songanddancegirl

the afterlife?

what comes after cancer?  is there a cancer afterlife?

one could ask  The Boss  whose wife often spends

3 months at a time in bedsores  with multiple myeloma💣

or ask   Chuck Prophet  who has recently risen from

metastatic invasion  +ensuing enslavement  to chemo

and radiation     unprophesied+shock

as old Epictetus proclaimed 2000 yrs ago  don’t seek

for all to happen as you wish it would   rather wish

that all happens as it will   then your life will flow well

face it  there is no grand plan  no universal design  it’s

chaos in the trenches  and we are all subject to the same

forces  despite all the shit they feed us  re heaven+hell

btw  (..hell is other people.. J.P. Sartre)

good+bad things happen to good+bad people  why me?

why NOT you!  being free  really fucking no holds barred

free  means accepting  that you have   zero control

that your animal body will grow old +die  that your luminous

spark  your spiritus mundi  will lead you to the otherside  where

the light at the end of the tunnel lives

how much better would human life be  if they taught you+me

to believe that   impermanence  is not the enemy  grasping and

clutching at the mast of an ever sinking ship  is

(..the bad news is nothing lasts forever..  

..the good news is nothing lasts forever.. H.I. Atkins)

real freedom is diving in   courage is allowing terror   peace is

revelling in your abandon  said Tom Petty  who at 66  sat on his

couch  dreaming of retiring

with wife+grandkids  in an Airstream   💥massiveinfarction💥   

from 67 substances used to dull the pain of various excruciating

animal-ailments    so REVEL!    for chrissakes   REVEL!

__

Winter 2024  ..this little light o’ mine  i’m gonna let it shine..🔥

trailing horny cherubs do we come

birth is way more mysterious than death  we have a shelf life

+death appears gestating  +oh so patient  right from the first

breath     you will  NEVER  be that fresh

decompose  bred in the bones  the stoics will tell you to meditate

on death every day  befriend the blooddrunk Reaper  who creeps

thru walls  doors  floors  + fancy cotton sheets   dampgrotty

now bestained with  a dot of blood  from inserting the port  for the

morphinedrip  the one you begged a dwarfish nurse for   you finally

won Olga over   with tequila  charisma  +your lipstickrictus

birth is a different story  created by 2 humans  coital+biblical  sometimes

in a tube  you the imperfect clone  chip off the old block head  you will never

be as exalted  as pure  or as wretched

all primalscream + what the fuck?  10 minutes earlier you lay among horny

cherubs  +there’s the rub  you never asked to come here  now chained to the

body of a human-animal    you  with your weak chin  +hottentot apron

in April i will be my father’s age

when he died  and i no longer know

if i am   dead  or alive

__

..angels it is said  often do not know whether 

they’re  moving among the living or the dead..

(Rainer Maria Rilke  The Duino Elegies  #1)

November 2024   ..now buzz off..

silence of the lambs

they’re eating the dogs!

they’re eating the cats!

they’re killing the songbirds in Afghanistan

women barred from praying  reciting poetry

singing +speaking loud enough to hear eachother

be careful what you ask for bros  when the last

songbird falls  the sound of high fives  of beer jingles

of soccer jeers  of mine’s  BIGGER  than yours  will

ricochet thru temples   emptied of the fairest sex

who birthed the beasts  now wreaking revenge

for coming

from  that place

vagina dentata + mucosa

so

MAN UP!    boys

__

..in Iran women can be stopped by the secret police

and subjected to body cavity searches on the street

at the whim of ultra religious men.. 

(Reading Lolita in Tehran  Azar Nafisi   2003)

Fall 2024     ..bearing witness to the return of hate..

duckdreams

ancient river bed  behind suburban house

pagan wanderings  of heathen children  find

sittingduck family  hysterical catching   running

screaming    duck-ecstacy

catching a bird my childhood dream  hasidic

salting of bird’s tail    a girl’s first meditation

how close can you get?  asked winking father

dishtowel trembling   in 7 yr old hand

these days  silverbuckled cowboy belts  wet look

pleather  baubled   bangled  decorative-bitch   near

taxidermied   hits of dopamine  no longer from duck

slaying   zarabird in 67 yr old hand  of tarred+feathered    fashionista

__

Fall 2024     ..ouccccch!..

deathbed blues

my parents were born in different beds  but they died

in the same bed  old mother 98  wouldn’t sleep in  that bed

for several years   pre  The Reaper  (father taken 35 yrs before)

and though a man sang tantalizingly from beneath the

sheets  she insisted on the living room couch  narrow +

facing the door    (they’ll take me feet first!)

her future death beckoned  from the big brass bed   always

visible  the bedroom un-doored  mother un-moored   father

a ghost  dressed often as a giant hawk  waiting for his wildbride

mother lay like Nefertiti  father like a fallen angel   no longer

football  +jazzcat   in the corner Ella+Loius whispered the words

to   April In Paris   setting the mood for   Le Grande Ascent 🖤

Frances & Lee  November 14, 2022

__

Fall 2024     RIP Mummybird+Daddybird…..don’t be strangers!