of so much

ice & snow    So let us re-visit our dress come Spring    This dress

is going places   This dress has dreams!

__

Winter  2013

BUTTERFLIES

BUTTERFLIES  ARE    FREE?

It’s 1960  North Toronto  Jewish ghetto

What does the air smell like?  Thick   with

peonies   mums   & death     Friend’s parents

newly transplanted from the Camps  of Poland

& Germany     What do I see   in front of me?

suburban lawn  road   survivor couple’s home  

huge & on a hill   they are rarely seen   faces lined

& weatherbeaten   no children   they always smile at me

A boy from up the street   Ashley   sits on their hill  most days

at 3   tormenting me    Staring longingly  at my bedroom window

Years later we heard that he   was crushed in a taxi   Cement truck

flipped over        Goodbye Ashley   

His face is round  darkish skin   His sister & her friend hate me

with a passion reserved for girls with gently curly hair  & handsome

brothers     They call out taunts from their balconies   daily

In dreams  I still walk by  and eye   their lumpy bodies & dishevelment

I shiver when cement trucks threaten    & wonder how the story might be

re-written    had I invited Ashley-boy   inside      In Chaos theory lingo:

Had the butterfly not flapped it’s wings would Ashley still be alive?

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It was a strange world ahead.  A thunderhead of a world

with jagged lightening edges. I went straight into it. It was

wide open.     Bobby Zimmerman  Chronicles  2004

Winter  2013

ENOS

THEY  NAMED  A  FETA  CHEESE    AFTER  HIM

I’m looking down on the world from the top of creation

the man on the corner growled   One yellow shoe  one grey

Thinning hair  caked on mud    here & there   standing too

close  to me     Catapulted to thoughts of   Enos  1st chimp to

circle Earth  Nov. 29 1961

Looking down on the world   little chimp-god    Tortured by

NASA with electrodes on feet   shocked repeatedly   lever

malfunctioned mid-flight    Mission deemed a success   It was

Enos who paved the way for John Glenn!   (Globe & Mail)

The scientist who devised said torture chamber  was obsessed

with the poet  Champcenetz   who named the Guillotine   and

later fell prey  to the razor himself    It is a little known fact that

our scientist died while receiving   electro-shock therapy

Enos was eventually retired  and lived out his days in a Chimp-Spa

funded by Bob Barker   Life is full of such serendipity   All the circles

are connected leading you to the centre  which is empty    Enos finally

chewed through the barbed wire of his enclosure   sending Bob into a

massive depression

We live in an epoch where moats are erected around solitude

and the cost of forgiveness has skyrocketed    In Toronto recently

many millions of dollars were spent on locking dolphins  sharks  &

a whale  behind a glass enclosure  underneath our business district

__

Winter  2013

NELSON

THAT’S  WHY  HE  IS     NELSON  MANDELA

If you want to understand your enemies   read

their poetry   he said

Find out what they worship:

Fame

Wealth

Power

Technology                Beauty  Silence  Mercy         Guns

Not all of us are cut out to be saviours  eh   (CBC commentator)

You can talk  Zen  but try to live Zen    depression sets in

Maybe it’s the antidote to a manic world    What is the current

Mythology?   When mangers & burning bushes fail to captivate

& you cannot see the forest for the Bodhi trees

Is the  virtual space  the new  sacred space?  Or is it the Psychiatric

encounter?   Will resurrections happen late at night   when screens

flicker green  and a voice rings out: You have a choice Modern Man-ic

Shoot yourself   or i will shoot you    

Saviours form a line to the right   Civilians to the left

__

“There comes a time in life when everybody must

take a piss in the sink”    Peter Orlovsky  Paris 1957

Winter  2013

A STRANGER OCEAN

IN  A  STRANGER  OCEAN  THAN  I  WISHED*

What do the Po Mo’s want from me?

They say it is: tres bourgeois  to sit down

and write poetry   

plotless bastards  archivists treacherous avant-gardists

By the end of the class  I was alone   The group

disappeared    two by two when I extolled the

virtues of  meaning   One woman ran for the door

shouting over her shoulder: My bird whistle is not

a craft item   You lyrical bitch!  (true-story)

__

Winter  2013

*Barbara Guest   Parachutes My Love Could Carry Us Higher 1957

(decidedly NOT a Post Modernist)

BABYLON

BY  THE  RIVERS   OF  BABYLON

To look into Mandela’s face  is to see the face of:

Gandhi

Dali Lama

Gautama

Jesus

Yahweh

Pan

The peace  joy  suffering  wild abandon  wisdom  innocence

A union of opposites   a face of transcendence imprisonment

freedom enslavement   Buoyant

He rises now  above  Robben   where his sweat caused flowers to

grow  & his tears the rivers he now sails upon

__

ANIMAL

I  AM  NOT      AN  ANIMAL

After a 4,500 kl road trip   3 elephants

arrived at a California sanctuary  Bob Barker

(The Price Is Right)  was elated    He’d

spent  a small fortune  and several years of

his life lobbying for this

Mr. Berridge (T.O. Zoo) said: We’re all emotionally

drained    when you  work with elephants they get

inside your soul    Fair enough Bob & Mr. Berridge

I find the same to be true  in work with human children

Over the past 5 yrs. in T.O.  funding for children’s mental

health  has been radically cut    12 sessions is all they get

Be careful about asking for more   Therapists    We do not

want to encourage a dependency 

dark circles crack house graduates lakeshore motels without

the meal plan  burns bruises  being peed on at 18 months in

cold showers  angsty & powerless   self-anesthetized zombies

I will lobby for a transport truck    Surely the PAWS Sanctuary

has room?  It will likely be cheaper to haul 30 child survivors

than 3 aging elephants    The children are rail-thin  don’t use

toilets  and can dissociate into long periods of trance   No costly

staff with degrees in Zoology needed

The pachyderms now resting comfortably  will die in captivity

but the children may someday break free   Their voices trumpeting

long   into the California night

__

Winter  2013

MY PORTAL

BACK  AWAY  FROM    MY  PORTAL

I want your life   she said    Do you want

it now?  Do you want it   knowing nothing

about it?  (other than my vacation plans)

Are you an incubus?  A succubus?

Forlorn girl at local drug-mart   You say: I bought 8

giant Hershey kisses for xmas presents &

ate 2 in a row   You know how chocolate

makes you thirsty  right?  My clothes feel   tight

Have a chocolate   they’re small   HAVE ONE

petite lady with perfect life    Lips curl into snarl

I back away   and miss slipping on hunk of ice at door

Uneasiness persists throughout the day

Drug-mart girl is dark & exotic   witchy smile  dangerous hips

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Winter  2013