songanddancegirl

JERK

WHAT IF RILKE WAS A JERK?

Trying to open the vanillaalmond biscotti  have to

resort to my poison pen   I finally tear a hole through

voluminous cellophane with a bit too much force   Hit

my Venti de-caf   it hurtles hot-hipster-drink  all over

Pulitzer winner John Berryman  drips too onto   Christian Bök

The bastard used every vowel one at a time  in every word

in every poem +won $65,000 to boot    A blind man walks by

his white probe on a single wheel   He knows nothing of me

+my 3^rd degree burns

Yesterday they charged Jian Gomeshi with crimes so heinous

he could spend generations in The Big House   You’d think he

would have sprung for Eddie G   though doubt Connie Black

would agree   Xmas carols waft from the speaker above me

Rufus Wainright winges about a hot bath on a frosty night    Poet

tries with all her might  to disappear into a wormhole +write poems

using only consonants: why fly by my shy pygmy nymph?

But I fight to stay awake  I fight not to fight  I fight the losing battle to write

People on the other side of the street can feel the red-hot sparks of

mounting anger   They stop +stare   If one more morose mo-fo gives me

the Toronto glare  I swear that I will propel myself through the window

+declare: I write to stimulate the old dead beast  So buggeroff  mes cheries

__

Winter 2014

TOMORROW

TOMMOROW   TOMORROW    I   LOVE   YOU     TOMORROW

Today I read something like: When you look in the mirror

the Devil stands beside you   and shows you the worm

inside the rose     I was riffing on shaving my head as I

struggled with my coiffure   It certainly would be easier

An older look to be sure  my luncheon friend demurred

But the worm was whispering:

You are entering the Sublime Decline fair rose!

It’s true   Yesterday I dozed briefly   as I drove the local

highway   Dangerously flirting with the   long repose

It may very well be time to hang up my eyelash curlers

After all   it is my dream to swim with the Dolphins soon

And not kill them with Nutriesse 564   A red so vibrant it

screams Victorian whore   or Annie   And not in a good way

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April 21,  2012

JINGLE JANGLE

IN THE JINGLE JANGLE MORNIN   I’LL COME FOLLOWIN YOU

Hands up if you are:

a holy mess

an un-holy mess

not on duty

cancelled

inoperative

vanished

Without resorting to hyperbole   all of these are true for me

The indifference switch has been thrown    Metamorphosis

button broken

Every morning at 10:15 he has a Molson Canadian   at 10:26

a Marlboro    11:24  2nd beer+umpteenth butt   Mostly he stands

out there & tries to catch me naked    Jeans  biker jacket   Lanny

Mcdonald  ‘stache    My cool guy from rooming house on corner

does not realize that I am  Coma-Woman    A cardboard rendition

of a once emotionally turbulent operating system

So is this dormancy?

40 winks?

Or perma- torpidity?

It really doesn’t matter much to me   Under the spell of reverie

Of life flashing before me constantly   This gorgeous transfixion

in slo-mo

We all seem to complain that Bob Dylan is incomprehensible

in concert these days    Maybe we simply no longer hear  the

nasal nuances    No longer care  where the answer is blowin

So fixated are we on the questions   Where will we be  in 20 yrs.

has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning   Hands up if this is

the most depressing poem you’ve had the pleasure of reading

Arlene Kogod  Center for Aging  Mayo Clinic: For example, we don’t

want to have a situation where we say, cure cancer and then you

die of Alzheimer’s or stroke. It would be better to delay all of these 

together. 

Now there’s a scientist on her toes  reading the zeitgeist  massaging the

numbers   Smart as a tack        Bring it Arlene

__

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’

I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.  

Bob Dylan  Mr. Tambourine Man

Late Fall   2014

HER MOTHER

MAYBE  SHE  SITS  WITH  HER  MOTHER   RECOVERED+WHOLE

Joe cried at her funeral  & for the next 20 yrs. had

roses at her crypt twice a week    DiMaggio was

famously private   now his love letters won’t be

Sotheby will auction the: Lost Monroe Archives  next

month   Norma Jean’s mother died in an asylum  +she

bounced between foster-homes   Used +sexually abused

Muse to powerful men   No stranger to the casting couch

Marilyn referred to herself as: HER    With those huge doe

eyes  perpetually  in startle mode  Monroe was a pop culture

black hole   Martin Nolan the auctioneer said: It really gives

you the chills when you see the intimacy  +personal nature

of the stuff   As though she were  an IT    Well Martin the detritus

of a life always reeks of intimacy  but then you may be missing

a chip or 2

This reminiscent of the 12 yr. old  girl who asked me: Do you think

getting shot hurts?  With most people in a permanent state of OFF

the great de-humanization is occurring as we consume disaster tv

+must be reminded that: YES a human life is personal  & that being

shot likely hurts a lot   As one Canadian woman tweeted following the

Gomeshi affair: I’m along for the ride and not liking myself for it.

