songanddancegirl

EYES

SHE  HAS  DENOUEMENT   EYES

Light moving in  bands   Waves undulating across periphery

of left eye   If I look in mirror will face have morphed into  BAST

the ancient Egyptian Cat Goddess    Eye feels feline & not in a good way

Same face   Same eye     Mirror doesn’t lie   says wrinkle commercial

YES it does  says me    Brownhairedgirl  gentle waves    Open to persuasion

Purple bow on pig-tails   It lies every day!   Who is this MadHatter?  Fiery-red

be-frizzled head    No Exit  sign  beside her bed

Undulating eye leads to ululation    Honey bees are dying + Monarchs have lost

their native plants   Even the car wash lady is prone to rants + taken a strong dislike

to  MadHatter woman    Work on Big BossMan Car!   she commands   as cleaners

scurry away  leaving woman musty

Her jaded ghost running  naked   along  West Queen West

She will find an Exit  yet

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Summer  2014

KAMAKAZE

HER KAMAKAZE SON

Her eyes are still emerald though nothing else

is remotely the same   When young & un-griefed

she was briefly beautiful

But the madness of her mother always hung heavy

especially on hot suburban nights

Her parents visited once in a  GIANT BLUE CHEVY

left on our driveway for the Repo-man   One year in

her late 20’s she spoke mainly in tongues

Now her son will protect her   A natty young man tall+lean

far too sweet for what is coming   Carrying her out of urine

soaked beds   & singing her to sleep when the moon shines red

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As I Lay Dying    William Faulkner   1930

SUMMER  2014

GIRL

COLLEGE GIRL MESSIAH

The prettiest most perfect little thing

just walked into and out of   my life

Pre-Raphaelite Eve   Apple un-bitten

Cherubic grin   Hair pulled into a top

knot   Gold+white flyaways flutter

Accordion skirt skyblue   way above

the knee   Tight white blouse   A pristine

machine   Patent bag  words on one side:

Who understands language   Understands God

__

Summer 2014

WAITING

NOT WAITING FOR SAMUEL BECKETT TO SLIP ME THE ANSWER

There really is ecstasy   a.k.a. magic in this life

followed by heartache  followed by tedium  banality

irritation   Then occasionally bliss breaks in   Life

culminates in having lived    It’s that simple   Yourownpersonalodyssey.com

I Was Here   written in pink chalk on buildings  benches  fences

Blackie Was Here   doggie odyssey   Unmarked grave   ravine

North Toronto 1970’s    As soon as we wake up into this puny-consciousness

we long for immortality  Do Not Extinguish Me!  (see: *Lascaux

*Michelangelo  *Godot   *Rosebud)

We all like to be near people who are living the life they want to

live   To touch a corner of their cloak   to take a selfie with them

to stalk them   to kill them?  (see: Mark David Chapman  or don’t)

At a workshop on PLAY THERAPY TECHNIQUES the sleek lady from

Arizona gave us: THE MAGIC BAG   Tell your clients they can put their

hands in and pull out ANYTHING: the missing mother    God    a puppy

then psycho-dramatically play with these    One client bitterly recounted

how her cat did not return to life when she used a bag at home

Perhaps this is more of an adult technique  for the suffering fantasists

reserved + melancholic   eaten up inside by ebbing passion   For the ones

who say: I have my pace + way of living   I’m not looking for something

Don’t bother me with MAGIC   If it happens it happens   Otherwise fuck you

__

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth   Down the hole   lingeringly   the grave digger

puts on forceps   At me too someone is looking  of me too someone is saying   He is

sleeping  he knows nothing  Let him sleep on  (Waiting For Godot   Samuel Beckett)

Adelia Prado begs to differ:

Nothing is ever dead  What seems to have died fertilizes

What seems motionless waits

(Lesson 1976)

Summer 2014

BLUE PERIOD

PROLONGED   BLUE PERIOD

People emerging from the theatre giving each other

bear hugs   rubbing of backs ad nauseam   One guy

being pecked on the cheek repeatedly   Who the hell

is he?   (diminutive androgyne)

Last night he showed up in a dream  The door had to be

locked + chained  only to open again + again   An unusually

small  womanlike painter  with a gravely voice said:

We must free ourselves from the titillating stew of schadenfreude

Write like no one is reading you   Easy-breezy advice from someone

who wields the brush   to she who slaves with the pen   It seems that

people everywhere are unloading  words of wisdom

Today a U of T scientist accosted me as I dredged words from the

nether-regions  He had the quintessential wild hair & skinny head

He gesticulated & spat    The gist of his message:

Try to have relations with Tibetan monks   A friend of a friend told him

that every time she made love with a monk  the hillside would burst into

flowers   He spoke too of time travel & 21^st century political tyranny   and

suggested that I not linearalize   too much  

And since it is near impossible to make shit like this up  you will simply

have to trust that it is not the blues or the psilocybin hijacking the Muse

Just a lot of people out there who should be saying something    saying nothing

__

(The poet Allen Ginsberg and other Beats  used Psilocybin to their advantage

writing numerous poems which would shape the direction of 21st century

literature, under the influence.  While this post-beat poet gets her prose seeds

from careful observation of normal everyday speech at U of T.  To date it is 

unknown whether psychotropics are widely used by this captive audience.  

One may only assume.)

POST SCRIPT:  Allen Ginsberg  (snippets of  The Lion For Real   Paris 1958)

I came home and found a Lion in my living room

Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!

