songanddancegirl

BEAST

THE  BEAUTIFUL  BEAST    LIFE

beautiful + cruel according to cg jung who knew

a thing or 2 about the vicissitudes   he invented the

collective unconscious at the burgholzli asylum where

dementia praecox  ruled    down they fled into the

labyrinth  without ariadne’s spool   the minotaur is

not your friend  modern hominid

janice stein professor emeritus +crone said: the middle

east is on fire  so is the globe   she lamented a time when

earth was warm under our feet  we swam in rivers cold+deep

+there was new everything  

the light is silvery-strange  an un-named woman rides alone on

a horse   something is different about this day   horse now flying

upside down   lands on woman’s legs     silence in the meadows

how many minutes does it take?  millennia to crawl out of lava-pools

+riverbeds   in seconds  she will never live by the sea

in nimrud the islamic state loots ancient treasures   a 3,000 yr. old

site on the banks of the tigris   john kerry says: no terrorist can re-write

history   but as all good fascists know: demoralize the demoralized  +the

world is your oyster   colonies of ants with complex hierarchies re-build

the hill  in it’s exact configuration  while bamiyan buddhas +the winged

bulls of mosul will become embedded in the visions of  25th century

psychotics    everywhere

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my sympathy with all creatures was strictly limited to warm blooded animals

the only exceptions among the cold blooded vertebrates were frogs and toads

because of their resemblance to human beings   CG Jung 

Spring  2015

OF A THING

OF A THING WHICH COULD NOT BE PUT BACK

She approaches the door in leathers  cottons+denim  Brittle

rain slanting down on bone-chilling March day   Does not

head out  into fray   Closes the door sits on chair  upholstered

with grapes on vines  Foot beats time to American Roots music

Fiddle sorrowful  banjo plucky    She does NOT move

Early spring inertia brought on by news:  500 women+children

kidnapped  yet again   Boko Haram taking over the world  one

village at a time   Souleymane Ali  local trader quoted B.H. :

They are slaves so we’re taking them because they belong to us

His wife & daughter not excluded

There is no protection  by the army of  Goodluck Jonathan   On the

road to Damask 100 bodies lay  many with throats slit by retreating

madmen  And from their desert prisons Ceres is a beacon  46,000 k. away

Ancient asteroid shines a light on plight of 500 newest slaves

Obama said he’d find  the girls  but can we blame him for all our ills?

While big dim +obscure Ceres (a.k.a.: apt description of G.L. Jonathan)

is about to be explored by NASA’s Dawn Mission     Would it require

rocket-science to locate 500 people?   Infrared cameras operate in the

dark at wavelengths as long as 14,000 nanometers!

Yet we are driven to explore rocky+primitive way stations to God?  Planets

that have not changed much over the past 4 billion years    Ceres is 2.8

times farther from the sun than earth  & is likely stone cold   Of course you

know  warm hearts beat all over the Nigerian hinterland

What more is there?  The last traces of dinner gone   glasses washed   &

gleaming  on this soon  barely remembered day   When hundreds of small

feet marched  on their way  to guerrilla camps  +new husbands

__

Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the 

deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they

hummed of mystery.   Cormac McCarthy  The Road

Spring  2015

SHE

SHE  LOOKS  SO  HAPPY  &  SEEMS  SO  SAD

Self-promotion is the new spirituality   Many whisper

about passion-projects in dark alleyways  where the neo

bohemians pee on graffiti masterpieces  Everyone has a

site or 2   numerous links  & at least 3 business cards   The

whole thing reeks of Lena Dunham  +her grating gyrating

GIRLS

Today I met 2 prophets:  #1 was working on assemblages

with her father  an upholsterer   They will revolutionize

lounging   #2 was a reasonable facsimile of a 13 yr. old girl

+likely 33    She prophesied the return of confession as a

way of life

Bring me your  self-promo-weary   +we will build a

bonfire of multiple business cards  bullshit  &hormones

Especially dopamine   The one that makes you see everyone

as far more interesting +attractive than they really  are

Including: Lena  Obama    +me

__

She’s a little lost girl in her own little world

She looks so happy but she seems so sad

ah ah oh yea oh oh oh yea    

Joey Ramone   The Ramones  1974-1996

(Past members: Dee Dee Ramone Johnny Ramone

Tommy Ramone Marky Ramone Richie Ramone 

Elvis Ramone C.J. Ramone)

Spring  2015

HEART

I AM  BARNEY’S HEART

Barney Clark a Seattle dentist became the

1st recipient of an artificial heart (The Jarvik 7)

It was March 23, 1983   Only catch was that Barney

was attached to an air compressor for his last  112

days

His dreams were filled with childhood memories

though strangely the love of his life  Lola Loman

morphed into an hourglass shaped robot  who

mopped Barney’s brow  and stroked his chest as he

slid in & out of consciousness

In the end Lola carried Barney  Jarvik’s body  over

hill & dale to a grassy knoll in Yellowknife  Where to

this day they watch the Aurora play in the night sky

over Blachford Lake   Many say that Barney’s sacrifice

was too great

__

I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and

life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing

animation upon lifeless matter.  

