songanddancegirl

APES

IN THE PALEST STARLIGHT OR IN DARKNESS ABSOLUTE

BOKO HARAM   A TRIBE OF BANDED APES

Did you know that the orb-like eyes of a falcon can see

small objects one mile away  +are 30 times more colour

sensitive than ours are?   Maybe the king of birds might

be brought to Nigeria  help find the now 2,000 abductees

some as young as 7 being hitched to suicide vests

Here in the West many believe that efforts have been made

Few know this is pure fantasy  Think logistically   Take the

400 children in their elementary school  shocked+sobbing

as boys are separated from girls   The school now stands empty

How do you transport  +feed an army of abductees  14+under?

Unless you do not   Likely there are bones in the forests  +many

madmen with 10 small wives a piece    Before the young bombers

are sent into market places +cities  the equipment is tested on

live candidates    Only really depressed poets are literalists of the

imagination

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Spring  2016

WALL

TEAR DOWN THAT WALL  OR BUILD A BETTER ONE AND BILL MEXICO

What would Gorby say?  Would he recognize the world today?

These days Daesh makes the Cold War seem child’s play    Oh

that’s a soft target  said the pundit   31 dead   200+ injured  pre-

security check-in Brussels    Airport loungers lying in blood +shoes

Bombs in suitcases on trolleys   injuries below the knees    You know

what that means   Boston Marathon re-play of instant severings    All

human flesh: soft-target  at malls  theatres  +hotels  near you    There

is a fierce urgency of now  Dr. King said from a balcony   1960’s USA

before the day bullet splayed +bloody   at 39

Remember Coretta’s face?  Jackie’s pink suit  clawing her way onto the

trunk?   The naked child running along a path from raped village  Viet Nam

We play characters who exist on multiple levels of dissemblance  concealing

hatred  +fear   putting one’s best foot forward

There is a Happiness Movement  afoot    Zombies like you+me are encouraged

to: walk in a way that is associated with happiness   This will elevate the mood

 of those of us who still have 2 legs to stand on   In Brussels today surgical theatres

are being readied for appendage removals  +re-assemblies    Once again fewer of

us are in a position to adopt the  Superman Pose   highly recommended by

Happiness gurus everywhere

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Adopting this pose for 5 minutes will increase

happiness +confidence 10fold

with a selfie  50fold

Spring  2016

DUNG

OF DUNG BEETLES AND RICH MEN

I live the poet’s life!  he said   One of my brothers

told him he looked like Zappa  the other he was

full of shit   Charlatans like this captured my fancy

by the dozens back in the days of yore

Now I know the dung-heap rejectee for all that he is

+all that he wantstobe   See him there  leering   with not

a little lust for my last clutch of middle-years youth   Red

dress sashaying  scintillating repartee   Weight of yearning

about my hooded eyes

1950’s father would have surely taken him outside   where

he’d have sent the bullshit+machiavellian grin  to the moon

Alice  to the moon   When men were men  and real men ate

poets for breakfast

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Spring  2016

DISORDER

HOLY DISORDER BATMAN!

is life linear  or a circle?  or a collection of single-day

sagas   disconnected lines  to nowhereville?   fading

pictures on the fridge  each day boy in Batman pose

+girl with big feet  +nose  that took a lifetime to grow

into   disappear

maybe it’s all just the sleight of hand of a cunning old

malabarista    the boy was Batman  still is Batman  on days

when caped crusaders are in short supply  his train takes

whores +gamblers

the girl was always scholarly  even recorded her professor’s

breaths   he breathes life into the system of checks +balances

natty professor Smith  in bow tie  poly-sci 101   circa 1977

40yrs. later  a man with a yellow comb-over  may become the

funhouse supervisor    screw checks +balances

then on a craggy Big Sur beach  a giant Walt Whitman lookalike

reads her Leaves of Grass  pacific ocean  body electric  rouge wave

had taken the daughter of a suicided mother just yesterday   and the

sign said    BEWARE OF:  ROGUE WAVES  

and handsome pretenders to Walt’s throne (she had a lifelong

susceptibility to charlatans)   +the future    it will keep on spitting her

+ Batman out    wet and weary   in scenes beautiful  and cruel   in hospitals

graveyards  +an airport hangar to pick up a mail-order mastiff   from Colorado

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the truth about the world   it is   a fevered dream   a trance repopulate with

chimeras   an itinerant carnival   a migratory tent show  whose ultimate

destination in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond

reckoning     (Cormac McCarthy   Blood Meridian)

