songanddancegirl

BATHYPELAGIC

BATHYPELAGIC  BLACK

In the deeps of the sea  it’s dark+cold at

3,333 feet   the blackest black you will ever

see    A good place to jettison your identity

Egos thrive in the light of day   while the

capital S   Self   loves the underbelly

Where murky meanderings  +little white lies

are laid bare  Away from the glare of the klieglights

you can ponder awarenesses long repressed  You can

even confess to coveting your neighbour’s wife   his 5

speed weed-wacker   +his sex toys galore

Today in my park all around me  there are bohemians

on highwires  lashed to trees   Navigating the balancing

act that is: en-soulment   #mailmeasoul     in these days of

our en-darkenment   Or is the darkest hour   just before dawn?

There is also a man  5 feet 2  who paces the periphery  where

girls are sprawled legs akimbo   Someone has led him to believe

that he can exorcise the worst kinds of demons by cruising

strange women    I give him an: I’ll break your neck like a twig

kind of glare 

He is a perfect example of the pussification of America!   my dear

friend screams      #mailmeasoulwillyouplease

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Spring 2015

SAFE

SAFE IN THE DARK   IT USED TO REST

in texas last week at twin peaks restaurant   biker

gangs had a shooting spree  nine dead   170 injured

bodies scattered everywhere

noon  busy waco interstate  truck stop draws a huge

lunchtime crowd   it’s not known what triggered the

violence   Sgt. W. Patrick Swinton   waco police

maybe there was no trigger Pat   maybe the wild wild west

still exists in the hinterland   why in washington a family

was held captive by a gun toting stranger   tortured for 8 hrs.

then he ordered a pizza   DNA gave him away   mayhem slouches

in gullies  near interstates  +arrives in the capitol on a clear spring

day   even the pundits don’t know what to say

so they pull at their moustaches   and avert their gaze   in a friendly

gesture Barack tweeted from the oval office!   he received countless

answers  many with death threats  one depicted him hanging from a tree

can we still consider america home of the free?

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What’s called a normal life?  

(Rosemary Waldrop  Love+Other pronouns)

Spring 2015

RAINBOWS

IN RAINBOWS

tiny grey-haired lady on the sidewalk

many officers + firemen in shorts pace

ragtag bag splayed  there is an oxygen

mask placed haphazardly on her face

she is well into her 80’s

as a child she believed in  rainbows +

paul bunyan   so how did she end up here?

shouting: hard hat  hard boots  what else you

got that’s hard?  once married   in leafy suburb

husband left her with 3 kids  for best friend +had

4 more

worked at a bakery   married a card shark named

Harry  a niceguy  who wore white undershirts   +

brylcreem   it’s about to pour  1st responders packing

up   Spring exploding everywhere   lilac laden trees in

hipster-ridden park give off a bovine scent  mixed now

with earth  +regret  +loathing

Her children stopped looking in 2002   will you take her

home with you?

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Spring 2015

SHIT

SHIT   MY EPHEMERA IS EPHEMERAL

words are disappearing   clearing cards of

endearments proving i was useful  proving

i was worth my weight in suffering   last night

in a dream i told a curious by-stander i was

kicked  +worse   what could be worse?

urinated on  spat at  hair pulled  +clumps came

out!  once called an old bag from quite a distance

it was worth it i insisted   she eyed me skeptically

+lumbered off

i am tempted to fill in the blanks: you rare saviour

you glorious rose  without you i would never have

become the Prime Minister   instead i am left with:

