songanddancegirl

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LAND OF THE WOKE  HOME OF THE UN-BRAVE

Have you heard the new-ish expression  woke ?  Nattered on

by those who consider themselves to be  woke   Gloria Steinem

recently to fabulously wealthy high school girls  in Toronto : You

are WOKE   Go forth and multiply!   When it seems highly likely

that they are not   Though the survivors in Parkland FLA  appear

to be  after 17 dead comrades  flung bloodied  into a cortege of

ambulances last Tuesday

She scurried ahead of me on faux cobblestones  Yorkvile  TO   She

sobbed into her phone: I’m heading to the hospital  My mother died

On+on she cried    Also Woke    As I scuttered along in too red  pointy

boots  pin size heels sticking in every crack   Un-woke?   Hyper-woke?

(aka  hyper-vigilant: a hallmark of PTSD)  Of late  known to contemplate

the  immortality chip

Constellated in all acts of  fellatio  creation   That  out of time  out of space

feeling    An altered state   i.e.,  It doesn’t present as pain  said the oncologist

On the surface you are listening to a song  reading words  looking at a canvas

or a painted cave   within seconds dopamine pricks  +your ego has the little death

(hallmark of great sex  sometimes even mediocre  depends how desperate you are)

And in the very act of creation  the artist/creator  drops out of time-space too

Unless the process is torturous  like the writing of this poem  waiting to be pounced

upon by brother’s friend  who frequents this cafe  +professes wonder at everything

I say   Really!  You eat lunch!   It devolves from here    On this gorgeous spring-like

day  when you sell your soul a la Goethe’s Faust  minute by minute  for  MORE    But

not the sobbing girl  now at St. Mikes    Mother’s head to one side  tongue lolling

She continues to cry

So why  did Goethe make wishing for more time  a sin?  The one where

Mephistopheles disguised as a black poodle  grins  + as punishment you are

yoked to the same day  over+over again   An apt description  of life as we know it

Perhaps all manner of epiphany sets you apart from the herd   Breaks the yoke   No

longer enslaved to the nuclear family   you may think yourself  FREE    But who would

people our Wallmarts?   Our Costcos?   Our gun shows?

You’re part of the animal kingdom after all   Magnificent + Mammalian    The only

hope of un-hitching the yoke  is to acknowledge  without surprise  that you are as frail

as you think you are   But so are they  who seethe with  BRAVE    And  if there are no

abnormalities in your 2nd scan in 8 weeks   RUN with it  on that putrifying knee  find

a cave  +huddle there  Spring is a mere 21 days away

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Winter  2018  can kiss my..

PASS

I GOT NO EXPECTATIONS TO PASS THRU HERE AGAIN

1 brother out of 3 is Schopenhauerian  even perhaps a

touch Machiavellian   Casting aspersions upon my dream:

To retire in Guatemala by 63   You’ll have a vinyl couch

salamanders in every corner  grimy tile floors +a musty

smell     Smell that smell

He is otherwise cheerful +quite happy  though a little bitter

over a painter I sent him 16 yrs. ago   Me rolling my eyes:  I

didn’t give birth to him    It is also true that I have begun to

wax poetic on the 363 shades of green in the Guatemalan canopy

And I have lost my bearings in travelblog descriptions of: the light

No doubt my ennui grows unbearable to those closest to me

Imagine what it feels like on the inside

the light is mystical pasty poet

the light will seep into your desiccated veins

the light will rejuvenate the heinous parts of you

you who made jaded your life’s work

This is quite a bit like believing in heaven  in the resurrection

And you  yes you  rise up on nearly new patent Dr. Martens  in

which you will break your neck on the quaint cobblestones   And

in your mind’s eye all of the detritus:  furniture  broken kitchen

gadgets  + the mouseshit  you have carted   IMPLODE

Suddenly compressed vertebrae release  +like a 1950’s housewife bored

silly  growing more unhinged daily  you toss your prescriptions: Diazepam

Lorazepam  Ativan  et al  +dive headfirst into the freedom abyss   Likely

just as terrifying as the captivity noose    Poor little naked Ape  walking

upright   Vestigal wings clipped at scapula  Rotator cuff agony  from flailing

against every self-made cage you’ve ever lived in

Time to grab hold of your cahones  +jump    Just be careful not to scream

shiiiiiiiiit on the way down   There is an ancient Guatemalan myth  in which

you become what you intone in your moments of greatest fear   Or to put it

another way:  should you not become conscious of what you fear  fate will

take you kicking and screaming there

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Winter  2018

HIDE

THERE IS NO REASON FOR U TO HIDE

Joseph’s star of David glinting on grey H+M sweater

Cruising West Queen West  high noon  Sashaying under

faint February sun   Jewessflowerchild   Ash Wednesday

Substitute 6 points for ashy cross   Did you notice the one

on forehead of shrieking mother at Florida massacre?

