songanddancegirl

dead poet’s society

making a will  is apocalyptic  permutations proliferate

minute by minute    your deadhead is spinning

machinations macabre   perhaps you’d like the spoils   while i’m still alive

our old mother  in delirium praecox  shrieked this very thing  to a muscled

nurse  in the presence of a cowering brother   we’d  taken care  of her money

for years   and upon her death  a mere  buck ninety-five  survived

my current husband  wants to leave his estate to the  Treehugger’s Society

he an avid Scottish forester    i’ll be dead   so i don’t care   though i would

have liked a bequest with more  flair

my own funds will go  (after the last bro falls)  to the  Society of Taxidermists

these fine men+women   will haul dead poets  out of the fouled-bed   and

prop them up   with a nod to former splendour 💃🏻

my own visage will be adorned with flaming red hair  a wild smirk   and an

extended middle digit   to all of the besmirchers  +sick-o-phants    and the

old geezers   who slobbered as they followed me   along shit-stained streets

___

..grant me an old woman’s frenzy..a wild wicked old woman..

myself  i must  remake   retake..  (W.B.Yeats+ AAC)

Winter 2024

NOT Alice’s Restaurant

have you ever been to a restaurant  where the patrons

are hungry  for more than just food?   they may want to

eat  you    and do    with their filmy eyes

most well past their prime  longing for your now  grubby

youth  your clutching grasp  on perfection  your sparklyshoes

they long too   for their young husbands

their bodies  verve+densely sexual   they covet your  (still)

freedoms  to jump in your car   and go!   what does it feel like

to drive   to go to the opera?  to prance?   asked Ellen

she who died beside  her starving cat   but seriously   just don’t

go there anymore  even though their sprinkle cookie takes you

back to Marla Gold’s kitchen

where her mother Dora  serves day-olds  from her rich bros

bakery   and her new step-dad  (possibly a pervert)  lurks

what do you mean he made you keep the bedroom door open?!

___

my own mother’s response to us 12 year old’s  having to undress

with the door  wide open   (London Ontario circa 1969)

Winter 2024  ..go for the bratwürst at Ikea better..

Navalny Bibas Navalny Bibas Navalny Bibas

a lumpen brother  has called this poet  a besmircher

really i am just a girl who is into  MERCH  all the way

on any given day  i flaunt Kahlo  Lucinda  +the NBA

*(not nearly as shallow  as i might appear)

admittedly horrified  by Time’s   Person of The Year 🏆

how about  Alexei Navalny  or Kfir Bibas?  (baby Israeli hostage)

both posthumously   Alexei murdered in prison  Kfir in a bunker

so is this just sourgrapes  apes?   i don’t think so   with a platform

of  100 million  12-24 yr. olds  Tay could   CHANGE THE WORLD

go ahead!  challenge the swiftie hivemind  to fight for causes  near+far

education for girls in Afghanistan  birth control  safe abortion  equal pay

marital rape laws  genital mutilation   but no  our culture elevates the rich

the beautiful  the private plane      the mundane

growing up at my father’s knee  i learned: don’t spend other people’s money

and do  spend more time with your dog  all of this is not Tay’s fault  but how

about a little   swiftie-consciousness-raising   O Personage of The Year?

__

..Forbes puts Swift’s net worth at an estimated $1.1 billion on the low end..

based on analyses of her fortune..

Winter 2024    ..Oh Bartleby  Oh Humanity..

his trophy wife for life

tinywaist  numerous gentleman callers

dowry  semi-sizeable   slender +torture

35 yrs. in a waring blender

well she really worked me over good

dénouement riffs   lean to maudlin  but there is

no elegant way to say: i never thought it would

be this hard   or this fucking amazing grace

__

..this life is both beautiful.. and cruel..  Carl Gustav Jung

Winter 2024     ..thanks Carl..

where the hell is Elijah?

when you need him most  when you cannot tell  if they

are praying over Lee  or cutting out  his beating heart   37 yrs. ago

your father  was on ice   in an ICU   on  University Avenue

heart by-passed  oh this’ll save yer life  not only did it not

it rather left him in a purgatorio  that lasted for the rest of it

and he   NEVER   complained

he was too much of a rebel  for that  bitch-shit

he listened to jazz   conjured up his dogs   a concubine or 2

and with as much dignity as he could muster  sat and loved us

for 5 fucking years  until the birds came  on his final day

he had a scar from his ankle to his breastbone  beautiful

jagged    just like him   and on quiet nights when the voice of Ella

floated up   daddy +his old dog Jim   howled at the moon

__

Winter 2024    ..a year older than i.. when he died..  RIP Rockin Daddy!

the grinch who stole swiftmas

Taylor Swift  a pop princess  Santa on steroids

they track her  +her reindeer  (aka..rein it in dear)

across the un-friendly skies

she is apparently  singlehandedly  destroying the

environment  with her emissions  vocal+otherwise

gaseous pop  until you drop

she is the light  $$$$  in Donna Kelce’s eyes  perhaps

soon to marry her son Trav   all buffoon +tight end   at

the conclusion of the Super Bowl  he pounded his chest

a scary-hairy ape  cameras panned to Tay’s face  oh the horror!

we saw a sweating Trav approach her  with a  come here girl  

bellow   as he grabbed her well coiffed tail

perhaps you read into  the green with envy here   but surely  if i

had my own private jet  i would spend my days ferrying orphans

from war torn environs

or would i?

