songanddancegirl

EDEN

TEN THOUSAND KILOMETRES WEST OF EDEN

They’re sending ZamZam to Edmonton  That’s where

she will be re-settled   It’s -23 +grey for 6 months  then

mosquitos the size of buicks descend  then it’s winter

all over again

ZamZam hails from a town near the azure waters of the

Mediterranean  4 1/2 yrs. in a makeshift tent  after fleeing

Idlib Syria  Both her babies born refugees  now 2+3   Think:

dark   as an adjective   dream   as a verb

Goodbye to dark city of her bombed out birth  Middle class

family  left father 70 to his fate  Neighbours dead of starvation

Dream BIG    ZamZam a woman known: to take great care of

her looks  (who wrote this article? a man or woman? Globe+Mail

December 10  2015)  Husband’s toilette not disclosed

There is a list: lipstick  eye kohl  nail polish  hair oil  loofah   details

intimate +claustrophobic   Leave them kids alone   Barely out of their

teens  Husband Iwan: I’ve heard the Koran might not be allowed in

Canada

Clearly they watched the Niqab controversy on tv   They are

allowed to bring one suitcase each   But the elixir made from their

suffering  is weightless   To date the holy grail cannot be detected by

airport security    Welcome to the frozen hinterland  of the free

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Winter Solstice 2015

CALIFORNY

THE NAKED FEET OF THE DEAD PHOSPHORESCENT IN CALIFORNY

Barack was on tv  late last night  He confirmed

what we all imagined: urban sprawl terrorism

is embedded in the heartland  +won’t be ferreted

out by boots on the ground   Obama explained  we

must stop selling weapons to folks on the no fly list  

It’s insane

And at the edge of the abyss this business of hope festers

Tashfeen Malik’s heart  dried+blackened now   Ms. Malik

radicalized mother  + partner in slaughter  San Bernardino

California   Her 6 month old daughter will live her mother’s

gold rush dreams   After foster-care   in eternity

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Californy  a land rich in minerals   in gold and silver    I would say

beyond the wildest speculation  (Cormac McCarthy  Blood Meridian)

Winter  2015

BRIGITTE

BRIGITTE BARDOTAGE

An aging Brigitte doppelgånger followed me after

the show:  Rickie Lee Jones   The Other Side of Desire

Brigitte fell into paroxysms of grief for her lost youth

Right there on the street in front of the Lightbox theatre

she shrieked: They throw you away like a used kleenex 

I’d offered her some  but she demurred    Tears +mucous

mixed with mascara  + MAC’s  Exaltation  flowed     The

alchemical dictionary defines exaltation as:  an operation

by which matter is altered    elevated to a  higher dignity

of substance+virtue

How’s this for you: at some point beauty reaches redundancy

then becomes something else   Now the lodestone of dumb daily

obstruction  Under that ruby-red lipstick a hint of the soul clings

Brigitte:  focus on the smooth little pebbles  striped+stippled  the

ones you carried back from a riverbed   Now bend your knee like a

pagan primitive  +ask for:  mild happiness   mild ecstasy   +sacred

ordinary    And you will be free    The wheel will stop + let you off

on Ossington St.   at this little hut where they make  Mac+Cheese  

The hipster chef  a Fisher King

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Longest Night  Yule  2015

SHINING

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

It’s December 9th   17 days ’til xmas   It’s 10 Celsius

Squirrel with white belly approaches me  confused +

hungry   Where are all the buds+cherries  +apples?

Where are the stoned hipsters on plaid blankets feeding

him delicacies?

Sun twinkles watery-gold  close 2nd to washed out suns at

Turner show  A.G.O.   If the global temperature rises by 1.5 C

swaths of Canada will be under water   And if the global temp

rises by 4.0 C  at least 144.7 million people in China will be

submerged

A man with a bushy grey pony  (or is it a donkey?)  inches closer

to me   He says: what with urban encroachment  farmland is

rapidly disappearing eh   And in several weeks 25,000 Syrian

refugees will be scattered across the land   Many are hesitant to

come   A desert people clinging to old parents in airport lounges

preparing for ice+snow

*see The Weather Network for tips on how to: Bundle Up for -26 C

(-56 with windchill)

My own immigrant ancestors came from from freezing steppes   ate

only root vegetables for 8 months of the year: Dad why did they have

to stop here?  Couldn’t they have gone all the way to B.C.  where the

islands are warm+lush  filled with fabulous Canadian flora+fauna?

Though in the end maybe it’s a good thing they stayed away from either

coast  as when temperatures rise we will lose Vancouver+Halifax    Moncton

may remain   Now the Albino squirrel  grown quite skeletal since Halloween

falls from a naked Oak  upon my naked knee  Won’t someone kiss my Dopamine?

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Winter 2015

H1N1

NO I DO NOT WANT YOUR H1N1 FLOTSAM  IN MY DRINK

At the Lightbox  waiting to see Peggy Guggenheim

documentary  barmaid with a cold wipes her nose

repetitively   Otherwise she is chic+bell-bottomed

Her hands getting sticky as I try to escape with some

dignity    Alas  no cocktail for me   (Ophelia-tinis/$21)

A man with green corduroys  +a woman with a limp

comment on my fresh style   They swoon for my fire-red

hair   I stare glassy-eyed  no tequila to ease my misanthropia

And  with my favourite literary critic Harold Bloom  I agree:

Ophelia went to a better place than had she married

Hamlet the Dane

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A creeping unclean thing he seems  His nasty poking +sniffling

at his mother  His traps for the King  His conceited perversion for 

Ophelia  make him always intolerable  (D.H. Lawrence too agrees)

Winter 2015    for Paolo Santalucia Hamlet 

EUPHORIA

IT’S LIKE THIS FRENZY EUPHORIA

What is it like when they call your name?

she asked Eddie Redmayne   He had just

won an Oscar for portraying theoretical

physicist  Stephen Hawking

Last night on CNN  Anderson  of the Vanderbilt

fortune +pale pink skin told us: for teens the 

boundaries between the real+cyber worlds

no longer exist    By 12 or 13  they live in a

participation mystique with their selfie-persona

We might pose the question: Do they even exist?

As any physicist worth his weight will tell you: the

human mind=reality    There are no trees in the forest

And the God called Zuckerberg takes no prisoners

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Evidence is growing that social media can influence

prosuicide behaviour. Cyberbullying, when directly or

indirectly linked to suicide, has been referred to as

cyberbullicide.   (American Journal Public Health 2012)

Winter 2015