Mary Shelley  Frankenstein  1818 

John Lehmann  Aurora Yellowknife  April 2014

SPRING  2015  for Lee Atkins author of: I AM JOE’S HEART 1967

SKUNK

DEAD SKUNK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

Walking home through skunk verdant streets   My

brother asked me to write: You know  More upbeat 

I quoted Dylan (Bob not Thomas)  another dark+

depressed Russian Jew    Who knew that being a poet

would require so much peeling back of the skin  a ritual

daily circumcision

As much as I try   daffodils+sunshine  elude me   And if

you really want someone to blo-sunshine  I know a good

colonic clinic around the corner    But maybe it’s just a

question of place  BIG SUR seemed so much closer to the

heavens   Easier to believe you might catch lightening in

a bottle  up there

Down here when we see a Dolphin   Messenger of the Gods

by God!  What stands out are the scars  etched like stars  all

over the laughing mammalian body   Down here the shredder

takes its toll  all the shilling of one’s soul: Your book is a thing

of beauty  But hard to tell if it’s a journal or a calendar  without

any writing on the cover  

Why not OPEN IT  Giftshop lady?   Poems will float out + fill

this dingy city   Why daffodils will sprout from every orifice!   You

know  even though female Orcas stop breeding at 40   they live into

their 90’s  & are much more likely to be the LEADERS of the pod

Just another mammalian cousin mystery   while you struggle under

the weight of your 2 legged legacy   of apeman misery

In pre-historic times Dolphins were terrestrial   and before you

were born  your foetus swam+breathed  a creature of the sea   Let’s

build a world where anxiety has no currency  One where it harmlessly

hovers  +we grab hold of fantastic  and run for the hills

Hello out there    Hello

__

BIG SUR

The season of dancing was endless  +many who wished they could

would never be able to stop    Delirium Waltz   Mark Strand  1998

I am going where I have already been.    Shooter  Cincinnati Kid 

4 days til Spring 2015        for my 3 brothers

fiancée

Little Fiancée Of The Atlantic

car crash coma at 17   at 20 first trans-atlantic

solo   sailor florence arthaud  dead at 57    remote

gorge argentina   helicopters touched briefly  then

fell to the ground    filming the reality show

DROPPED

a hero in france   her eyes fierce beacons

inscrutable glare   stares out of front page

news   hair leonine   mouth screams don’t

fuck with me   skin leathery    wizened brow

the whole of a story is never told   when she was

a girl her passion was to catch a bird   countless

hours spent crouching in tall grass   her father said:

if you can shake salt on his tail   he is yours

birds filled the sky on the day she died   birds guided

her over the frigid+black atlantic    they carried her

out of the gorge yesterday at dawn   arthaud slid gently

+elegantly into ceres gravitational embrace    a dwarf

planet with a dusty outer crust+a rocky inner core

__

Winter 2015    20 days to Spring

CURIOUS

WHY SHOULD HE PICK SO CURIOUS A PLACE

We left him on a frozen hill beside a stand of Pines

Slick white snow  churned earth   dry+brown  looked

trucked-in   How deep can you dig in 23 below?  First

thud of earth on wood  a shockwave through the crowd

Dead-silence   Thud  Clomp  Thud  Clomp    Clomp

until 6 ft. under ground

Hearts freshly rent  trudge back to civilization  for coffee+

knishes   A glance back to snowy knoll  & behold a fiddler

madly fiddles   New ghost takes tentative first steps  barefoot

in the snow   Sun glints off of trees   his laugh echoes   as old

ghosts form a receiving line    Turn back one last time  now

hoisted up above their heads  new-ghost  horahwild

An empty chair floats close by  waiting for his earth-bound bride

Last night she dreamt of a blind man running his fingers over nose

+lips      Clomp  Thud        Clomp

__

Winter  2015       for S.R. & L.R

HARD

A  HARD  SPRING  IS GONNA FALL

flawed ice sculptures on the lawn  there a

giant snake  slick+sheen-clean  +white   ice

pellets overnight   friend’s husband in a chair

gave him 3 yrs.  he lasted 4    funeral sunday

first above zero in 98 days   my serpent will be

melty   slushbrown   crown of thorns

resurrection a month away   time of pagan eggs

chocolate rabbits  +last suppers    REBOUND

said my amazonian shaman in the California hills

28 yrs. and still  reverberates  especially on days when

shit’s creek overflows

__

(amazon warriors removed a breast to enhance archery

skills   survival of the fittest is not for sissies)

Winter  2015

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.   Bob Dylan

BOX

THE DROP  BOX

Some baby-hatches in China have been so

overwhelmed in recent years that they have

been closed

Little baby boxes by the thousands piled high

UN committee on the Rights of The Child will

ban the box soon  in cities near you

Out in March fields  crocus+babies grow  Snow

covering toes  sun warming noses +wings   Nearly

two thirds of all babies left outside die  before being

found by birds+dogs

__

Winter  2015

W.W.W.

WORLD  WIDE  WEBS  WE  WEAVE

A new term has been coined ISFG (Islamic State Fangirl)

radicalized in their bedrooms  on twitter  tumblr  +murdr

Post millennial groupies to beheaders   How can they have

missed the well staged executions   orange jumpsuited  bloody

desert mirages stuck on replay   OMG gutwrenchingly awesome!

tweeted one recruit

Messianic fervour +magnetism  can whip up female hormones

alarmingly (Yasmin Alibhai Brown  The Independent)    A sad

commentary on humanity   Today Bebe  the uninvited guest of

Barak said: The enemy of your enemy is your enemy (btw Bebe

John Boehner is your frenemy)  Among the enemies of the Free World

are violent warrior heartthrobs seducing our daughters

They see it as emigrating to a better life  They say they feel free

(The Guardian)  More beheadings please!  tweeted another recruit

But can this really be?  Mass rape  oppression  +the new crucifixtion

as aphrodisiac?  Everything they need to know is on the Internet  even

what to pack  in the new  jihadibridefieldguide.com

__

Tonight’s the night, come on surrender
I won’t lead your love astray, astray, yeah
Your love’s a weapon
Give your body some direction
That’s my aim

Justin Timberlake  Take Back The Night 

Winter  2015  (tweets reported in the Globe+Mail 3/3/2015)