songanddancegirl

ecstatic confessions

I’M DONE WITH CANCER:

just when u all were threatening to stop  reading me

i agree   it’s been a time of    metastatic-confession

and  it’s over                   for now

you may miss it  +beg me to return with my radioactive

wordplay  my surgeons have both run away    one to

Greece+the Peloponnese    the other to the Mayo

where they took my great grandmother Molly   at 33

5 kids  +dead before the youngest turned 3   Uncle Louie

the sweetest bookie in the family

so i’m done with cancer  you just wait and see   come back

dear readers  + i will regale u with endless stories of sunshine

daffodils  +pigs      be careful what u ask for

pure Carlton card hell  +u thought cancer was maudlin!  but

you’ll stick around   ’cause everyone wants their hope on a

platter   with the fucking thanksgiving roast-pig

this may come as a shock  but hope thrives   i mean THRIVES

in the bowels of my local cancer hospital  where the emaciated

feast on  Miss Vickies  smile at bald children  +hope they’re still

here  in a year?

hey  how ’bout in 3?

PLEASE GIMME  5     my big bro’s   BIG ASK

He was given 2

and ran with them

all the way to Mexico   where he bought pinátas

for the children of strangers

__

(I have always depended on the kindness of strangers..

Miss Blanche Dubois .. Streetcar Named Desire)

FALL 2024  ..Happy 5784 ..The Year of the Doorkeeper..+signs showing the way..✡️

old iron lungs

they’re looking for nefarious items in my lungs

blacklungdisease?  my dignity?  of late it has gone

missing   cancer a too public  thing   (oh it’s a thing)

strangers tell you to  STEP AWAY  from the stretcher

your husband is festering on   perhaps they could use

some people skills?

everyone wants a kind of  effervescent positivity  from you

which has really never been  your operendi   you’re trying it on

though  +it smells like teenspirit   long fermented hypocrisy

but  NEVERMIND   Kurt blew his brains out when Frances

Bean was not yet 2  one of my then child clients said: we can’t

know that therapist    yet i insisted on   the truth

the child’s grandfather had died in a river  grandmother  in a

burning bed    denial anathema    only grieving heals grief

ie., like cures like      (whether u like it or not!)

but waiting for a cancer diagnosis is a fucking altered state

sweat-on-palms  heart-sakluptnischt   (yiddish for heightened

arrhythmic pounding in the chest)

but i don’t feel any of that  i simply want these robotic oncology

workers  to step out of their  robot-suits  and surprise me with

some shred of  simple humanity

you know  the kind where we call  pandemics pandemics  on day 1

and  wars wars  especially when  walkie-talkies  become weapons

of  mass destruction

in that case you would have to value  TRUTH  over  SPIN   7 million

plus  have already died of the spikey-virus  post WHO’s denial    who?

(exactly!)

__

…the truth knocks on the door.. and you say.. GO AWAY  i’m looking for the truth..

so it does!.. (Zen+The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance..Robert M. Pirsig 1974)

Fall 2024  ..new beginnings..💣🌻💣🌻

..and truthfully.. some oncology workers..are loverly🌻

(Ari.. Anne.. Jill.. Steve.. Grace..)

tales o’ the crypt

i’ve heard tell the crypt is a private+stonecoldsilent place

earthy-embrace  with mouldering   but I’ve never imagined

my peeps alone   ever

they are buried side by each  with trinkets placed in coffins

one wears a brother’s scarf  it was cold on the  feld  that day

a wicked storm kicked up  emblem of our old mother’s rage     (i’m what?!)

Freida  who loved life  more than life itself   regularly ate 6 ice cream

bars  in the wee wee hours   of sleepless nights  whilst serenaded by

unknown men   a maven  a heroine   though a useless shrink said:

they will interfere with your lithium  (mother was NEVER on LITHIUM!)

said psychiatrist  also spat on my need to  pre-grieve mother   dead

within weeks  at 98   dont kill her off yet   said she   i marvel at such

colossal stupidity!

you don’t take a good picture  mother told her

i’m not paid for my looks   clearly!    and not for

much else    either

our crypt is a busy place   unfetid  unwormed   you see  our parents+a bro

are  NOT  there   just some dancing bones  +ash  along with the hearts of

our child-selves   who mourn most pitifully    with wailing

post-bardo now   cutting the rug  at our starry ole homestead   where

the  rest of us will  oneday   land   father has  Muddy Waters  at the ready

Ella+the Duke too  +dog Satchmo  whose GIANT tail  thumps out  West End Blues

every great i have ever read  has pointed me in the direction of   NO DEATH

merely transmutation  why it’s bloody uroboric!

no mud  no lotus

no death  no rebirth

your spark inextinguishable    *(see the 1st law of thermodynamics)

__

FALL 2024 ..there’s no place like home..

The Scarlett C

it’s not shame really  it’s more like having your

number called   and all of a sudden  it’s public

Cancer  has entered the building

all stigmata + Ash Wednesday  mark of Zorro on my

forehead  slipped thru a crevace  into the shitabyss

but it’s not all fecal     and i think to myself

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

in new ways   in ways i never did

when i was too busy  worrying about

EVERYSINGLEFUCKINGPLAGUE

known + unknown   when i was a warrior

of    WHAT IF?   and   WHY ME?             (why not me?!)

    oh the sadness of victimhood

fuck all that  the gurus are right

what you   RESIST   PERSISTS

and finally  i fully accept the universal

shitshow   of being a humanwoman  hooked

into the fucking  space/time/continuum     for now

__

FALL 2024  ..for Cam..🦄 🦄 🦄

(as soon as i stopped fighting it all…i won back my steelydignity)

summer of blurrrrrr

whirlwind of tubes  beepingmachines  25 staples in a leg

and a crazy balloonlike contraption  taped to their heads

incase we have to  go back in

sounds like war  what is it good for?  adrenaline cortisol

grief  shock+awe  plentiful   now spat out into civilian life

six months lost     am i dead  or alive?

according to Unamuno: life+death are wretched terms to

which we are limited ..in this prison of time+space.. he hated

civilization    i hate everything   (Charity Royall +AAC)

clearly more dead

but today i am spat   into a low German cafe  the girls beside

me  are likely dead too  but they resist  the mortis  + in the lull

between bites of greasy-sourkraut  pinkish grizzel  on a white tee

highly curated affectation  +thrift   it’s difficult to feel alive

beside  the most shallow jive  known to mankind   you catch

my drift?

but i won’t let these Gen Z grifters  eating 34$ salads   with shift

jobs from 7-11 am  2 days a week  spoil my return to the life i wrested

from oncologists   +brothy turkey dinners    (barfacious to the max)

__

FALL 2024  ..we rise..