songanddancegirl

heeeere’s marty!

these days i find myself doing my old mother’s

breathing exercises  she does them for anxiety

i do them to stave off madness  but they don’t

seem to be helping

as i parked my car at the grocery store this morn

i heard my brother’s voice say:  heeeere’s  j o h n n y !

with eyes wild+jacknicholson  i begged the pharmacist

for a double dose of numbing cream

my brother wasn’t in the parking lot  he’s in a plastic box

beside my bed  it’s been his home for one year  numbing

cream won’t help him now  but i may mix some with his ashes

the paste will be a goddamn panacea!

put hair on your chest  make you forget that he wore black

rubber gloves after chemotherapy   ditto the 16 yr. old chica

who died in the room next door  on the floor  where your

bladderman bro  rose  like a phoenix  like the prodigal fuckingson

on fire

__

Fall 2019

whitedustblues

where were you for those 2 days bro?  you died

on October 21st  but the certificate of crucifixion

says October 23rd   well don’t worry   the numbers

match   the one on the plastic box   +the one on the

brassy dogtag  shoved into your whiter shade of pale      ashes

being an unholocausted jew  i have never seen ashes

let alone cradled them  +wailed over them  i must say

that i expected them to be grey  cindery+magma  but no

yours are white with bits of blue bonedust

your great hair is in there  your even teeth  your smile?

no  i don’t think they allow smiles in crematoria  you had

the smile of an adolescent boy   impish   charismatic  +

i own u bitch   around the edges

an old world man in the new world   i earned your respect

by dragging you kicking+ seizuring  screaming  away from

yourself     selfhating     famewhoring     fatherless

__

(..the only one who didn’t know you had a father   was you..)

Fall 2019  ..RIP #15933..

marty when you gonna come back?

my brother’s ashes may appear at his wake  tomorrow

i say may as they have been MIA for one year  is it even

him in there?  who lies inside in that ornate box?  reeking

of crucifixion

Jesus  Marty when you gonna comeback?  been waiting

for your call  been setting aside 2.5 hrs to listen to every

detail of every meal u and the old gringos ate for $2.99

and i’m saving dollars for the call  as they usually run me

a double dix

Marty when you gonna come back?  i grow weary of being

poltergeisted   of vague heart orbs on my wall💔  + the repeating

4’s you flashed on our brother’s clock  as he lit his memorial candle

commemorating your disappearance    4 4    ever ??

i know you rail against the title of my next book: Then There Were 3

NO!  we will never be 3    why don’t u ever listen to me?   your

refrain in our final spat   cause me and said brother  took the wrong

train to your deathbed   with vim+ rigour vigour u screamed

You 2 never listen to me!   i told u which train   this as u grabbed our

cabby by his throat  +squeezed   Jesus +Marty  just come back      please

i’m starting to lose my teeth  and if u wait much longer  u may not recognize me

__

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,

till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast

thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt

thou return. (Genesis 3:19)

Fall 2019  ..first anniversary of your death.. and all the ubersensitive out there say:

it’s gonna get easier   and:  there are worse things than losing yer teeth.. !

..go away..

no barbarians at the door?

now what?

i don’t need your balm

your stinkin salve

your pallid comfort

in the absence of

chaos

loss

and cancerdocbarbarians

who am i?

slinker in parks

once stalked by a mad cousin

now weathervane jesus

portends a prairie resurrection

of metis mother-in-law

who will rise with the next

gibbous moon

__

it is night and the barbarians haven’t come

some people say that there aren’t anymore

barbarians   what will we do without them?

(Waiting for the Barbarians  C.P. Cavafy)

Fall  2019

hopesprings

oldmandown  in the lobby today  a regular

occurrence  in this place  residence of the

elders  and scores of redshirted women

from the philippines

a stones throw from the ravine  where our

family dreamed our bollywood dreams  not

squeakyclean   bootleggers   horsetraders

pirates of the london bridge  now in arizona

we also have a piece of land for y’all in florida

next to a reticulated python preserve  said the

spider to the mark fly  but no need to cry for us

argentina    the republic of atkins is strong

like bull

like kryptonite      (evil lex atkins brought us the patent in 69)

like we don’t stop

for nobody

__

FALL 2019   ..it’s coming on winter..

follow your cbd

was a time when bliss was free  and we

were joseph cambelled  up the ying

following bliss was de rigueur  but the

no exit signs made it treacherous

if u lived in bliss  wouldn’t that be akin

to  infancy  lunacy  headfuckery   this

search for happiness has got to  STOP 

soma didn’t work so well in huxley   the

brave new world   a place where   the one

un soma-ed man  the savage   hangs himself

is  cbd  the new soma?  how badly do u wanna

be sedated?  be all stepford wife with dead eyes?

husband #3 keeps asking me: what’s your limit?

the simple answer is:

the night weasels do not know from limits

__

Fall 2019  ..bring on 5779 bitches..

*the only beings whose life is irremediably and achingly linked to happiness

all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is

unhappy in its own way   so said leo tolstoy  in anna k

happiness   shiny   rosy   boring   fleeting

were we one?   yes   as long as we kept

our parent’s demons in separate rooms

our brother’s outsized wound   revisited on

the son  who has 2 sons  +will be searching

for his father in their eyes  under beds  on giant

waves  which do not wash away  the original sin

we were never boring!  ignoring all the signs that

one day we’d be pressed together in hallways  fathers

dying on gurneys   but also in dining rooms going through

motions   we think:  this is what happy families do

but the porch light is out  maybe we’re in the wrong house

who are these happyfuckers who vaguely resemble me?  

we are a richly textured  unhappyfamily   who once went on a

holiday  and a small turd floated above a swimming brother

on lake nipissing

__

Fall 2019

*(Giorgio Agamben, Moyen sans fins)

the ghost of marty joad

in a hospital    again

just a little posttraumaticstress

last time grim reaper  reaping

my bro

but u know  today is the first day

of year 5779   and it is time to let go

of the no way home show  because

the only way home is through  the

martycrucible   so today he is right

beside me   smiling and telling me stories

about  everysinglefuckingperson  he ever

met  and i am ecstatic!   healed   risen

and ready to be first

__

Waiting for when the last shall be first

and the first shall be last

In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass

got a one-way ticket to the promised land

(Bruce Springsteen  Ghost of Tom Joad)

Fall 2019  ..bye..florida hellholes..