songanddancegirl

GHOST

A  GHOST  OF  A  DIFFERENT   COLOUR

Getting ready to celebrate  Dia de Muertos  here in

the West   Loads of fake bones & skeletal clones  +white

ghosts  (can we be a little more inclusive with our

horror paraphenalia please?)  

Do white people think that all ghosts are white? Casper was

white  +a generation of cartoon loving children became white

ghost lovers   Somewhat along these lines  Oprah opined to

the cast of FRIENDS:  I think y’all need to get a black friend

And though I am a member of an invisible minority (my nose may

give me away in certain circles)  I suspect that my ghostly avatar is

is Jew   through+through

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GOD

WELL  I  CAME  UPON  A  CHILD  OF  GOD

curated samitches

curated kids

curated beau

Faux pond beside which I write this poem

In my gentrified hood  I have to look hard for signs

of putrifacto  (this a.m. a rotting bat   holy batshit!)

The alchemists spun straw into gold  maybe my local

hipsters can transmute boredom into curated passion

They sit in our parks in hoards at mid-day  Are they all

.com millionaires or just millennials without jobs?  In the

40’s they’d have been in foxholes  warplanes  +graveyards

Today there’s nothing grave about my 20 somethings  They

are super-beautiful  Dustypink cheeks meet overgrown beards

They are so hip it hurts   in places where  I used to be hip

In flowerchild places   In Quaalude bacchanalia places

When Zimmerman plugged-in  reverb woke up an old beast

birthing the Judas’  who crucified their King    Were those

simpler times?  Or just as sublime as the 50’s  when folks were

fried for selling atomic secrets  to Russian spies

Ethel Rosenberg’s brother recently died  He confessed that he’d

lied    Sent his sister to the chair to protect his wife    CAN YOU

BLAME ME?   he cried

The great mythos of our century  is that we are LIBERATED

Except that all of the LIBS   have just made us slaves to curated

ideologies  This week two 16 yr. old girls have embraced the term

feminism  They are: Girls Who Code  +they have invented a video

game: Tampon Run   Soon they will be on park benches  their faux

hippie skirts  swinging in curated breezes

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Their voices thin+high+meaningless+at the same time profoundly

wild+sad   Life was created in the valleys  it blew up onto the hills

on the old terrors  the old lusts  the old despairs    That’s why you

must Wake Up  (William Faulkner As I Lay Dying 1930)

MID FALL   2014

FACE

PLEASE  REPATRIATE  RENEE ZELWEGER’S  FACE

I want to plumb  with dreamy morbid ardour   the

tentative   half finished  half born  thing   that is

middle stone age    fear loss vanity serenity chaos

wisdom defiance freedom self-loathing  +botch

O this longsinewydance through claustrophobic

corridors   of memory

Who is choreographing this show?  Hope the camera

man adds a touch of glow to our peaked pallor  now that

we are 1/2 way there    Where?     Is death life’s final

scorekeeper?  Or is life  death’s funhouse?  What’s the

frequency Kenneth?   What’s the score?

When the glorious Mrs. Reaper appears  will she be your

grandmother’s doppelgänger?  Before she spirits you through

the eye of the needle  she will want to know: Who must you

say good-bye to  before you go?   And your entire life will pass

before you    a la Ebenezer Scrooge

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A final sense of being right out in the cold, unkissed.

My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.

John Berryman  A Stimulant For An Old Beast  1959

Mid Fall  2014

O CANADA

WHEN  CANADA  GOES    IT’S  ALL  OVER*

For Cpl. Nathan Cirillo  the Reaper looked like

Barbra Winters  former Naval reservist   His angel

of death   She told him: Everybody loves you  We’re 

all trying to help you  Your parents are so proud of

you    But they could not stanch the blood from holes

in his chest

Who was CSIS kidding ladies & gentlemen?  Leaving

those young soldiers to guard the War Memorial  without

bullets in their guns   The editorials everywhere say: We are

still standing   The True North strong & free    Except  NO

it’s not

Yesterday I heard a racist slur  on Yonge St.   as 3 young girls

in black hijabs  crossed my path some scraggly Canadian screamed:

