songanddancegirl

HEAVEN

HEAVEN’S DOOR

My grandmother  the Polish one   From a town

that doesn’t exist anymore   Residents slaughtered

willy-nilly  1939-1945   This grandmother said  on a

freezing day circa 1985: Losing your mind is the worst

thing that can happen to a person   as we said good bye

pre  her annual Miami sojourn

She then gave me some intricate instructions re: prospective

deathbed visitors (these will go with me to my own grave)

The conversation weighed heavily  though I came to chalk it up

to her extreme eccentricity   Later that winter my father received

a call from  Sam   A man in her building we didn’t know  He said:

Your mother asked me to call   She doesn’t know where she is   

My father Lee brought her home a few days later

Tests showed an inoperable brain tumour  She was 86   It took several

months for her to lose her finemind   So  had it been a premonition or

an admission?  Perhaps already inklings of a fading database  +losing

a grip on memories   Farms  A speakeasy  An arranged marriage   Hard

patriarch father put a broom in her hand  and said:  Sweep!   Her mother

dead at 33    Mayo clinic couldn’t save her

4 younger children to raise   Now a slave   People took her lack of an easy

smile  personally   And when she died they found $4,000,000 in her

mattress   I have her exact feet  (don’t ask)  +a serious loathing for being

told what to do by any man  no matter his size or title  i.e., Dear Leader

I don’t walk around smiling either  but when I do  I have been told the Styx

begins to freeze over

In the end my grandmother was more animal  (not vegetable)  Crazed hand

signals  +mouthing words    And yet it moves   to paraphrase Galileo at his

heresy trial   One day in her room  I looked in the mirror at my 26 yr. old face

+for a split second didn’t know who I was   I wore red+black stripes  and was

about to begin my Master’s in Psychotherapy

There was also that time when I looked at husband #1’s young face  and for a

split second I didn’t know him   Premonitions or admissions?  Revelations or

devastations?  Voodoo bugaloo  Weird shit   Because it is simply true:  that one

day I would no longer know him  know him   And as for myself   the real me has

been under house arrest forever   continuing my scientific work  (again much like

Galileo  a genius with a flair for self promotion)  on freedom   on busting out   +leaving

you all  in my dust

__

*On Wednesday a TTC employee seeing that someone had jumped onto the tracks,

sat down and began talking to the man. He reminded him to breathe, and encouraged

him to say, I am strong, and got the crowd to recite it with him. He coaxed the man

back up onto the platform. It’s something we should all strive to do, everyday. 

(Globe+Mail editorial  TRANSIT HERO  June 2017)

Summer 2017      Go ahead.   Try it.

BEATNIK

BEATNIK COWGIRL

No one knows what it’s like to travel backwards to

before   To those moments when you were tabula rasa

Before they put their mark on you   Before horsemen+

baseball players +models   Before Polish+Russian Jews

Before the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

entered you  on a cellular level

Who were you?

Perhaps the question has never been: nature versus nurture?

But rather: Once nurture takes over does it obliterate nature?

Does nature even exist?  Other than for that brief pre birth canal

spasm  Before sacred substances  blood  feces  urine  +the placental

feast  smear your clouds of glory   making you ½ the creature  you

were meant to be

Come on!  Take a stab at it    Who?

Perhaps if you are bold enough to  you will be cast out of the space

time continuum + instantly take your seat next to Yaweh or Zeus!

You’re stalling   Who?    Is it in fact because nurture  has jettisoned

the essential you?   The one who had small wing tips at scapula?

Face it    You’ve mourned flying  all of your days

Often putting head into wind   Developing degenerative disc syndrome

by 30   Weighted down by their freight   Sinners  Panzermen  Mad-women

Your birdlike pure essence   Sturdy girl-boy   Ravine dweller   Forest nympho

Hawk mother   Father a rolling stone

Nature worshipper   Bareback rider  by 5

Captivity anathema    Ditto close quarters with humanity   A lone wolf

Die of tribal glue  seeping in through them +theirs    Play nice   Don’t

fly  or I’ll give you something to cry about!   STOP  soaring +walk upright

you frightful bird-child  

Or we can’t ensnare you

Now 60 years on  you collect downed butterflies +battered 6 yr. olds  pre-

dawn  only to free them  later on   Today you found a Swallowtail molting

on June asphalt   Telepathic connexion   It said: There is a snap at C-4  the

disc where all the pain began   In the years ahead these words will come to

mean less and less   + the snap will morph into a cancerous mole

__

 FER CHRISSAKES COWGIRL  

OPEN THE FREAKIN SNAP!  