Called my Reichian analyst   I’m afraid any discussion

would have no value  He hung up   I ended up masturbating

in his Jeep  parked in the street  moaning Lion!

Summer 2014

ADAPTATION

COUNTERACTING  ADAPTATION  INCREASES  HAPPINESS

According to scholars  including Sonia Lyubomirsky (U of Cal. Riverside)

Humans adapt quickly to our circumstances  but that also means we are

easily bored and unhappy

Beware of Adaptation!  Cockroaches adapt  Bottom feeders & sharks

are good adaptors too   Among the most effective methods for increasing

happiness  is talking to friends about your coming travels (Leaf Van Boven

U of Colorado  Boulder)    This is the best they could come up with?

I implore you gentle reader: Always remember  nothing is that  funny  and

happiness is a drug developed by BIG PHARMA to make you think:   you are

can be   want to be   need to be   happy     Whereas real happiness is fleeting

illusive  ephemeral   FICTIONAL    much like life itself

Happiness is a mirage  Go ahead knock yourself out   run towards it     see what

happens   I know a woman who is getting married next Tuesday   as of  last Monday

she was sucking the fingers of a long time acquaintance   Adaptation is the last great

Mythos     Ditto happiness

Several years ago  a man in a tall fur hat  made eye contact with me through the glass

at a Starbucks  Next thing I knew  he was beside me:   You have the face of a writer  

With this he disappeared from my life   forever?   Perhaps it was a meet-your-maker-

moment   All I can say is that I have finally figured out how to be faithless   making

happiness redundant   Like the song says:   Ain’t nothing like the rill thing    baby

__

*Wish you were on vacation right now? Don’t.  Taking a vacation won’t make you

happier.  And it may make you suffer even more.  

(Journal of Applied Research In Quality of Life  2010)

Summer   2014

JUNG

THANK GOD I’M JUNG    AND NOT A JUNGIAN

This week the light went ON at the end of the tunnel

Whereas in my last book it went OUT   * (pg.82)  

On Saturday I told a young doctor that I was at 1 on

the  Pessimism for Humanity Scale  until about 7 yrs.

ago  when miraculously I jumped to a 6    My husband

swooped in with a  scaling question   He said: So what

would it take to get you to 8?

Peace on Earth   the arrival of the Messiah (2nd coming for some)

& throttling the diner at the adjacent table (too funny  wise  +interesting)

Truthfully  the light began to flicker then  & as I flung the cold carpaccio

in his face  I shouted:

You have a shittylittlemind + a goddamned honking laugh

+ the scent about you is  Bottom the Ass   Fie Fie boring hipster

at Terroni

With this the young doctor & his ethicist lover  wondered about my paradigm

Well I’m: an angst-ridden Jew from the Pale  a Jungian  + a witch    and if

carpaccio-face doesn’t  shut his trap  I will  no longer be a pacifist   Not to put

too fine a point on it

__

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind  

the lawyer all the wickedness

the theologian all the stupidity      

Arthur Schopenhauer

Summer  2014

HBO

THE  LEFTOVERS

We all do disappear eventually   except not

en masse   unless in mass exterminations

Generally we are orphaned one-by-one    Some

look up & see stars   others flashlights    While

others still   see hunger   Everywhere   Soon tiny

mouths in the black sky will begin to  eat us

The other night at the Music Hall: greying crowd

emerging into the dark night (after spending much

of the concert peeing) looking around with starving

eyes at other 50 somethings stumbling into the light 

*(read between the eyes  their pasts are seeping through

the cracks)  While the dead leave us hungry  with mouths

full of questions

__

Summer  2014

FREE?

FREE WILL   vs    DETERMINISM

We have free will   each of us   in the cage

constructed especially for us  by the   Puppet Master

The Puppet Master  a.k.a. :    *genes   *family history

*temperament/constitution  *age/culture/religion born into

*personal unconscious/collective unconscious   *un-lived life

of mother/father   * sins of the fathers/mothers  *certain types of death

*romantic love  *marriage

**(space below to add your own Puppet Master baggage)

*

*

*

Within these walls   wearing these chains  you have a few meagre choices

So  DO NOT SQUANDER THEM on tequila & sin    Better yet   DO

in order to drown the sound of the Puppet Master’s  belly laughs

__

“Marrying means to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find an eel

amongst an assembly of snakes.” 

(Arthur Schopenhauer)

Summer  2014

CHILD

I CAME UPON A CHILD OF GOD

The heathen-children are back in our parks

first days free  now back in captivity   Sent by

adults who believe every waking minute should

be:  programed  supervised  teachable

RUN! I cry as the bearded man-counsellor tells

them it is raining   (boys+girls it’s raining)

RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!  mad wet poet

commands   Heathen-children scatter hiding behind

rocks + trees

Tonight they will erect this city’s  1^st stone circle  and

the powers-that-be can charge a dollar & a half just to

see it    Wait! bearded man-counsellor calling police

Mad damp poet giving out cupcakes   Wonders if it was

all the Joni Mitchell that turned her into a subversive

bitch    Naw more likely the Mingus

At 13 I drowned in the River Mingus flowing from our

living room stereo   The Mingus+moonlight embalming us all

__

* (later Joni  would say that on the day Mingus died at 56

56 whales beached  and died   on the Mexican coast)

Summer 2014