DON’T BEHEAD ME

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*New York Times Columnist  Robert Cohen

Mid Fall  2014

THERAPY

CASTRATION THERAPY FAVOURED FOR SEXUAL PREDATORS IN THE WEST

Africa pried open for all the world to see   The W.H.O.admitted yesterday:

A botched response to the Ebola calamity   Now the entire world is Ebola blue

The virus no longer wicked & away   On Saturday a bridal shop in New Jersey

was closed    Ebola nurse had visited with her soon to be married sister

Then there is Boko Haram selling off Chibok girls like cattle  at 25-1000$ per

head   Some executed   Some committed suicide  The U.N. reported that: captured

teenaged boys as well as girls were routinely sexually abused

While in the Middle East  the estimated number of enslaved Yazidi women+girls

has reached 7,000   The Islamic State is proud to admit their viciousness  using

religious rhetoric as a shield   Most of us just think they are sexual predators hiding

behind  The Word    It’s an enslavement project says Matthew Barber  U of Chicago

While the U.N. says:  jihadi abuses may amount to war crimes

One young mother   after her husband+father were killed in front of her   was

dragged by a bloodspattered captor  to the house of a man of 80  She escaped with

her baby  as her new husband slept

Don’t be naive  Don’t believe  that the girls will be returned   They are being held in

schools  community halls  prisons  +houses    They will become spouses  to the

leaders and emirs   Let’s face it   The girls have disappeared   In Nigeria  Goodluck

Jonathon is running for re-election   He says: We will bring the girls home 

Mr. President  what type of services will you offer to your country women?  Who after

6 months in captivity no longer own their souls

As weary grows the West   As empty grow the beds   Do you feel well?   Are you

feverish yet?    You loiterers    You tourists of the war zones

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Mid Fall 2014

WAR

THE  NO-NAME   WAR      (HOW  ABOUT  WWIII?)*

Woodsmoke in the air  just received T.O. glare from

petite mother with tiny tot   This rankles  +prickles

My kindly has gone missing  as I sit here hissing a tune

Even find myself glaring at hardworking squirrels   +lanky

blonde children   For pity’s sake why are they not in school?

Today Barak & Angela met with the U.N. security council

to outlaw jihadi-tourism  Many of us are wondering just how

they will accomplish this   What are your reasons for travel

today Mr. Terrorist?   Perhaps this is why petite mother scowls

She knows her kid will inherit a  headsonpikes  kind of world

Thought we’d finished with this by 1792

Found a new park today  where eco-friendly parents escort unholy

group of children    most barefoot on ground full of rocks  glass +

excrement   Kids now running for the ice cream truck   20’s blowing

in the breeze   I thought such parents were against the evils of white

sugar?  One boy wears an: I’m Not A Role Model  tee   I begin to wonder

if woodsmoke is from a scented candle

Without Haji Obama we would lose our heads said  Sheik Mohammed Bozan

It seems that illness is in the forecast    while back at the U.N. Barak &

Angela dance  real slow   Was a time when poems flowed about ochre

leaves  +scent of coming snow   Not a single mother wears lipstick here

in my new park  *(MAC City of Sin could do wonders)   While  off camera

there is a scraggly wolf   scaling the Gates of Heaven

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*(Name For War Against Islamic State Could Come By Wednesday)

Headline  Globe & Mail October 15, 2014

Mid  Fall  2014

NEUROTIC

TO  BE  OR  NOT  TO  BE   HAUNTED & NEUROTIC

Now 1/2 empty  in shimmering dilapidation   remembering

the days of kittenish anticipation   Almost spoiled the sweet

Thanksgiving spuds    Too much chaos in old psyche  to use

utensils with care   Sauce does not fair well   ginger allspice

nutmeg in heaps  tastes earthy  old  unsweet   (throw the

orange mo fos out   my inner poltergeist screams)

How To Re-Invent Yourself at 60  For Dummies   the book is

called   1/2 of me wants to crawl under a rock   1/4 wants to

eat cake   1/4 wants to soar once more   before rigor motionless +terrific

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In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are

emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you

are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know

what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. 