+ DAMP WINGS  SHALL UNFURL

SUMMER SOLSTICE  2017

SWALLOWTAIL

THE TWO-TAILED SWALLOWTAIL  PAPILIO multicaudata

AND THE 9^TH PLANET HAVE GONE MISSING

WHY CAN’T CANCER?

The official butterfly of Arizona has been sighted

all over Toronto   My friend a taxidermist + art director

found one dead   He photographed it for instagram  Laid

out nicely on his kitchen table cum butterfly morgue  Milk

+ cheerios  beyond forlorn

Dead butterflies  like dead angels  +dead bees  give off a kind

of sonar to their tribe  Now the glorious yellow+blue Swallowtails

are gathering in profusion  up here in the great white north  where

they will certainly die of cold   While the other C word  will descend

upon 1 in 2 Canadians  who will be diagnosed with it in the coming

year

__

SUMMER SOLSTICE  2017

BACIO

IL BACIO DELLA MORTE

Mt. Pinatubo awoke from a 500 year slumber in spectacular

+disastrous fashion on June 15 1991   For almost 20 yrs. now

the destruction has continued   Volcanic ash seeping into veins

even into relationships   As that creature on slow thighs crouches

outside your window  waiting

The center gave out a long time ago especially for those born

mid-20^th century  only now coming into the 2^nd half of life   Rife

with disappointments like: It was supposed to be much cooler than

this   Flying cars  Sound minds+bodies   It was supposed to be secure

(in Canada universal pensions will disappear in thirteen years)

In such a climate one must cultivate a rich interior life   much like

Dr. Edith Bones  imprisoned for 7 yrs. and 59 days   The communists

couldn’t break her  And she emerged wiser +full of hope!  Let us all

take shelter inside of ourselves  though rank with decay

*(pay close attention those 55 and older)

And let us not be fooled by handsome people at parties  +the person on the

barstool beside you rubbing your stiffening leg   They have been sent to distract

you from the real business of keeping perfectly still as Mrs. Death  in an ill fitting

blouse  begins to enter you  one puckered orifice at a time

__

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

W.B. Yeats  The Second Coming  1919

Spring 2017

CANDY

SMELLS LIKE SEX AND CANDY

There is candy in the lobby   Huge piles of it   But

it is not free   Little $3 signs  sit beside curated bowls

At first you miss the signs  +thinking it’s free  a happiness

comes over you +your 59 yr. old brother  the likes of which

you have never seen

It’s like winning the lottery   Finally  free candy   after

years of pilfering from the corner store   Money doesn’t

grow on trees  they said   Well neither does candy  +a kid

can’t live on chocolate matzah alone

Here  the coloured wrappers on high end candy  bring back

ennui    Instantly   Later when the complimentary limo forgets

to pick you up  you stand in the dark  with gangs approaching

For hours   The manager says:  TAKE SOME CANDY !   And

you do   Handfuls stuffed in pockets   In a sock   One fits into your

shoe

The two of you sit with lizards  near palm trees  in the soulless hotel

for millennials  who must have candy close by at all times  (google

Google’s workplace)  And you gorge on Snickers +O Henrys   Finally

free of nagging feelings of underachieving  +untold fantasies of your

minds resurfacing

___

SPRING  2017

ANYWHERE

IF SHE CAN MAKE IT THERE SHE’LL MAKE IT ANYWHERE

Came upon them as they sat baking in the June sun

No one seemed to be having fun  except the Social

Director  Lovely lady   Wonder about the Koolaid she’s

been drinking   Giddy with manic joie de vivre   Can it be

real?

Feels more like the energizer bunny commercial   She

just keeps on going   They shoot horses don’t they?

