songanddancegirl

DOG

THE MORE I SEE OF SOME PEOPLE

THE BETTER I LIKE MY DOG  HE SAID

First 6 months of grey mornings   coming slowly

to consciousness   Merciless   Remembering around

the edges   He’s dead   Gutted  pulled back into the

gaping hole   More vast than the one they put him in

With antechambers  tunnels to arteries  clogged with

freshgrief

 

Then on a full moon night  February 1990  the 6 month nadir

After which  you rise up from the bed  bloody+splayed  like

the sacrificial lamb   Griefempty+skinned    Shot back into life

Perma-soulhole    You slide through decades  learning the

secret meaning of:  immortality

 

It is: your father’s voice   His laugh   His phraseology:  Don’t

argue with a fool   If you have one true friend in a lifetime

you’re lucky   Don’t spend other people’s money   He’s full

of shit    All of it  alive +well  in the deepest caves of memory

Unaccessible to the ravages of aging   Growing deeper +more

resonant with time  (your 93 yr. old mother  hears her mother’s

voice almost nightly)   

 

Until one day  almost 30 yrs. since the grave was fresh   There is

a transmutation of: your father + a bird    It screeches loudly at

the cemetery  as you + a brother  re-visit line and verse  old sorrows

The family curse   This father/bird will have none of it   He bomb dives

your head  with beating wings +a rush of air   +the ever so faintest

scent of  Aqua Velva

__

 

 

Spring  2017   for Daddybird   aka Harry Lee Atkins  1921-1989

 

CODE

I’M SPEAKING TO YOU FROM THE HEART

BUT IT’S COMING OUT IN CODE

An ecstatic confession?   My mother saw her 1st sunrise

at 93:  It was orange  NOT  yellow!   emphatically     2

lines of orange light  just over the buildings  far off in the sky

It was so beautiful!   I didn’t know quite what it was   

 

What is the name of that place in the States where they

covered up a UFO sighting?  I thought this was what she

was telling me   A fire breathing dragon in the east!   A burning

bush on Sinai    1947  Roswell:  the flying disk in the sky    Or

perhaps like that hard shelled bug   the one we kept in a jar  +

batted around for an entire summer   A visitation?    Be careful what

you torture      The Gods will likely arrive in disguise

 

Build a shrine to your innocence    It will return with a vengeance at 80

+be all you have left at 90  when the firsts + the lasts  areoneandthesame

 

We came upon ducks    It was 1963     Wild with wanting one  I trampled

them   They fled from said child  who trembled  with a future  approaching

unabated     Maps entirely futile       Never to be fully navigated

 

An unshaven holyman crouched by the bullrushes   A river flowed through

our ravine  carrying the bones of ancestors  +those not yet born  all the way

from the burbs to Babylon    New forms  both strange +familiar   alighting

like an old grief  about every 10yrs. or so   Crouching on slow thighs  waiting

to be born

__

 

 

I must clear the house of my head,

I must make room for a shrine before they all die,

With fireflies and starlight.  

(Walcott   White Egrets   2010)

RIP  Derek Walcott  87   Nobel Prize  St. Lucian Prophet  

..my muse on a very good day..

 

Spring  2017

 

HELMETS

GIVE US A CRACK IN OUR HELMETS

SO THAT RAY CAN GET IN

First day of Spring  5 degrees  grumpy+grizzled

I realize that I have no allegiance to my demographic

Maybe even horrified that I belong   Dead stares   bad

hair  mostly   I am not a joiner  more (pussy) anarchist

Thought I’d be one  when Trotsky’s moustache beckoned

 

Then seduced by service for 10  Ashley’s registry for bougie

brides  Platinum ring around white bone china  Never used

them   Marriage stalled   Mermaid spirited young husband

away

 

47 yrs. ago when Leonard sang dirges to Suzanne +Maryanne

adulthood beckoned   juicy+sexy   Real thing: motherlode of learning

curves pile up  until you’re the Einstein of the universe   Poet of pain

Collar bone aches bitterly today   Spring breakers stare at your frothy

pink coat   +your unconscious is really unconscious

 

It’s time to run away from home   Barbie suitcase packed every Sunday

as father +jockstrap boys watched sports   Where’s that Barbie suitcase

when you really need it?   Throw in a few bottles of: Clairol Light My Fire Red

a MAC: Ruby Woo  +hit the road

 

And dontyacomeback no mo  no mo

No mo

__

 

ANGELS

THEY WERE LIKE ANGELS

RUNNING AROUND IN FLIP FLOPS!

