songanddancegirl

better run for your life if u can little girl

saw the giant peregrine in big tree out back

my family being stalked by raptors  one on

a branch a foot from my head  talons bloodyred

i should have run  but cannot hide  these huge

hawks  messengers from the otherside

harbingers of death in most cultures  unlike

vultures they eat prey alive   poor little mice

rabbits  and prairie voles (i live with one who is

six foot three +tasty)  2 lifted my football brother

from his hospice bed

but this poem is going in another direction due to

poet’s misguided promises of sunshine+daffodils

come spring   most of us can weather intense grief

+be spat out in about 7 months  give or take

naked

limpid

+largely

insane

but that’s ok   winter is done  +due to freak nor’westers

hundreds of icebergs are arriving on the shores of lake ontario

many harbouring the newly departed   and as they melt in the

sunshine  the dead will alight  daffodil in hand  +ready to fight

i also have a nice

piece of

land for sale

in the florida

everglades

said the poet to the fly

__

Spring 2019 🕷🕷🕷🕷

scar tissue

he is being put down as I write   his plight

not unusual for a 9 yr. old british bully  white

with one beige eye  nothing else beige about

the guy

a hellion

a biter

still have scar   inside right wrist  a favourite

bit of poetforeskin  bitten over+over+over  again

he was polish  like our father’s people  best bullies

from polish puppymills   massive heads   bred to

take bulls down if need be  flappy neckskin   a lot

like me   can withstand yanking+stretching in combat

i liked him best when shortsqueaks escaped his lips

immortalized on pgs.  51+82  of my book   when he spoke

like this  he sounded real   that is  like a human child

belonged to my skinnybro

childless like me

this madbully  was our kid   in first year alone  80,000

bucks in surgeries  scars too numerous to count   but

we’re no pussies when it comes to  surgeries  or scars

468 stitches held  our father lee   mother  +brother marty

together

lee’s vertical

mother’s horizontal

forming a kind of cross

if u put them together

brother’s down below  gruesome+scabrous

the sign of the cross keeps vampires at bay   it just doesn’t

work as well on everyday run of the mill  cancers  heartstoppages

+general brokenness by 60

but  the beauty of scar tissue is:

that come resurrection day

the scarred shall be first

__

Spring 2019  ..RIP.. Poydie..a.k.a. fatboy..

why can’t we all just fade away?

she became upset when i grabbed the box

of 144 teabags  i will never use them all before

i die   so this is why she wants us to buy the small

size of:  everything

except i doubt she’s dying  she’s been saying this

very thing from the beginning   i’ll never make it to

your bar mitzvah   he’s 26  +she’s a very alive 95

when i said: i will take the tea bags home after you’re

dead  she was unimpressed   ya sure you will   i.e..,

she knows they will go into the garbage along with the

giant box of:  Replens     don’t ask  don’t tell

yesterday she told my skinny bro  (not chubbychubby

as the other one is known by the filiipinos at her retirement

home)  to bring one bandaid at a time  to stanch her near

invisible grief

mostly  since she lost a son  she appears to be in the kind

of cocoon i wish i were in   the kind where u feel:

zilch

nada

nothingissimo

__

Spring 2019  ..nothingissimo blissimo..

life’ll kill ya

at about 3 am we hurtled thru TO streets  in an

ambulance  bro’s girlfriend having an event  young

paramedic  slid needle into vein  without skipping

a beat

bro+i   bouncing

girlfriend trancing

+writhing

once at mount sinai  girlfriend projectile vomitting

bro+i still pre-ptsd   but barely   in corridor a cop

with a gun  guarding a woman  redhair  +slurring

i’m 48 yrs. old  +i look just like my mother

looking good!  said my brother

woman now flailing at his head

i’m 62  +i look just like my mother  there’s no guard

outside my room   yet   violent rambo fantasies

flickering   kicking doors down  at a shady florida

hospice  bilking another brother  too sick for his

last stand

sister intercedes

pulls pin on grenade

now hurtling down  interstate 95  old bro riding bitch

and very much alive  73 tomorrow  his hair blowing in

the breeze

when we get to canada

old bro will be free

a new man with a future  and everything

__

Spring 2019  ..M.A… May 19, 1946 – October 21, 2018…RIP

holy roe v. wade

would someone please send up the

bat signal for me?   people all around

me  entrenched in their  tics   one even

asked me to re-phrase an observation

as a question   so i did

why are u so full of fuckery?

the answer is blowing  and the winds in

canada can be fierce   in may they rip thru

machinations like shit thru a canada goose

i need the bat signal most urgently  so that

the caped crusader  a christfigure if there ever

was one  might rescue me from contraryfuckery

__

but much more seriously  the women of alabama

need more than jesus right now

the vote is in   no abortions  even in cases of rape + incest

so please do send up the batsignal for them too

*if passed the new law would make performing an abortion

a felony  punishable by 10-99 years in prison  which is more

than the penalty for rape

how’s that for fuckery?