It’s a time waster and an energy suck.  It’s an obsession. 

Yet perhaps the floodgates have finally opened   In every corner of the

free press  there are references to rape+abuse   Today is World Toilet

Day   & the U.N. tries to raise awareness about the dangers to women

+children in outhouses &fields   where they are regularly assaulted

Might we predict a seismic shift for humanity?  Perhaps too soon to know

54 yrs. ago they carried Marilyn Monroe out of her home  with dirty sheets

+pillbottles  a personal scene of overdose?   Tomorrow fans will fly from all

corners of the globe  +spend more than 2million$   Marilyn’s collectibility

has skyrocketed in recent years     Among the artifacts of mid-century

debauchery   is a watercolour she painted for President Kennedy

__

Late Fall  2014

BOOTY

BOOTY  CALL  OUT

A young handsome hipster crossed Bathurst St.

beside me   He said:  I will protect you    Now I sit

at  Brioche Dorée  with signs that say: Continually

look for ways to be greener    If you’re afraid of butter

use cream   It even says: Brioche pronounced bree-osh

I do need that dude to protect me  from pop-up Normandy

+ it seems   a few Toronto Hydro guys close by

They are wonderfully polite about ogling me    One is impish

persistent   & Gandalf-esq    He might make the perfect man-pet

The media is giving terribly conflicting messages right now   One

feminist columnist spent 13 paragraphs extolling as empowerment

the virtues of Kim K’s: oiled naked ass  on the cover of PAPER  (who

knew such a big arse could be so flawless)  

In the same newspaper another proto-feminist from Harvard called

ogling a form of public shaming   I don’t know though  my new man-

pet is so compact I suppose that I could grab him by the throat  +apply

pressure until the police come   And this is where it all falls apart   as I of

course  would be the one arrested

Rebecca Dick/ Children’s Hospital Pittsburgh  is studying:  cyberdating 

abuse   & found 41% of 14-19 yr. olds reported such abuse in 2012  including:

harassment  stalking  +threats   more common among girls   with a clear link

to offline abuse+sexual assaults

Seriously   Kim’s bare ass  cannot be construed as evidence  of women’s

empowerment!   More likely  a narcissistic ploy to get more coverage

Clearly  it’s about the size of her bank account    So what chance does little

North West really have of ever escaping the infamy  of her mother’s well oiled booty?

__

*Headline NOW MAGAZINE: How did sexuality become

the single most crucial way for women in pop culture to demonstrate

their power? 

Late Fall 2014   

36

36 DAYS  UNTIL   CHRISTMAS

The seats are too close together  the music

is  World   on steroids   So repetitive is the groove

if you’re not *OCD  you will be:  na na nay ba ba 

ba  ina ina ina ska   Need I say more?   Writing at

Starbucks across from the asylum where a frigid wind

whips under the door  Longstoryshort the country is okay

but the long months of freezeyourassoff turn us animal+sour

Sorry we squandered the sunsets +spiders the size of hanging

meat   Pointed car  back to city  where gritty reality obliterated the

last of Huron retreat    Now nicely tenderized  we cower at Old Man

Winter’s feet   A patient from the asylum sidles up to me +bellows:  Bro!  

na na ney ba ba ba   He is the man who said : I’m gonna slit your throat  

to my old mother  one sultry summer’s day

Full circle have we come   Now awaiting the scented dusks of  May

Sweet May     Na Na Ney    Hey  turn that goddamned music OFF 

before I go grinch-psycho  +vomit on your Advent Calendar   a steal

@ 39.94  

__

*Obsessive Compulsive Disorder 

Late Fall  2014

for J.M.A. who in 1969 passed a whole maraschino cherry thru

his nose while laughing(+vomiting) at our father’s back spasm throes

BULLISH

NOT  BULLISH  ABOUT   WINTER

Yesterday you felt like you couldn’t face it

The long white tunnel that will spit you out

in April    Today a cacophony of flakes coming

down   +one drifting back up   An orgy of beauty

You get a 2nd wind

Promise us a wonderland   & deliver ice packed

narrow roads   Where burly men in plaid leave you

stranded in the snow   No chivalry it seems  at minus 33

In Calgary they have a Polar Vortex  & my old bully who

moved out there after a division of property  is freezing

his bulldog-balls off    Hey Old Man Winter   can you throw

a girl a bone?