Said someone not in the habit of waxing whimsical

Quite the contrary   Usually a diehard Schopenhauerian

with a penchant for down: you don’t get me  I turned 

the lights out 5 yrs. ago  I’m not pretending to have a 

life    Yet today there he was tossing out limericks on:

Grace does Lace   He even used rainbow twice  in the

same sentence

 

G does L   2 blonde Australian girls who can fly  when

they’re not seducing middle-aged depressives with their

pent up joy   I hate them already   One will likely have a

cameo at my next wedding  (they sell 150 wedding gowns

a minute!!)  Trust me an exclamation mark has never found

its way into his syntax

 

So what’s different about today?  His friend’s brother lay in an

upstairs room slowly dying of Legionnaires Disease   In a dream

he called out: Save me!  Save me!    Too late  the ambulance carted

his ghost away   In real life he lives  to fight another day

 

In his youth  a legend in the shetl   A tough Lenny Brucer   Introduced

phony Beatlemania boys to Springsteen+Lou   He’s 68 yrs. old  never kissed

a girl    Tomorrow eve  Grace does Lace  will do his ghost in Shopey’s dream

Small town hero will wake with a smile   There will be a rainbow  Full umbra!

#wouldntshitya

___

death, he said, let it come,

it was after the races,

zipper on pants broken,

$80 winner, he vomited

and got back into bed with her.

(Charles Bukowski  1972)

 

 

Almost April  2017   RIP DEREK WALCOTT   87  poet  Nobel Prize laureate  muse   died today  my copy White Egrets stolen from car  along with 6 mths. of poetry  2011

YEARNING

A REMINDER OF LIFE’S WILDNESS +

UNASSUAGEABLE YEARNING

It looks like a scene out of Heidi today  everything

covered in white   Slow-mo flakes cascade   A crazed

cacophony of tiny screams as they melt    Last blast

Surely

 

People tired of poet’s obsession with weather+ references

to cancer   Stop reading now: if you are looking for answers

sunshine  or daffodils  (you know who you are!)    Yesterday’s

news brought us sisters   97 yr. old twins  who died within

minutes of each other

 

One of natural causes  as they approached the other’s car   The

2nd of hypothermia (supposedly gentle; a quiet shutting down)

as she waited +cradled twin #1   Zillions of stars overhead  Reports

of several hundred falling to earth!  Celebrating the twins    1st

responders found them in co-joined fetal position   Just as they came

 

Something beautiful  +cruel in this   I’ll give you that   Though it occurs

to me that I wouldn’t mind leaving on the same day as the boys I knew

first   We who rode wild our bikes until dusk  +the biggest one held off

police as we 3 pulled every flower on the street    Mother’s Day 1966

 

Now old goats  marching side by each  dragging one another from the brink

when necessary   Said a friend whose brother suicided 25 yrs. ago: may you

die the same day as your brothers

__

 

Who understands the world, and when

will he make it, make sense?  Or she?

Maybe there is a pair of them, and they sit

watching the cream disperse into their coffee.

Like the A-bomb. This equals that, one says.

They exchange smiles.  It’s so simple, they’ll be

done by lunchtime.