Google Earth zooms in on Jewgirl  still prancing   When a

shot rings out  +the boys who just jostled me begin to run

In my fantasy I bleed out on the world’s 2nd coolest street

In reality I  yellow bellied +afraid  hide my Zaida’s star under

my scarf

Not the bold resistance fighter in the woods outside of Warsaw

Big talker   But let us revisit this stroll in 2019   Bravery seeping

in through hardening arteries   Preparing for the death of the last

survivors

When you will be called upon to place a yellow star on your foreheads

+walk through neo-Nazi streets   Daring the world to repeat its brazen

atrocities   Heads held high   No more an invisible minority

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1969 Bathurst Manor Toronto  Jewish Ghetto

My bro + friend (whose parents were resistance fighters

Warsaw Ghetto) walk home from school  A car pulls up

+one of the 2 teenaged young men calls out:

Hey  you Jews?  

Why  don’t you like Jews?

Ya I like them  

I like them better dead

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Winter 2018

Star of Joseph Marlieb   1891-1973   RIP

REDUX 🖤

OUTLANDOUS D’AMOUR REDUX 🖤

I grabbed the bull by the horns  as hipster arriviste was

cruising the same cane seat  at Balzac’s   I tapped the

faux-lumberjack guy on the shoulder  You Leaving?   Ya   

Seat was warm    So warm that I broke into a sweat

+wondered if I was overcome by a  lovehotseatsickness

Heart jumping out of chest  mostly because another hipster had

just tapped my breast?   Hand slipped  apparently   In any case he

wanted the seat next to me   MAC: sadistic vixen  lipstick  against

pointy incisors  frightened him away   Now I sit  +contemplate love

a day after Valentine’s     Likely wearing one skull too many

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Tru Love..

Winter 2018

PILL

ONE PILL MAKES U LARGER + ONE PILL MAKES U SMALL

New neurologist said this should have resolved itself by

now   Well so should a lot of things   She wore mushroom

coloured Blundstones  exact shade of her boiled wool suit

Lips dry as a bone  a wasting purple lipstick  likely  MAC

Purple Nurple    Yet she asks me !  How many bottles of

water do you drink?  As I sit there cool as a moist cucumber

Even after waiting 1 hr    The patient before me was late

This after a 2 yr. wait to genuflect at her Blunnied feet   Poor

little poet on a stormy February day  when the white tunnel

does not stop at Wonderland  a la Alice  but at cabin fever  +a

whitebrite claustrophobia  boring into your brain

Wherever you look  white stuff   some yellowed   some browned

And Torontonians crawling upon bellies due to a world shortage

of salt  +sanity   In an Ayn Rand world  (think Atlas Shrugged  

+ We The Living)  mediocrity + incivility went unrewarded

(are  you listening Justin?)  And the late patient would have waited

until the other 26 were seen  but not so in squeaky  PC clean  2018

I grabbed my silver lamé jacket shrieking  Viva la Revolución!  Head

pounding  stomach squeamish  +made a bee line for Reposado  where

the Anjeo is served by  lush Zøe   And the Mezcal is full of succulent worms

for munching    Viva civility!      Viva Dr. Agave!

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Winter  2018

HONKUS

WIARTON WILLIE VS. RATUS HONKUS

Ice inches thick   Recently a friend said:  The snow is so

beautiful   But he hails from a North Atlantic town called

Souris   The yiddish word for  suffering   A Pollyanna Canadian

not unlike husband #3   who often quotes the Inuit   They have

261 words for snow  the ultimate collaboration with the inevitable

I would rather collaborate with the devil  sell my frigid soul for a

one way ticket to the Mayan Riviera  where American retirees drink

frozen Margaritas  +make new friends of Canadians in ill health

Many more of us than you think suffer these whiteskydays  with glazed

eyes  nausea  +turgid heads   One hip young woman  contemplating bangs

(big mistake in February)  said to me   just before I swooned  at  Schmaltz 

Dundas+Ossington: I feel not quite myself   I feel the colourless sky an

inducement to over indulgence in chicken schmaltz in particular   Divine

elixir of the shetl Jew  meant to put hair on chest  +inches on various body

parts    Eaten or slathered

One of these white February days  wearing perhaps one too many wool layers

I shall wrench that honkey groundhog  from his Wairton grave  to perform once

more for our amusement  (recently crushed in a thresher)  Or better still employ

the Ratus Honkus  Furry oracle of the snow  who likely knows more about being

white than most   O bitter little poet with chilblains  on arthritic knees   Take heart!