light   forever your destiny  dreamcatcher  you were

woman

it seems that time is taking poetic licence  with my

ephemera  +turning out to be   a much better poet

than me

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Spring 2015

KOOL

KOOL KID  & THE NATUE/NURTURE KUNUNDRUM

in the park today there is a baby so cool  hip mothers swoon

he is likely 8 mths. old wearing a pork-pie +leggings boldly

emblazoned with neon peace signs   nice hat!   i say to old

nanny with baby spread on lap   it’s the mother  every day she

makes an outfit   

what will the impact be on cool baby?  will it be helplessly

addicted to chic?  never leave the house sans cravat?  develop

a lifelong hunger for dapper giants?  the whole of a story is never

told

i know a boy whose mother sleeps a lot  beats the dad a lot  Oh

+ there are bugs in the cupboards  so far he isn’t attracted to anyone

refuses to speak +barks like the dog back home   please teach me

how to do that     the whole of a story is never told

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Spring 2015

STRAFE

GOOT  STRAFE  ENGLAND

100 yrs. ago a Weapon of Mass Destruction

was used for the 1st time   April 22  1915   On a

day when Spring gets into the blood   Ian Sinclair

Canadian Highlander  Ypres    Then a  HISS   +

yellow-green chlorine gas  poured over the trenches

5,730 canisters

Soldiers were running hither+tither like madmen

crying loudly for water, spitting blood, some rolling

on the ground struggling to breathe   The thing was

that WMDs  were already illegal in 1915

So who was Fritz Haber at the end of the day?   The

chemist responsible for these fledgling gas attacks

said: It’s a way of saving countless lives, the war will

end sooner   Fritz’s wife  also a chemist  did not agree

She shot herself with his pistol

Later the British  +the Americans sided with Fritz   both in

the Battle of Loos   +twice in Japan where 106,000 were killed

atomically   Japan too was not immune  carrying out biological

warfare in WWII   Wells were poisoned with cholera+typhoid  +

bombs were dropped with plague infested fleas

It’s hard to point a finger   Fritz was just a chemist   the others

Presidents   Dictators  +Prime Ministers   Think Brigadier General

Jack D. Ripper  a fictional madman with his finger on the trigger

And while you’re at it  think  Kim Jong-un

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Spring  2015

REAPER

BROTHER’S REAPER

look at dzhokhar  21   pale-caught-in

headlights-stare  doleful +dangerous   a

convicted terrorist    sentenced in boston

to death     limbs finally at rest    8 yr. old

martin richard will stop knocking on his

parent’s door   martin bled to death on the

street    his parent’s asked for clemency

sydney corcoran  badly burned  +her mother

who lost 2 legs tweeted: YES   after friday’s verdict

now the brothers tsarnaev will terrorize parts unknown

soon to be re-united in a place so hot  human skin is

vaporized in an instant   +the streets of your town will

be  safer

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Spring  2015  (boston marathon bombing: 3 dead  264 maimed)

AIR

THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE AIR

see bridget bardot in the video: there’s something

in the air   see how there is a shining light about her

eyes  her time in the sun  you can taste the fecundity

bridget’s immortality   now bag-ladyish animal activist

my time in the sun?  yours?   maybe it hasn’t begun!

the last person who said i am not hopeful  knows not

of the enantiodromia  years in the making   what was

underneath is on top   what was on top is underneath

turning the earth with a spade & a parade of horses+blue

dinosaurs+dodo eggs pop out of your father’s grave    my

cousin worries about the water-table  +what it will do to her

mother’s bones   i was painstakingly positive   i said: that’s

where we’re supposed to go  become earth again   go home

her mother-in-law had spoken of decomposition  because she

was a cruel woman  sometimes the earth is hard and caked over

in such cases there can be no turning of the soil   rendering the

bitter   mortal   not hobo

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Spring  2015 and every stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band

BANALITY

THE BANALITY OF RICARDO KLEMENT

droopy eye  evilsmirk  a not  not handsome face

fugitive SS officer led the race to snuff out europe’s

jews   no mere cog  sent to gallows in 62   eichmann

apologist for everyman who looks the other way

a hot  +steamy day mid-century jewish ghetto   survivors

now in bungalows  neat rows on a ravine   daddy won’t

join the shul   god wasn’t listening    +in the night you

heard their screams  waking out of recurring dreams

a friend told me her mother  a russian jew  32   slept with

one eye open  +the hammer   their house smells like herring

+tears+gas

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..and were there not forewarnings   those 5 yrs. churn in my 

soul   i have grown thin   i’m hungry     Marc Chagall  My Life

The gas is visible to the condemned, who is advised to take several deep

breaths to speed unconsciousness. Nonetheless, there are often convulsions

and excessive drooling. Following the execution the chamber is purged with

air, and any remnant gas is neutralized.  The bodies can be removed with great

caution, as pockets of gas can be trapped in the deceased’s clothing.

Spring 2015

EPHEMERALITY

EPHEMERALITY BLUES

do the birds get  squawkier every Spring?

This year a choir   begins at 5 a.m.  led by a

robin taskmaster   it is 9 p.m.  +he is  still

shouting   as a new batch of moths attack me

+my woollens   i don’t even bother to brush them

away   they flitter in front of my face reminding me

that i am alive

that my wardrobe is alive with larvae  +that at

almost 60 there is a wild beauty  exhuberant+

perfect about the slow leaking    & receding  of

my story   a very wise woman said to me today:

you can buy a cream for $10,000 +it won’t do a

damn thing for the skin on your legs    i nodded &

mumbled something about  the body no longer making

moisture

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keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be

we forget all too soon the things we thought we could

never forget      Joan Didion

Spring 2015