 (Tracey K. Smith  Life On Mars  Pulitzer Prize)

 

 

 

Almost April  2017    for my bros  M+H+J       RIP  Jean+Martha Young  Barrington RI

number

#whatsmyfuckingphonenumber?

the final 3rd begins at 60  hypothetically

yesterday a dental hygienist questioned me pointedly

circling back  again+again to the question I would not

answer   in the midst of:  bleeding gums  +saliva suction

thing  sucking out the dross   the last shreds of intact

memories    +my soul

 

who said what yesterday?   while  25  30  40yrs. ago  minute

detail  etched   but only fragments of past 30 days    impressions

suggestions of encounters   hygienist spoke of:  argentina  reykjavick

a party at a restaurant for 30   her 60th will go down in history

 

but this is my final history  the one i will write alone  out of the

fragments  the blurring of the lines between: dream-state  +non

dream  everyday fugue-state   a quasi-reality occurring around me

no doubt a coping mechanism to dull the pain of losing one’s

witnesses    who either disappear  or  can’t remember    eyes glazing

over too often in conversation  once scintillating

 

who are you when there are not repositories for your stories?   when

your witnesses do not survive the witnessing    does it really matter if

i name some points on a compass?   places  you should see   as you

approach 60   as if in visiting these one will magically have more certainty

about  the landscape  the signposts  to watch for  in years 61 through 70!

 

i am not lost   nor do i need a  big trip  to soothe fears of the shit abyss

because some other thing is happening!   i care much more deeply about

the music that moves me   8 or 10 people   a bulldog’s face  +this new ability

to linger in technicolor  with full sensation in every first there has ever been

 

now semi-frozen like a landcrab or tarantula  pausing on the blacktop   sun

high  minute articulations   when the big birthday truck  hurtles towards me

my nude pink lips will erupt in bel canto   while the mists of big sur lift  as marcello

a gorgeous redheaded argentinian says:  ape-reeel   i will give you cosmic orgasm!

___

 

i’m just not here today

i don’t want restaurants and expanding cultural events

i want an old shack in the hills

rent free

with enough to eat and drink until i die

 

strange eyes in my head

strange ways

(Charles Bukowski  Mockingbird Wish Me Luck  1972)

_______

 

Almost April  2017

*for my significant other   who i am sending

on a long trip  for my b.day 

 

 

 

 

 

END

WHAT WILL THE END OF YOUR JOURNEY LOOK LIKE

+ WILL YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU GET THERE?

In a dream (#amithedreamerorthedream)  my brother  18 mts.

younger than me  + I   sit across from each other at the kitchen

table   Furniture circa 1953  orange+turquoise   Parents tastes

more avante-garde than mid-century bourgeoisie  Both hidden

artistic tendencies  Burst out in cowboy father’s shoe collection

Mother’s Paris gowns  Model in another life  still walks catwalk

proud

 

As we sit it dawns on us  that our old family home is worth millions

+we still own it!  A bright light shines in the hallway leading to our

parent’s bedroom   Temple of love  Temple of tempests   This home

a beacon to our adult selves:

 

Come Mine The Best of What You Were /ARE?

 

Dreams scattered in corners   Football glory   Pails of money

A Florida vacation  or new furniture kids?   A cure for cancer   Write

a book  Be an African  (Dad I know what I want to be  I want to be

black)   Brother really said this   Father somewhat dismayed

 

Somewhere the numbers fall into their slots  pointing to a jackpot  of

love  innocence  +purity   Jaded furies now biting at the heels of aging

family   Hard pressed to believe in their dreams  marching into uncharted

territory   Last man standing flicks off the light  takes the high road to the

land of milk +honey

__

She’s the only woman I ever loved  (our father re: our mother)

It would take one hell of a wife to beat no wife at all. (Cormac McCarthy)

 

 

Almost Spring  2017   for the Atkins Family of Purdon Drive 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BAD

IT’S BEEN A BAD YEAR FOR ROCK AND ROLL

And pretty young girls with cancer in the room

next door   She was just 16  big Latino family

Generations sat at her feet  as cells multiplied

inexplicablemente

 

Old grandmother on her knees  looked homeless

hunted   weary    Heart milagro tucked into shroud

Bed stripped of sheets   Empty chairs in hallway weep

 

Chica headed for long sleep   Earth smells of green  as

new spring  marches across towns +cities  waking things

that had been sleeping    Hola! 16 yr. old Persephone

________

for Joey Atkins  a mensh