songanddancegirl

uneasyrider

met him at 25   he just died   on a hog  in

aspen  1st wife often with powdered blu-ish

black eye  he was effusive  handsome jersey

jewishguy  accent like scorsese  mobsterlite

violent death on that bike

2nd wife at home in florida (at least he didn’t die

there  where hospice care has gone missing)  2 kids

now searching through rubble  boy has his square jaw

and anger issues?

but he was undeniably beautiful  last pic of him on a

facebook horse  teeth gleaming  now the gloaming

seeping along cemetery walls  duskdances about to

begin       they rise

__

..Colorada state police release the name of motorcycle

rider, 67 of Del Ray Beach, who died sunday on U.S. 21

driving a 2015 Indian Chief westbound , when he drifted..

Summer 2019  ..RIP  S.E.  1952-2019..

..we don’t see people for months

then they’re dead..

(Virginia Woolf  To The Lighthouse  1927)

they shoot behemoths don’t they?

(venezuelan poodle moth)

the groundhogs chased youngest up the

back stairs  snarling   their progeny  people

the house now   the house that housed the:

mother father

three bros one sister

ten dogs  twentyfour pups

one rabbit  one squirrel  fish

one turtle eaten by poodle

backsplit ravinehouse  sunsets in living room  bigreds

boy who killed his mother returns  prodigal-jerry  in a

bathrobe  now his orange javelin  spewing dust of the dead

father

brother

grandfathers/grandmothers

all dogs

so far

the still alive  inhabit new houses  while the earlier house

decomposes in their basements   in their dreams   and

new moths eat the new clothes  and the family pretends

their moth problem has been solved

__

Summer 2019

..here once someone had lived; there had been a house..

(Virginia Woolf  To The Lighthouse  1927)

(transmutation of blacksonovitch the family poodle

now a poodle moth in heaven)

the wasteland

i met a girl at starbucks   she said:  i always

wanted to be named after a month   we settled

on   december   her eyes black  skin ebony  many

say jesus was ethiopian   father of the lost tribe

wandering north  on florida highways

i met a man at my mother’s retirement rez   a child

psychiatrist  named ted   a pioneer in my field

ted took a liking to me  +gave me a book on child

psychiatry  when i mentioned it was on my office

shelf   ted said:

you’d be better off reading it  

he also gave me  17 pages of poetry  each with the

month of  april  writ large:  whan april with her shoures

soote   +  april is the cruellest month    chaucer + eliot

among others

when ted’s wife died   my mother said: ted’s hungry   so

we took him to the cafeteria +bought him lunch  i lifted his

walker into the trunk   ted’s dead now   and i kind of wish

they’d struck up a relationship  she’d have loved to marry

a doctor  or a baseball player

__

April is the cruellest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land   mixing

memory and desire  stirring dull roots

with spring rain  (t.s eliot  the wasteland  1922)

Summer 2019   RIP  Dr. Ted Rosen  ..a mensch..

bride of frankenstein rides again

43 years ago right this minute  we were

getting ready  for wedding #1   nineteen

+heading into 2nd yr. U of T  where profs

would call me   MISSUS 

feminism in infancy  along with bride to be

groom my boyfriend from 15   silk chiffon

teal traina dress   matching flying nun hat

of my own design

bride to millner:

have u seen the flying nun?

and so on

today groom is in his 3rd marriage  with 2 kids

none with me  he is happy +independently wealthy

while i returned to proletarian roots  +toiled in the

trenches of humanity

parents just happy i didn’t end up a missionary  better

a divorcé   dad i‘m going to adopt 2 zimbabwean children

shouting match in a walk-in closet ensued  + a dowry rapidly

produced

daddy’s gone

groom’s mother too

grandparents

great aunts +uncle louie

groom lost a sister

me a brother to cancerinteruptus

not a single friend still married

arranged shtetl marriages not what cracked up to be  we went to

hawaii +frisco  19+23    2nd honeymoon to a school house in the

tundra   where new husband shared: my first wife asked  what about us?  

when i said i’d marry u   a shouting match+cigarettes ensued   but his

timing has been impeccable since

__

..it is the glue..

poet + numero 2   circa 1990

__

SUMMER 2019

welcome to the machine

has an experience ever unhinged a few screws

in your stability machine?  the machine that keeps

you jogging walking crawling into a happy ending

yesterday our neighbour kate died at 88 in her sleep

george her husband didn’t hear a peep   we saw lights

flashing on the ceiling quarter of 6   by then kate was

by-passing the styx

straight to the heaven for strong women   sent to the room

for advertising execs   she was called the first madwoman of

the jingle  next to the room for real estate agents and football

stars falling

next to the room for working class heroes   our grandparents there

but they won’t let us in cause we clawed our way up the ladder into

the middle class where everything is illuminated+irie

__

Summer 2019   ..summer of broken machines love..

do cows get cancer?

she’s starting to come out of it

8 mths of cocoon

around wound

i lost a son

i’ve come undone

i’m glad my parents aren’t alive  to see this

they worshipped him   and so on

would she be better off back in said cocoon?

selfishly  yes   

i wouldn’t have to field hardballs like:

i should have been there  

it was so   fast

should have

would have

didn’t tell u

suffer this until last grasp  at straws  that

slipped through fingers  even as you knew

this to be  criminal?  increasing panic as his

last days were numbered

or why not just blame it on him !

he insisted you didn’t know

or shove it where the sun don’t shine   along

with your other crimes   quarters from her purse

+informing her of the zigzag scar on her chest

after telling your dad:  I’m going to write a book

where everyone gets cancer  even the cows   he

being a man of the land who loved cows  said:

i don’t think it will sell

__

Summer 2019 .. wouldashoulda ..

*alexander solzhenitsyn beat me to it dad

with  The Cancer Ward   sold zillions of copies

and was released from the gulag  

free like marty+lee 

A MAN

ivanka’s father put her in front of despots:

uun  as my 95 yr. old mother calls  pudgy kim

+ the one with the pointynose  who wrestles bears

in his dreams

my father introduced me to a king   a giant shepherd

killed on dufferin st.   + tex  our docile horse  rescued from

the glue factory

i cannot help but wonder about the father of prisoner #A-8541

henriette cohen  the oldest holocaust survivor in france  who

died tuesday  at 103   her father hid her from nazis

here i sit in canada  missing lee  gone this summer for 30   if a

nazi had touched me  he’d have been quite dead  at the hands

of lee  he of gentlebullish tendencies   fierce +paul newman

now a star up there with football bro marty  glimmering  +phospherescent

on horses  in the high chaparral   first post sunk in the fence of family

compound yesterday     the wagons  now circling

__

Summer 2019  RIP Lee Atkins  A Man  1921-1989