songanddancegirl

NUMBERED

OUR ENDLESS NUMBERED DAYS

creep into house after dusk  drop bikes on floor

of garage  cat with kittens  eyes glinting  it’s 50 yrs.

since  +you still remember this   grab a kitten in the

morning on the way to school  take a long scratch to

back of hand   worth it   something alive in your pocket

+in the coat closet

more alive than teacher droning on about the Voyageurs

canoes  traplines  James freakin Bay   stole your mother’s

red silk robe for the play on French Canada!  teacher impressed

you knew how a bishop dressed   not so your mother   glamorous

montrealer   hats+gloves+gowns

later at u of t studying shakespeare   a mid summer night’s dream

mother’s gown dressed the Faerie Queen   professor patricia moodie

stuck her hand inside  tickled your fancy  +read the label in near ecstasy

by GOD she cried   it’s a fucking Schiaparelli !

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Spring 2015

ANIMAL

I AM NOT  AN ANIMAL

Maybe there is a limit to how much of a good thing

is a good thing   There is a car in my neighbourhood

with every kind of plastic flower glued to it   I have

never seen the person who inhabits it   Surely she has

risen above this melancholy   +can hook me up with the

Oracle  just beyond the gate

__

Have you forgotten what we were like then   when we were

still first rate  and the day came fat with an apple in it’s mouth

(Frank O’ Hara  Animals  1950   dead at 40  crushed by a Jeep) 

Oracle of Delphi

Spring  2015

REAPING

THE REAPING  &  THE SOWING

time  love  death  religion  life   What if

these are real  +not just illusions?  What if

wild men who caught and sang the sun in

flight  did not go gentle?

Somerset said: dying is a dull+dreary affair  

my advice to you is have nothing whatever to

do with it    History will keep grasping for you

anyway

The poet Clive James (Sentenced to Life)

dying of leukemia+emphysema   He with bandaged

head where carcinoma radiated  said: I was faithless

sly  deceitful  I regret it all

Clarity seems to unite the death memoirists    Clive writes

in a recent poem: when did you ever see so much sweet beauty?

Why wait to smell Mr. Reaper’s acrid breath?  Take the cutting

shears to your life   leave only what is vital    Oliver Sacks  the

psychiatrist with multiple metastases in his liver says: I want to

travel!

So can the living learn to think like the dying?  Self-flagellation only

works while flagellating  Egos are almost immune to death  otherwise

who would get out of bed?  And episodic amnesia is exactly what it is

cracked up to be    Each day brings another shot at immortality

the day they will find the cure

ban the bomb   resurrect ronald reagan

who finally banned the neutron bomb he

considered the perfect death-ray!

What if your favourite places: the last bohemia sinking into the sea

a whaling island packed with Range Rovers until Labour Day  exerted

a magnetic pull  greater than your  grey city with dirty mounds of melting

ice +dog shit everywhere  The one that has an iron grip on your soulless glory

Cry UNCLE   or   gnaw off your left foot   + RUN

__

I am taking percoset to sleep, and I have

become an addict, and don’t care!! 

Drugs are wonderful. Looking forward to Spring!

(excerpt from 97 yr. old mother-in-law’s diary)

Spring  2015

WASTELAND

WASTELAND  O  SUBURBIA

down in the ravine  an empty giant’s cabin

he walked across the americas to winter in

miami beach   family ghosts sitting in the trees

family dreams ford the muddy stream   smells

like prehistory

duck+chicks scatter as you run wildchild+mad

to catch feathered friends   our 2 fathers + 1 mother

fertilize flowers+seeds in a grassy field nearby

it’s 2015   ravine with bulldozers   adult children

of eden-dwelling family  inch closer to eternity

once-girl in a wading pool   lightening in the sky

certain she can fly

so  is it a circle  or a straight line?

_

Spring  2015

DEATH

DEATH  THE CANNIEST CAREER MOVE

James Dean  Cobain  Joplin  Morrison  Basquiat

There is even a term Basquiatiana   His blackness

didn’t hurt  says the Globe & Mail   Nor did his 

wild-child urban noble savage mystique  a wild pet

for the recently cultivated white  said one art critic

And though he lived on the street for a while  he was in fact

an upper middle class private school child  whose father drove

a Mercedes  He has 2000 sq. ft. at the A.G.O. this Spring   Also

in the building are the photos of   Henryk Ross  Lodz Ghetto:

dead bodies on the ground  children in carts being carted to camps

& the man who saved the Torah!

Notice the yellow stars sewn onto chests & backs   the better to

identify you Jew  especially when running   Let us unite these 2

artist’s works  One a visible minority  the other invisible   Let us

place a yellow star on the forehead of Basquiat’s self-portrait

Black dreads  white slits for eyes   +the star of David

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Spring  2015

BITCHED

WE ARE ALL BITCHED FROM THE START*

They find each other through reincarnation   Boy Lama

knows old Lama’s favourite cereal  +the number of raised

moles on his grandfather’s cheek   On this day in 1959 our

Dalai Lama arrived in Dharamshala with 80,000 followers!

They’d all walked over the Himalayas   an exodus sans the

unleavened bread

Dalai looked geeky big rims black lace-up oxfords white socks

+broad child-smile   He was bitched from the start   Communists

want to kill him still   +his boy Lama replacement rots in prison

Were you bitched from the start? Drop me a line with details   & I

will immortalize you sometime soon (#bitchinglorystories)  No doubt

that I was bitched   All poets are  So is every butcher you will ever meet

My high school BFF’s dad Lou Goodfield was a butcher   +a ginger

This July it will be 3 yrs. since my notebook was stolen   cover gold

+filigree   Words dredged out of swamps +songbook from hell    One

angry poem about Neil Young’s vanity project Granddaddy   Shouted

obscenities all night from a box at the ACC  2003   Bitched most definitely

__

*Hemingway in a letter to Fitzgerald

Spring 2015