SPRING EQUINOX  2016 

EVIL

HEAR NO EVIL  SEE NO EVIL  I AM EVIL

Peacefully shouting obscenities   carrying placards

denouncing everything  is the sine qua non of democracy

Seems the Donald  wasn’t at Civics class that day   Think:

Pussy Riot  Donald!  They recently received a heroine’s welcome

stateside

You are starting to sound a lot like  your doppelgänger Vlad    Think:

chest pounding+naked to the waist  (while trying to hold onto your

biscuits  beleaguered reader)    A 78 yr. old Trump supporter after sucker

punching a protester: He deserved it   The next time we see him  we may

have to kill him   Donald will pay John McGraw’s legal fees    Think: Gulag

Mar-a-Lago    

Today front+centre in The Globe  Canada’s National Newspaper  a bloody

execution is chronicled: naked man spread eagled  shields his privates   He is

covered in blood from savage beatings   He is sobbing   Off to the side a tall man

with a slim-jim automatic weapon  shoots him   This is Liberia  where the naked

man had been caught foraging for   food

Is it a far cry to imagine  what President Trump would do to: Muslims   fleeing

Mexican families   the wives+children of terrorists (I will kill them too)    even

members of the Press  for whom threats have been made on National tv    He is

beginning to sound a lot like   Comrade Stalin  a strongman  a thug    +TRUMPGRAD

signs are in the works for the re-naming of   NYC   secretly stored away until erection

day 2017

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Washington January 2017:

two mounds in the snow  one of which broke open  and up out of which

a figure sat suddenly  like some terrible hatching..   

Blood Meridian   Cormac McCarthy

Spring 2016

LOSE

WITH EACH LOSS THERE IS LESS TO LOSE

Or is there more?   On a pouring early Spring day

here in the North  transported back to childhood

balcony   Home to ghosts+ flea-ridden baby squirrels

Bring one in!   Now littlest brother flea-bitten  eyebrowless

Robin’s nest atop air conditioner next door   Generations

of bird family  our family   survivor family   live out lives in

quiet desperado-burb  where schools close on Yom Kippur

+phonies eat pork on pretty paper plates  

We just eat it with our hands    Poodle atop kitchen table

joins in too   1st boyfriend says: you could get a fork in your

hand at supper    Yes  many tests of mettle in blue kitchen  where

orange hanging lights  with little holes like swiss cheese   Very

Jetsons    (if you are under 40  lose this poem)

Birds building nests  bringing worms   looks like feeding chicks

white regurgitate?   You had to sit quietly for hours to notice   It’s

all in the details   See kitchen Calendar   father’s striking script:

I hope I make it     day of his quadruple bypass surgery

Yes details   The ones never mentioned at fancy Cardiac surgeon’s:

Heart-Lung machines frequently cut off oxygen to the brain  during

surgery   leaving patients with varying degrees of impairment    Father

made it   but never re-appeared

In the end a bird-redemption  hundreds of wrens gathered  to take him

to his other home  where the buffalo roam  +the sky it ain’t cloudy  no more

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Frankenstein  circa 1984   Heart-Lung mo fo

2 days til Spring 2016     RIP  d. bird  coolest cowboy in the land

MORTUARY

COOL URBAN MORTUARY

ghouls   zombies   ghosts   crammed onto the

rooftop   hanging out of windows   lining the

street   trudging through snow  with nowhere

to go   the funeral home at Strachan+Queen

closed for renos

not 6 months ago bodies stacked neatly in rows

cadavers awaiting make-up  +cavity filling    +

formaldehyde cocktails to go   eerie orange lights

all hours of the night

i watch from my bathroom window   a macabre factory

sans Andy  where new-dead prepared for eternity   in 2nd

coolest neighbourhood in the WORLD  (Vogue 2013)    so

what will it be?   a restaurant?   bar?   haberdashery?