__

Winter 2024    ..even old Joe Biden wants her..

drop off the key Lee + set yourself free

at 24   Lee enlisted  WW II in full swing   12 yrs. later

he became  my sweetfather  i was  his only daughter

in my grade 6 autograph book he wrote:

to the greatest little filly of them all

that was on August 16th  the same day he died  decades later

at 68  of a brokenheart   life’ll kill ya  then yer dead  sang Zevon

+he was right   life pummelled Lee  +Lee pummelled life

same for Elvis  who also died on August 16th   houndogs both

father’s military file describes him accurately: powerfully built

smart  cocksure  a semi-pro athlete  +boxer   Atkins may prove

a problem in training   he may want to be  the boss

i think that i am cocksure too  though as a woman there are

other less flattering designations:  ballbuster  bitch  witch

i’m daddy’s girl     so don’t mess with me mister

5 husbands under my belt   3 i killed  with my bare hands

the other 2  remain devoted   but back to daddy   another

descriptor was:  temperamental instability 

i believe this to be  a catchall phrase  for cocksure men  with

piercing blue eyes  +big muscles  such men (+women)  can be

moody  angry  anti-social  +anti-authority

this apple did not fall far  from the Lee-tree

father was fiercely introverted  +did not suffer fools  with a steely

gaze he’d size up interlocutors  as would a tiger   in the wild  🐅

desk-dweeb assessor   lucky he wasn’t eaten

he saw  daddy’s moody depths  a wild young jazzcat  yearning to

be free    a fearless warrior   not amenable to  captivity

A Man

__

addendum: Lee’s brother was a coward  who hid in a closet from

1939-1945  +feigned a clubfoot  to avoid conscription  later in life

he stole Lee’s inheritance

Winter 2024   ..the root word for angina..is anger

i know an old lady who swallowed a fly perhaps she’ll die

yesterday whilst being crucified by yet another  gorypoem

a fly  flew into my nose  i know you will never look at me

in the same way    tuffnuts

but that is what happened  hard to pretend when a filagreed

wing protrudes  iridescent +torn  said fly did not emerge for

48 hrs.    okay  enough with the flies to shit jokes bros

so  was this fly giving me bubonic?  or comforting the other

creatures trapped within me   including my 1st husband

who among you has not eaten a living thing  or 2?

flowers  ants  e.coli  pieces of a throbbing heart you broke  bitch

i swear that fly visited  my soulhole   +reached nasal-nirvana

pre being ripped away   a buzzin + a shrieking🪰

what exactly did he find during his body-cavity search?   hair

the scent of sausage-debris   nostalgia galore  scent of mother

dogs  a horse  sex    +death  of course

also the scent of floral bath beads mother used to entice me with

dirt smudged  burrs in hair   faintly-fecal  wildgirl  ravine-pirate

hated bathing  hence a poetic bro’s refrain: you just stink a little bit    (oh so funny)

that exotic beadfume continues to envelope me  especially on graveyard

visits  when mother wafts up   it is always Spring inside my nose  (my name

in several languages)  + that’s no place for a rotting fly named   Harman🪰

__

Winter 2024 Imbolc  ..seeds stirring..winterflies resurrect..

lonnnnnng poem blues

the Jungians say  *individuation  begins when your

Gods die   the final 3rd of my life officially began

when at 65   an orphan made

98 yr. old mother in her final resting place   a not

so verdant cemetery   deadflowers  and a rude-dude

gravedigger

lady  it’s a hole   it’s not  Shangri-La !

my burly bros pulled me off the man  I’ll give you a hole !  

my own individuation  will be complete   replete with

lilies  + dungbeetled   when this orphan girl  dies

my work with orphans  over 30+ years: redolent of  bomb

shelters   of fantasy dates  at the Olive Garden  outcasts don’t

date  of never recovering from grandfather on the floor  from 9-5

he died while babysitting   stiff  +not answering  (grandad also dad)

all of my orphans begged to be taken  HOME   plaintive yelps

the odd kick  therapist how many guns do you have?  how will

you protect me?       i’ll do the best i can

i recently read about the reformed mobster  TJ Martin  also an orphan

his villain origin story: beaten savagely by stepmother  lived on the streets

from 16   his own infant twins   killed in a car crash   their mother too

TJ had one last score to settle with society   he is the man who stole

Dorothy’s slippers  now in hospice care  in prison  wheelchair bound

+oxygen tanked   Terry John was desperate to   GO HOME

who isn’t?  lost found lost again   the ruby reds  DON’T work for chrissakes

Mr. L. Frank Baum   but would you really want to return  to that childhood

home?    where the family drama plays out  in an eternal loop

fresh scars  new dog  mistress or 2  a tyrant uncle festering

or are you brave enough to let it die?  set out through the dark woods  rather

than rot in a purgatory of   what might have been   i coulda been a contend-ah

i coulda been a somebody     could you have?     are you not?

no ruby slipper will save you

should you not know the answer

nor a shape shifting charlatan  wizard

in another era   magicians were crucified

__

*individuation: becoming completely wholly oneself    a.k.a.

not caring if you get invited to their California parties    know thyself 

Winter 2024  …God is Dead..Spurn the Herd.. Nietzsche+AAC