William Faulkner   As I Lay Dying  1930

Fall  2014

KOMMANDOS

SONDERKOMMANDOS

On October 7  1944  Crematorium IV

was blown up   The Kommandos  a special

squad of slaves at Auschwitz  were shot on

the spot    The women from the munitions

plant   the gunpowder smugglers  were tortured

& hung in the Auschwitz courtyard    Thousands

of lives were saved   & the war ended 22 days later

Today we fight peacekeepingmissions  using religious

scholars +air strikes   a.k.a. the new boots on the ground

On Tuesday  Turkish +U.S. officials warned that Kobani

would fall to the IS   yet each looked to the other to take action

As our own Justin Trudeau weighed in with: Let’s whip out our

CF-18s and show them how big they are?

It seems that transcendence has disappeared  & in it’s place

inferiority   These are crude +inelegant times   I have heard it

opined by Generals  that the West should remove itself from

ancient battles  The infidel only stirs up the beasts   Close Borders

Stop the Planes   In the end Ebola may even reign supreme

Somewhere there is a lone man building a raft straight out to sea

without compass or map  he relies on augury   The oracle is troubled

& struggles with this botch  this predicament of modern paralysis in

the face of depravity  She wants to shake us from our addle  & wonders

if good old annihilation might not do the trick   A  wipe the slate clean

prognostication   On the house  out of her love  for humanity

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*RIP: Ala Gertner  Regina Safirsztajn  Roza Robota  +Estusia Wajcblum

the gunpowder smugglers of Auschwitz

Fall  2014

FACE

A FACE THAT SCREAMS  TELL ME  YOUR LIFE STORY

Today my favourite purveyor of jeans told me   how the whole

jeanthing really began in L.A.    Then as I made my way to the

door   she told me so much more  all the while playing with her

topknot  hypnotically   Her mother had been sick 10 yrs. before  &

wasn’t like her mother   anymore:

My Dad was her enabler +sometimes she thought there was poison

in the food on our dinner table 

Then at a party on Saturday a new friend said: My father was beaten

viciously by his  & my mother died when I was 10    Almost everyday

he told me I was a worthless loser   Both the jean purveyor (21)  & new

friend (67)   had a rat’s nest of fear+unshed tears about their person

His father a fallen king  & rabid alcoholic beyond saving    Her mother a

pearl  had a relapse 2 yrs. ago   and now  she’s just back in denial

So why do you all persist in sharing your plight   your muss  your shambles?

Though I have spent many years with strangers in rooms   can you not see that

I am dressed for a different kind of success    & my skies are now always so blue?

You can take the therapist out of the room  but you cannot take the room  it’s botch

+it’s doom   out of me

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Fall 2014

WEST

* CLOSE  TO  ZERO  EBOLA  RISK     IN  THE  WEST

Sitting in a military cemetery   foot of Wellington St.  established

220 yrs. before we  roaming the streets with our smart cars   We with

our even smarter phones  Many of the tombstones stolen or vandalized

10 remain: 2 drownings mid-20’s   3 infants 4-9 mths. old  1 suicide  31

Lieutenant Zachariah Mudge  universally beloved  2 toddlers 18 mths. & 3

1 wife  36   I wipe my weeping eyes     1 drummer  25

We in Fall 2014   mess+ a half     Leaves still green   flowers only semi-putrified

belie what is coming    Howling winds up our backs  hackneyed Christmas cheer

(please do discover the dates of  OUR  holy days  it wouldn’t kill you)  

We familiarizing ourselves with  dead body management  in Monrovia   Where?

Monrovia   There everybody is collected + burned    When the body snatchers

collectors arrive   on rocky hillsides   families fight them off   But there is no where

to hide   Mrs. Jacob’s body was sprayed with disinfectant +burned like a dog’s

(bodies are most contagious in the 1st hrs. after death)

More recently garbed in yellow Hazmat suits  in 45 degrees   Red Cross workers flee

for the stigma+the suits   They must be changed 10-15 x per day    Today we see a

9 yr.old girl  butterflies on her tee  eyeing suspiciously  the 2 yellow clad  body

managers  hauling her away   We  hope you survive this day  Nowa Paye   from

a village near    Monrovia

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*Globe&Mail Tuesday October 2, 2014  pp. A9

Fall  2014