__

Late Fall  2014

GRATEFUL

THE GRATEFUL (?)   UN-DEAD

Today I sit at the edge of our city  in a

military cemetery  a stone’s throw from

Lake Ontario    A Grade 1 class has come

to lay a wreath at the feet of a statue  marking

a soldier’s grave    A teacher shrieks: Everyone

has to look at the statue NOW!  There must be

a gentler way to take their innocence  no?

Today is the day we honour the fallen soldiers of

THE GREAT WAR  where in places called Somme

Verdun  Dieppe   Canadian ghosts are out in droves

It’s Remembrance Day   & the old cemetery is covered

with grass     The smell of rotting leaves wafts up  as

designer dogs dig holes

With a poppy   blood red +woundlike   fastened to

my chest  I mingle with the ghosts   & wonder how the

5 yr. old son of Cpl. Cirillo is faring   His father cut down

just weeks ago by a young homegrown jihadi

It seems there are old wars  +new wars    Wars from bunkers

+wars from caves   The children’s wreath is blowing along King St.

now   & a canine ghost sits at attention beside the soldier’s grave

__

..in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds, when you’ve been lost

a long time, when you have no other place.  

Anne Michaels  1991

Late Fall 2014    RIP  9 million soldiers + 7 million civilians   

CESSATION

GUARDIANS  OF  THE  CESSATION

Right now in Toronto there are a few theatre

groups doing death+dying   An auspicious time

is early November  when the scrim is thin around

the edges   & the dead walk among us

The un-dead are busy as usual  inventing ways not

to waste time   So precious  so rapidly diminishing

(just toss your watch! burn your Calendar!)

Take the cubicle rats of Silicon Valley   tech-savvy

millennials tired of chewing their food

They are touting Soylent: a healthy alternative to

normal food   It allows users to transcend a basic

biological need  Soylent’s slogan: FREE YOUR BODY

which used to be known in simpler times as: being dead

It seems that everywhere they are trying to put us to sleep

Note the recent discovery that memory is exquisitely sensitive

to anesthetic drugs   How many times have you had surgery?

Based on the newest mouse study  memory deficits persist long

after surgery   Face it  general anesthesia is NOT the same as sleep

It is instead the Big Pharma Coma   They will put you under  but

in most places  they will not let you die  with dignity

Beware of Resuscitation   Dying in Canada is currently a techno-

laden odyssey   Few are brave enough to broach the subject of

dying   with the dying   Euphemisms abound: Get Your House In Order!

At a recent death-bed scene I overheard these words: Let the doctor tell

her   that’s why he gets paid the BIG BUCKS      

3 things the dead won’t miss about the living:  their cowardice  their avarice

their mendacity    1 thing they will:  their immortality

__

It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon.

Willam Faulkner  As I Lay Dying  1930

Late Fall  2014

SLEEP

IT’S BECAUSE OF LIFE THAT I CANNOT SLEEP

There are 14 leaves left on my tree  +a mad white

squirrel gesticulating at me (did he just flip me the

bird?)   Rogers no-showed after 3 hrs. on the phone

with: John  Infar  +Brett   This left me shouting

obscenities at Lexi  in Kuala Lumpur  who was sorry

I felt this way  But no more appointments today   I see

it was your husband’s birthday this week   Awesome!

But there are more important things afoot this November 5th

2014   Poor Barak will be a lameduck until 2016   & in Ottawa

a 15 yr. old girl was sentenced to 6 1/2  yrs.   for running a well

oiled human trafficking machine

On this day in 1954 Godzilla was born  Back then he was known

as Gojira  1/2 gorilla  1/2 whale    A hybrid beast born of our

destructive capacities  meant to be  Nature’s revenge for  The Bomb

Later spotted atop the Empire State building messing with Hedy Lamarr

It’s always been true that few things make one’s heart race like a good

revenge fantasy: Gorija comes upon the Rogers truck    He lifts it over 

his head +begins to eat it for lunch   Then he makes his way to L.A.

where he has recently earned a star  on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame

O Gorija  take me with you!  In about 2 days time  there will stand my barren

tree   + the albino squirrel will shit all over me  Divine retribution for invincible

optimism  & a precious wildness that simmers in the jaded botch  that is me

__

There’s no shortage of tormented things. Far from mirrors I feed

dreams of fame+travel, extraordinary men offering me necklaces,

words that can be eaten they’re so sweet, so warm, so corporeal.

Adelia Prado  1981

Late Fall  2014