songanddancegirl

FACTUAL

LIFE IN A POST-FACTUAL WORLD

There is a giant crack when scapula rotated

Heard beyond the membranes separating

poet from world at large  Permeable membranes

Too diffuse for words  which escape into the

atmosphere  where judges judge +do not send

grant money

These poems  these words  trouble   +have caused

jurors  tingling in hands+feet   vertigo +diarrhea   Today

words chronicle the fall of Aleppo: a meltdown of humanity

Not enough sunshine for the many  No canned laughter with

this poetry

Aleppo   Giant gutted Gehry   Twisted tatters of buildings splayed

Gaping holes in concrete   Skin of civilians  flayed   Al Assad friend

of Russia +Iran   by proxy Trumpnation?  Sent troops into homes

killing women+children willy nilly

Canada trying to mobilize UN General assembly to: Take action

on Syria   This as new PM shamelessly panders to wealthy Maoists

in mansions across the land   Words fail to bring grant $  +uplift

the lumpen proletariat  So long in breadlines +fodder for tanks  they’re

voting for snake oil  neo-right

Now resurrecting words like: Umvolkung (ethnic conversion)  Volkisch

(racially pure state)  +concentration camp   Soon  kike    In the 21st C

no one gives a damn about the Nazi era   The future belongs to patriots

Many Germans simply fear that by 2040, Germany will be like a Third

World country which doesn’t consist mostly of white people –

(Ronal Glaser  Berlin based politician)

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Baby I’ve been down, but never this down

I’ve been lost, but never this lost.

Bruce Springsteen

(December 14, 2016)

GONE

DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT ‘TIL IT’S GONE

little dwarf trees all around me  window seat on

parking lot  paved paradise put up a tree mausoleum

all dead soon  needles in your house until the 2nd coming

when the mob will be chill  bathe his feet  bloodlust+hate

have had their day?

my christmas cards are half: BELIEVE  + half: JOY    I’m

giving the Believes to those who already do  +the Joys to those

who are to joyous  to believe   across europe+in dingy ballrooms

in donald’s amerika  heil  is the new raised fist  why must it always

come to this?

too much liberal democracy  pendulum castrated mid-swing  donald

weeps for swing state recounts   billionaires everywhere gnash gold

teeth   in new world order fatted calf messiah dances at pink trump

hotels +local hot spots

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(December 8, 2016)

WONDERFUL

THERE’S STILL TIME FOR IT TO BE WONDERFUL

I saw a giant black truck  A monster truck  plough into

a christmas crowd  Full tilt  Santa impaled on a steel pole

gingerbread debris    Annus Horribilis 2016

If we could live it backward  +have all the firsts to wait for

the firsts would be last  +the last would be birth  A death of

a different sort   It’s like the films that really reach into the

human experience  lay it bare   Show us what we always knew

was  out there

Like the aliens who land  +suck us into their tubers

Like the cancer  the one your great grandmother flew

to the Mayo for

Living it backward would turn mortality on its head    Show

us how in spirit form we don’t need these radiated bodies

anymore   Remember  pre-birth   you swam!   Non-weight

bearing shower room to your right  said the nice lady at the

retirement home

Annus 2016  I saw a reality tv star voted president of the world

that thinks it’s free   Tell me  over+over again my friend we’re on

the eve of destruction  Or are we?  Living it backward would bring

us to the mother of all re-births  No?

Back to a time when we worshipped Earth  round+fecund   When we

knelt before rotund thigh+belly    When Venus of Willendorf was a

supermodel  28,000 BCE      Hey a girl can dream

Don’t be afraid

Fuck the cancer

Take no prisoners

Bring on 2017

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Winter Solstice 2016

COLOUR

OFF COLOUR POEM  FOR A GREY SKY DAY

It happened again on Instagram   Someone asked

to  lick me  within seconds of signing up to post

photos of rude citydwellers   Later on  almost knocked

over by fragrant girl with greasy hair on my way to

singular boutique where bespectacled clerk told me:

the shirts don’t really fit me here because of my big

butt   (seriously!)

Even a poet of my wordrenown cannot make this shit

up    I inched closer  sidelong glances   Obtuse young man

trying to seduce me?   Later we joked over macarons +latte

and he proceeded to tell me that he prefers real redheads  for

reasons unbeknownst to me

I do tend toward naiveté   Fodder for charlatans with

affectations   Pronouncing words like Nicaragua as:

Nicarrrragua   + arsehole with a slight lilt to the e’s

Later though at the Four Seasons  our clerk left in a hurry

Shirttails flapping in the late November breeze

Curated tryst gone terribly wrong   My hair: Clairol Crimson

smudging the damp sheets  as chandelier began to quiver

unrequitedly

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Winter  2016