She looks somewhat winded today   Bouncy ponytail

belies intense boredom   + the beginning of rage    It

comes out in prickly asides: High time you stopped taking

care of his sweaters  He’s freakin 95!   This to the woman

who  still has a husband   alive

Blood pressure climbs   Cheeks cheerleader pink  as ponytail

goes limp in 33 degree breeze   Smells like urine+cake   We all

weep over  My Yiddishe Mama  +watch in horror as the lady

who has fallen and can’t get up  is left on the ground for 25 minutes

Until 4 staff heave-ho her  into a chair   Waivers needed signing

Cake meted out  like casting pearls

Waitress snatches mine away  If you don’t eat yer meat you can’t

have any pudding  How can you have any pudding if you don’t

eat yer meat?   Faux strawberry shortcake  sans the cake  sans the

strawberries   More like gluey batter in a reddish puree  Could be

a lot of things   Gag in back of throat turns to song  as my beautiful

mother belts out Sinatra  + I sing along

Start spreading the news!  I’m leaving today!   She who at 93  sits

queen bee aloof   Eyes on the perimeter   dressed in impeccable Ralph

Lauren blues   She begins to lindyhop in the direction of the parking lot

+hails a cab   If I can make it there   I’ll make it anywhere!   Her parting

glare  speaks volumes

Don’t squander your courage  You’re gonna need it baby!   

As I begin to back away from the Social Director lady  who approaches me for

the Samba line   I begin to gnaw off my own hand   While my mother  ever glam

ever chic  silk scarf blowing in the breeze  doesn’t even glance back at me

She just keeps on lighting out for new territory   NYC be damed!   She’s set her

sights on the Promised Land

__

SPRING  2017

MAD

HE WENT MAD IN A PARADE AT LIBERTY & IBERVILLE

Today is the day in 1907  when Buddy Bolden was committed

to the East Louisiana State Hospital  for the insane  Entered at

31 yrs.   Carried out in 1931   Coffin sent to Holtz Cemetery

New Orleans    Travelled through Baton Rouge  +Slaughter  to

an unmarked grave

No Huck Finn glory  of lighting out for new territory

Mississippi his river Styx   Buddy rotted 24 yrs in Stygian

swamp   State hospital opened in 1848   by 1861  36 girls

mostly under 12   Causes of insanity listed largely as: unknown

2nd to that for many   loneliness  or failed solitude

During the Civil War impossible to get food+water there   Buddy

died 17 yrs. before the Medcraft Shock Machine purchased   He was

there for: guard rapes  lack of heat  +hard labour   Saints posing as

humans   Ditto those murdered on the London bridge Saturday  when

3 men with long knives stabbed people randomly  shouting:

This is for Allah!

New Orleans cemeteries are places of great beauty   Hundreds of milagros

+mementos  dot the landscape   At the tomb of: The Society for the Relief of

Destitute Orphan Boys  1894  dozens of toys  +chocolate bars   The high water

table strips flesh quickly   Generations stacked in perpetuity  until all the dead

are one dead   Witch’s brew   Stew of fetuses +granddaddies

There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me

Nowadays  we are all exhausted   No longer know the difference between loneliness

+solitude   Most of us made mad by addiction to connection   on screens  Longing for

the savanna  +a bit of wildtenacity    The stuff that gets us through the birth canal

Through the hard passage  where remnants of our glory days hang to dry  on fragile

bones  +disappearing memories     O won’t you take me back to New Orleans

__

SPRING  2017   110 years since Buddy’s admission  24 yrs. in captivity  RIP

MEND

THE GOLDEN MEND

Kintsukuroi   becoming more beautiful for

being broken

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget the perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

(Anthem   Leonard Cohen)

Are you more beautiful for being broken?

Gold tributaries of suffering   Kintsukuroi

The Japanese technique of repair with gold

resin   The object more valuable for having

been shattered

Soul resin   A priceless gluey substance used

on lost children by damned angels   Scavenging

in the night behind orphanages +brothels  +

residential schools   Even behind ordinary apt.

blocks

I knew a girl whose youngest brother was the 13^th

child of her mother +her 2^nd husband  (also the girl’s

Grandfather) The two re-united years after her own

horrific abuse in locked bathrooms  from 18 mts.

Her smile pure Kintsukuroi   Part slash   Holding back

a rhetoric of fury  seeping out of every orifice

Where have you been soldered together?  Womb tomb?

Breast?  Heart by pass?  Did they use gold resin  or spit

gum  tar  +glue   All sacred substances too   My father a

scarecrow   Held together with 64 stitches  So much more

beautiful for having braved repair

Birds flew in abberant migration to sit on the balcony +

chirp jazzy rhaphsody in blue   So  don’t wake up every

winter’s morn in your Canadian town +expect it to be

warm   For chrissakes put on a wool layer  +save your

complaints for the undertaker  when cold will be a relative

term

__

Live damnit! Live!

(George Costanza)