songanddancegirl

ratatat

she was gnomic  +rat   small with 4 teeth +5 hairs  maybe 8

prettysweet  in a Chuckie kind of way   she was the security

guard at what might have been   a brother’s new home

except that while visiting the cemetery earlier in the week

he and i were cruised real low  by 2 giant hawks+their hawklet

this while visiting our parents graves

these very same hawks had carted mother away   snatched her

from the balcony  one fine autumn day   now a talon  glint-swoosh

amidst feathery clumps of LSU shell   +there was brother  lifted up  up    +away

all very Mary Poppins if i do say    these days i visit RatLady  who confides

she’d had a moist-on  for he who flew the coop  to live among the giant Raptors

where angels fear to tread     they’ve made him their leader

(all who are faithful  follow me!)

nowadays he divides his time  between swooping  +inserting talons into the soft

fleshy arms of old ladies on the street  soon he will come for RatLady  +lay her down

across his big-grassbed   +play with those 4 teeth   which appear to be quite loose

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FALL 2024  ..what would Zimmy say?..

don’t tell me what the stoics are doing

each day is a life  

Seneca

we tell ourselves stories in order to live  

Joan Didion

you can get new toilets  but if you put the same old shit in them

they’ll still overflow  with the same old shit  

Aprill Atkins Cameron 

amor fati  (love your fate)

Nietzsche 

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i remember when they lost their parents  mother wore black well  taffeta gown

Jacques Fath  Paris  1952   black velvet hat  with netting  i kept these all my life

in bags stained yellow   time colours moistcotton   skin too   where cigs held

where liver spots dwell

mother wore black  at what would become  her mother’s deathbed  +NEVER

again  the opposite of widow’s weeds   reversefuckingsuperstition !  a death

not pretty   old Sarah’s stroke  witnessed by 5 yr old poet   mother went all

Clytemnestra   pulling her hair out  running back+forth

bitchslapped  by a cousin in the garment industry   boy did mother grieve

HARD  for the rest of her life   (just like me  for her softhands+beauty )  mum

do you think your mother would have liked me?  she’d get down on her knees

and worship you    mother a gorgeous drama queen

father lost his mother  to brain cancer  she’d had a premonition  pre her

final Florida sojourn  if i die  don’t let your mother come to my grave  or

anywhere near me   this our final goodbye   i didn’t tell anyone   mother

visited her everyday

sat by her side  combed the hair  of her now demented mother-in-law witch

who’d hated  her Paris past   father wept  enfrailed+yellow  he’d caught his

mother’s  Hepatitis C   deathbeds germy   father weakened  +died soon after

a shadow of his former  football-self    she took his manhood to her grave

who by slow decay?   now i have lost both my parents  orphanpoet  who among

you will remember me  from this time in the veil of tears?  in the crucible of gutted

how i howled over their bones  their dust  how i healed  will heal  am healing forever

because i was given to them   because i was with them at all      LUCKYGIRL

they loved the shit  out-of-us  despite  maybe because of  their woundedness  every

Saint   broken a little   my young child clients   abandoned at birth  or kept  what’s

the difference?  starved  hit  raped  burned  +on+on   and you cannot make up for

these holes   you wanna be slipped  the answer?    you just were

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Fall 2024  ..that was Paradise! +we were kicked out of Paradise..(husband #3)

..stay just a little bit longer..

deardiarydeardiarydeardiary

what do  Anne Frank  Marcus Aurelius +Thich Naht Hanh

have in common?  all diarists  Anne only 13   i too was a child

diarist   Ashkenazi   un-holocausted

my diaries were hidden  under my bed  and later inside the giant

hole  a crazy bitch poodle  (father’s designation for Dilly)  carved

into the side of the bed

also in the hole  my stash of black hash  a fair-sized piece nibbled off

of a giant slab  belonging to my BIG BRO  i was given the  smell test

by father  who unwrapped the  tarryblackblock  oh so carefully

BIG BRO’s bestie  Howard Cohen  had brought it back from an African

safari   pre-law school   what is it Ape?   father queried   i sniffed

i gawked   my druggie friends had ounces   NOT  keys!

gee dad what is it?!  looks like liquorice   OK  she doesn’t know what it is 

it was that easy!  my mattress hole a cornucopia  where mother regularly

found my diaries   and thought the hashish liquorice   she a true innocent

until winged   at 98

mother read said books in horror  and i was often pistol-whipped   in the end

i needed to invent a code  each letter of the alphabet turned hieroglyphic  with

pilfered pics  from same bros Playboys  illuminating my manuscripts

there was  Barbie Benton  lushboobs  brown verdant venus  +Dorothy Stratton

later murdered by a sadist   simpler days in the bosom of my family   jazz wafting

reeferburns  on Art Shoppe couch

giant mastiff beside father

often teaching him to speak

my parents walk on water

my bro on golden cleats

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Fall 2024  ..for Anne .. June 1929  Frankfurt – February 1954  Bergen Belsen

rabid scavengers of care thesickthelonelytheafraidtheold

Virginia Woolf in her essay  On Illness  said: ..illness is the great confessional

a childish outspokenness..truths blurted out which the cautious respectability 

of health  conceals  

she was right  i spoke in tongues of pain  to anyone who would listen

the man who washed the filthyfloor  the woman who brought the tray

of  rubberchickens+greaseymash

hey anyone in there?   you look alive   but you are not  nervesfrayed

too many scalpels to speak of   do they really use scalpels on virginskin?

one doctor shouted:  has she signed the releases?!  

he knew i’d sue his doctorass  if he killed my husband  or worse  maimed

him   whose Viking splendour all heldentenor  he should probably have been

an opera singer   not a hockeydangler   part-time wrangler   friend to buffalo

illness has had its way with my repartee  people run away when i enter a room

or act so weird  i start blithering about disemboweled cats    hey reader  

you still there??

Virginia knew a thing or two of illness  she walked into the river Ouse with

stones in her pockets  all Ophelia +streaming hair   dead at 59  her husband

Leonard at home with a pickled brisket  waiting for his brilliant bride

and waiting

and waiting

    not

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Fall 2024  ..human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way..

..there is a virgin forest.. tangled.. pathless.. here we go alone.. (Virginia Woolf 1926)