Only 9 more weeks until the first spec of green

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*honkey – perpetual liar

Winter  2018

FEEL

FEEL SOMETHING   AGAIN !

Admonishes a Kia Super Bowl ad  worshipping : youth  audacity  +

reckless abandon  Infact predicting their “coming”  As if old people are

not audacious  leaving this place in droves!   Steve Tyler  Leper-messiah

Drives a Kia around a track  Morphing into rock divinity   Now 20  plump

of lip  Hard of glute + thigh   Am I really writing about a Super Bowl ad?

Watched my first  in its entirety  last night   Cherry pop  +tequila chasers

Pretty-boy Brady  all mine

Saw grown men reach out to touch the silver Lombardi   Like the relic of

a saint   Saint Hubris?   How do grown men of the Abrahamic religions do

this?  Idolatry  by any other name   Better to touch the bark of a healing tree  or

the head of a baby   Transform  2 point conversions into humility   Hail Marys

into dignity   Isn’t that what Roger (the Dodger) Staubach meant when he said:

I like having sex   I just like having it with my wife

These same warriors cried  as the trophy-god went by   Some sobbing openly  for

crippled future bodies    And minds concussed into states of un-glory   Men  paid

more money than the GDP of certain countries    The Kia commercial  tells the

old man  to: Feel Something Again!    Hubris of another kind   Do the youthful

jingoists think the old have stopped feeling?     This is quite likely

Well just the opposite is true   For beginning at 59  there is a sharpening of the

sense of smell  as the other senses  dwindle   Who needs a sharpness of  taste

touch  or sight  when that chair by a sunny window beckons?   And the scent of

the hellhounds propels you to summon the courage you never had    It wasn’t

courage  propelling you to marry 3x  or to have 7 babes   It was unconsciousness

letting you think you chose!

Steve Tyler’s old face  now craggy + hanging off of chiselled bones  The steely

hooded eyes   Speak volumes   A worn cavern of experience    The totality of:

Boy  Man  Senex    The acceptance of the road’s end   Now walking backward to

his beginning   As my old mother has pointed out time+again:  No more gurus  

No lovers   No teachers    In the end  time is simultaneous    Embrace it

And yes  zillion dollar Kia commercial  unless one is comatose  he or she will feel the

shutting down of circuitry   Cell by cell   And smell your youth festering   Just as you

the scent of agey-mouldering    One doesn’t become less    One becomes more !

Hey  there had be some prize for hauling your ass  compass-less  toward the non –

weight bearing shower     Just go quietly   +savour the four handed rub down

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Winter  2018  ..in memory of Lee Atkins..the Plunging ACE..my 1st football hero..

WINGING

WINGING IT

There is a bird the size of a 3 yr. old child  who visits my

mother’s balcony  Is he a giant hawk or peregrine?  He looks

at me hungrily  Yellow slits for eyes  glinting  Talons curled twice

around the rail   He has plans for my old mother  +he whispers:

You too sister

Handsome as a groom   Natty tuxedo plumage   Regal spotted head

Sharp hooked beak: The better to taste you with my dear   Such a

flirtatious ferryman  so close at hand   It makes one want to sit up  +

take notice  Is this destiny manifest?  Am I manifesting  or manifestering?

And what of my old mother?    Time is wasting

Certainly a kind of calm acceptance has set in  amidst my incessant chattering:

To avoid falls upon awakening  sit at the edge of your bed  count to 10  then

dance the horah with wild abandon   Perhaps I should listen to my own advice

As I have just learned that there is a rare gum disease laying in wait   As churlish

dentist drilled down into my soulhole  he chimed: This could be hereditary!

Oh no   Not many teeth in the heads of closest ancestors   Father regularly gagged

on foul denture   And  with not a little glee  I threw it down the incinerator  as he

lay dying   I screamed: Be prepared to meet your maker  You the most vile of late

life instruments   Yet in spite of all the gnashing  I throw caution to the wind  +search

for  a Caribbean island upon which to expire

One without a dentist  but with a fine 17th century synagogue   And a rare species of

flower   Sensing one’s last breath  it releases a scent   Top note: Ecstasy    Middle:

Harmony    Bottom note: Horny adolescent suitor     Breathe deeply     You are

getting sleepy

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Winter  2018