NO!  a giant Sephora  artifice emporium  for the sort-of-alive

who spend fortunes on potions that make us look like we care

put some light in our eyes  compassion on our lips

today a woman in Zara said to me: i could NEVER work with

children  i just don’t care    so honest!   and beautiful    +empty

about the mouth

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The Rising   Spring 2016

SADISM

THE CASUAL SADISM OF THE JESUS BED

Gabriel was childlike  with a teardrop tatt under his right

eye + an impish grin   He said: I wonder if I will go to

Heaven or Hell?   Grin now a mega-watt smile   He was

just out of his teens  death row   Texas

The warden said he’d watched hundreds of executions  +

felt not a shred of remorse  or anything resembling compassion

He added: They don’t deserve to choose their last meal   Did the

victims get to choose Tacos or BBQ?     No Sir

Anderson Cooper then took us on a tour of the facility   deep in

the bowels of the penitent-iary   The gurney is called the Christ Bed

See Gabe with arms outstretched   A chemical-crucifixtion   Few fight

the guards  most docile with fear   soiling themselves on the long walk

home

I killed a cop but it wasn’t on purpose   He stepped in front of the 

getaway car   Why didn’t you stop?  asked Anderson   Because I

was trying to getaway   Cop’s family ushered into room adjacent to

Christ Bed  +watch the spectacle through a glass darkly

Still feeding slaves to lions in the Coliseum?   Though  if the Cop were

my son  my brother  I may discover reasons to watch the needle crucify

Gabe    Hard to know   but I am thinking  so    I’m a better person now 

I found Jesus Christ  +my wife conceived all 3 kids here  Gabe testified

Cop’s wife exits the final-exit chamber   She says: Our eyes met  We had

a special connection   Some in the audience heckle   catcall    Gabe’s

wife is carried out on a stretcher   And there is a steadfast shortage of

gasps     Swing Low

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a matter of days until Spring 2016

FROTHY

THE SENSUAL WONDER   THE PRETTY IT    ALL FROTHY

& READY FOR ME

walking through saks 5th avenue  where the shower gel

smells like money   i came across hordes of hungry men

alone+wandering aisles of leather+haberdashery   achingly

metrosexual +prone to bouts of rage   one stamping his gucci

foot  shouting: where is the plump full rich thing you retail

whores promised me?

a far cry from the burly  also leather-clad apes  of 43,000 yrs.

ago?  who picked up a mammoth bone shard and made it into a

flute   why would this stinking near animal invent music  24,000

yrs. before the cave paintings of lascaux?

for comfort  i suppose   for what calms the beast into a fugue state

of repose  faster than the pipes of pan?   since the earliest days of

man   think rock my soul in the bosom of abraham    the naked ape

has resisted the death-necklace   worn like a crown of thorns   from

about the age of 3

in every tradition+culture  music is part of entombment ceremony

in modern times new musical scores are in development for those

righteous die-ers  when grievous+irredeemable suffering  make

assisted suicide  legal

in belgium+the netherlands psychiatric patients can be euthanized

+one woman  grievous angel  chose to die rather than live without

her husband   now seekers of death can shop for doctors who work

in mobile euthanasia clinics

In quebec 10 people have been euthanized in 60 days   since the right

to die law  was passed     66 more have applied for reasons of social

isolation   one man has already been accepted for: living a life without

love  +therefore having no right to exist 

what about 3 yr. olds with terminal cancer?   the highest court in the land

has just put the hand of the MAN who stilled the waters right into your own

saying: you decide and get back to us   obfuscation?  abdication?   or confusion?

Quite unlike Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court  who said of

pornography with conviction: i know it when i see it

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18 days to SPRING