Spring 2019

i’ve got to pull a lazarus and i can’t even shine my shoes

a day of glaucoma testing  now pretty testy  saw more

blindfolks than i can ever remember seeing   and

seeing is not overrated   talking is   talk a thing to

death   and it will die

like 11:11

talked it up recently  all spiritual newagey   and now i

see only  11:08  and u know u cannot wait for the universe

to give u 1’s   it will only give u chilblains  where u sit   w-a-i-t-i-n-g

and waiting is for godot worshippers  and i am all  heathen  

• a follower of a polytheistic religion; a pagan   i need to pull

a lady lazarus  but first

come poet    

shut up

__

my typewriter is

tombstone

still.

and i am

reduced to bird

watching.

just thought i’d

let you

know,

fucker.

(Charles Bukowski   8 count  1992)

Spring 2019

dying is an art

Sylvia Plath

who in this merry merry month of may?

i climbed the eiffel tower with ms. semolina pilchard

and trained for the big fight with rocky raccoon balboa

i can sound like a legend  at times   especially re:  my

recent work  isolating an isotope  in a petri dish

it will eradicate optimism

+prehensile giblets in the upper

arms of most women

i wish i could promise you more

optimism is actually not my forté  eh

and in any case it has been proven not

to be the quality  most likely to win wars

there is a certain grit involved in seeing things

for what they are   in knowing that the half full

glass will be spilled  and the unicorn dehorned

revealing a grizzled old white goat  with nubby

eyebrows like my 3rd husband’s   i implore u

don’t get too attached to the rainbow  or the view

do linger before the spring cherry trees  pinkpetals

mixing with mud of april showers

__

Spring 2019  ..1st mother’s day..

..💔flowerpower💔..

the real wasteland

i came to a flat + desolate space  there was

a shed where festivities took place  filled with

china + x mas dinner  valentine’s day conflated

with st. nick   hermes weeping for my captivity

carltoncarded   largely disregarded   100 yr. old

birthday celebrant in roses+pinks  slept long and

often  dreaming of the homestead   a dirtfloor farm

house  where life was rife with life +death

so what can we say about the day?

needed tequila restoria   pot-oil transmutation gloria

and as i flew home over the frozenprairie  i thought the

serialkiller guy beside me  may have spiked my drink  his

left middle finger  on my mainvein  all the way to thunder bay

__

..and april is the cruellest month..

Spring 2019

ashes to

tell

me

about

that

ring

he asks   for the umpteeeeenth time

it’s a broken heart

sometimes a broken heart is just a broken heart

he continues

cause he’s so smart

aren’t all broken hearts the same in their brokenness?

no they are not

my own reeking of an old maritalcorpse  diamonds glinting

i wear grief on my middle finger  more easily presented

to the griefdeniers   unholypacifiers   +fools

we’ll give u 3 to 6 months  then we’ll drag u to bellevue

another said:    fake it til u make it

so what scares u more

my grief

or my strength?

__

Spring 2019

..in the matter of my own ashes..

scatter them in the ravine behind 52 Purdon..

at Marty’s tree UCC    at Lee’s grave..

and at the munk school reflecting pool u of t

bits of me  colourful outfits  loads of silver  where

i sat for 12 years  writing depressing poems

almost invisible

but not quite..

..some deaths , they explain, will never simply be “gotten over.”

..some mourners will never quite again “be themselves.”

(David Chariandy   Brother   ..on complicated grief  2017)

O Brother

everyone’s weighing in on whether or not

i should   go silver   my mum +i  will be silver

foxes  together  we now look like sisters  95+62

better news  for who?

i used to call my old bro  the silver fox   but he’s

lost now   an anchor of love keeps me sane on a

good day  but most days i am want to say:

complicated relationships are brutal to grieve

and ours was

halfbloods    same womb    visions of him while

in there   the handsome 11 yr. old boy i am still

tethered to

__

Spring 2019  .. may 19th  silver fox bro with killer grin  would be 73..