songanddancegirl

PASSIVE

THIS WILL NOT BE A PASSIVE EXPERIENCE

Hot tub a phantom now  + so too Pleiades   The 7 sisters I

watched cross the sky  blinking archaic codes  to those in

the know   Immortality is free!   they said   It’s not a perk!

If you were all told this  the powers that be  would never have

been able to tithe you so lavishly   The body  a carpetbagger of

the soul   Rented  +rent   they blinked   You there filthy squatter

Don’t get too comfortable

 

Now having dismantled the hot tub up on the 5th floor rooftop

where water continues to pour in until this day   The past 4 have

brought the ice storm of the century  Rivulets run from surround

sound ports in ceiling   Onto me   As I toss on the night sea journey

Medical pot  induces blank spaces  where crooked sailors used to wink

There is no REM  on THC

 

I miss those sailors more than life itself   The force of which diminishes

in the 2nd 1/2 of life   Soon the jettisoning of an Ego   One who worked in

the salt mines of consciousness for some 61 yrs.  It may be a relief to not

have to be   To rest on laurels of head-banging   Sit quietly   Not being smart

or pretty  (bitter psychiatrist to beautiful mother: I’m not here to be pretty)

 

No clearly not   Nor to gaze into the recesses of a human soul  +see beyond

what stares you in the withered face   The whole of a life   One that cannot

be reduced to fit that tiny corner of your reductivist brain  Where pat answers

sit beside antiquated revelations  bullshit  +deep vicarious pleasure  As your

own pleasure centres enfeebled by years of looking  but not seeing   No cataract

surgery invented for this malady

 

How does this happen to one who wanted to vanquish suffering?  Your skills

at observation are rusty   That sine qua non of all sorcerers  +pedophiles    All

night now the patient wails in the mother tongue of her ancestors  And I too have

begun to sing in Russian  This at 4 a.m.   When the Ego  we will soon ditch  hears

knocking  +bells tolling  in these endless numbered days +nights   Except  they are

not     Yet  not here to be pretty  wasn’t slipped the wisdom of the Pleiades   Does

not see  the poet  in the rare beauty   The Ego railing against its jettisoning

__

 

When I clamour for God  he sends me back to time.

I want to sin, to be free. It’s as if God’s smacking me around,

pushing me away –  

(Adélia Prado – 1987 –  Griffin Lifetime Achievement Award Poetry  2014)

 

 

 

Spring 2018

..Ms. F. Marlieb 94.. was published in the Montreal Gazette at 10..

.. she is also a rare beauty..