songanddancegirl

shake rattle und roll

i just can’t seem to shake it  no matter how

hard i try  maybe i should stop trying?

let it all

sink in  and down  and out

roll with it

fer chrissakes

 

memory-lobotomy anyone?

 

the tall smokestack  reminiscent of ?

why does an urban hospital

have a smokestack anyway?

 

what are

they

burning?

  

souls of the operated

and

the sainted ones

who

didn’t make it

those jagged telltale scars

on heads  ✖️☠️✖️

i tried to look away

hey

i just can’t seem to shake it

3 am  stretcher races

the ballet

to get you onboard

so many lines

attached to you  who

has been

fished out of your life

 

now a manfish

on a line

my mother is a fish 

says Vardaman Bundren

as his mama lay dying

(William Faulkner 1930)

 

a tall east-europe man

with slittyeyes

heave-hos

the sheets

and lifts you

off the stretcher

 

you rise

like

Jesus The Magician

we race to bowels

of the hospital

where resides

the MRI  monster

 

there an ancient

grandmother

slackjaw +police

is naked

sometimes

screaming

 

don’t look

don’t look

 i tell you

 

i just can’t seem to shake it

 

..i don’t know why memory won’t go away

it hangs like a bloodsucking leech out of

the bottoms..

(Frank Stanford  Battlefield  1978)

do i have the blues?

my life smells

like

the blues

reads

like

a broadway play

bleeds

like

a new tattoo

adulthood is not

for everyone

hoodwinked+hoodoo

hood of Reap

comin fer yous

 

STOP TIME!

(Frank Stanford)

13 minutes

pre-pulling the trigger)

 

puer extraordinaire

his ticker full of bullet holes

adulthood an imposition

 

childhood dies on a clock

 

longest moments

of my recent life

watching my

old mother

watch the clock

 as she lay dying

the clock ticking

toward my departure

leaving her alone

to contemplate

the moment

I’d return

 

YOU’RE LATE!

 

 fuck  why can’t I seem to shake it?

__

 

Summer 2026  ..for the risen..

shoot the messenger

..the truth when you finally chase it down

is almost always far worse than your darkest

visions and fears..Hunter S. Thompson

was i born a Cassandra or was I groomed?

that sounds semi-creepy  except that yes

i was groomed  in the trenches of my family

an exhuberant/aberrant  family of origin  that’s

what we called it in therapist school  +of course

all  the rap ists   born Cassandras

truthysoothsayers  one+all  reviled too  if  they

don’t like your jibjab  awful close  to the bone

we hone truth  exposé of veins  of the nittygritty

under the flap  where grieflovehaterageliesflies

+rotting brisket remain   like in a draincap

 

for you novice therapists  there is a flap  zippered

+camouflage  in women: under the left breast  or

its remains

in men: it resides on the side the rib was taken from

Adam  to create Eve  or was it Eve’s rib that made Adam?

 ..behind every great woman..

prick me + i bleed  into your flap  all over you +the

floor  truth is a messy business  +highly theoretical

to some

 

there are degrees:

she is the only woman i ever loved 

i jilted the one  before her  a plump-pudding

of a deli-queen  her father owned Moishes 

 

i never had sexual relations with that woman

finger wagging pencildickstabbing liar  poor moni

 

true confessions

i love money

+beauty

+the zigzag

9 inch scar

on your leg   spinal fluid refill

 

is this true jew?       (who you calling a jew?)

true blue

 

they cannot

undo

unscrew

unsee

unsew

you back

together

 

Aprill  

they’re going

to cut me

from stem to stern

 

word

__

..i love all of your jagged scars  (all 276 of them across 4 bodies)

they are more beautiful than once pristine skin  any day of the week

Frankenstein has nothing on yous..

__

Summer 2026

..ok enough with the truth already

hands up if it has set you free..

  

 

 

what is the shape of absence?

bubba’s chicken pluckers

white ashes with bits of martybone

mother’s yellow cats-eyed sunglasses

in New Orleans after Katrina coffins floated out of

shallow graves  the bodies freed  some danced the

bamboula   some continued on to Zion

maybe that will happen here  up on Bathurst St.

where in your coffin i placed the above noted items

somehow in my shock i forgot i’d never see them again

or you

i will dust you off dear  you’re probably a bit damp too

and hungry  don’t ask  we’ll go for lobster  the world now

less motherless  + me sporting your mouldering yellow

sunglasses  Welcome Home  Mummybird!

__

Spring 2026   ..how ’bout watering the goddamn grass at the cemetery?..

 

 

what is the scent of absence?

Paris by Yves Saint Laurent

Paco Rabanne

Toe Jam Football

falling stars streaking thru the sky  in daylight? !

asteroids? comets? the end of days? apocalyptic

crazed dreamscape  long streaks of light  like

lysergic trails  seen at 14  frog blotter in burbs

walking home at dawn  teen warrior minted  in

david fuchs bedroom  long haired freaky people

need not apply

morning after the dreamy light shower  newsflash

daytime meteors !  the Arietids peaking  like me?  50

was the ultimate  still robust-vibrant  a rock n rollin bitch

for you   now penultimate    powers simmering   in the

crucible of ape

 

stew of old jew

eye of newt

flowerpower interruptus

don’t despair rebirths do happen  right up to the last

second  +afterward too  martino a brand new babe

with a brand new bladder  not the frankenstein one

from the florida cancerward  father married!  looking

dapper  in a wedding suit

mother in capris  cardi  +cig  ohhh so Audrey

luminescent-incandescent  +waving   Hi Mum!

swoooosh   flying past   bumps my head   now

windshadow💥streakinglight

i’m slowly getting used to being here without you     (is that even possible?)

you can’t imagine how different it is  how it feels

from 30,000 ft   above our city   the first time

returning after you died  so EMPTY   now 4 yrs

later  the strangeness commonplace  ingrained

a motherstain

..the work of grief is to face the reality of the absence..

__

Spring 2026  ..you want more..

 

 

 

 

 

 

the motherlode of marian apparitions

i watched her coiffure  the toilet paper ceremony

mahogany skin  burnt cinder of a woman  clothes

meticulously placed on fence  suitcase on the brown

sodden ground  soggy rivulets  sacred substances

monsoon rains for days  she remains encrusted

muddy+golddust  like Frida K.  when she lay under

the bus   crucifixion thru pelvis   future gangrene

waiting in the wings   27 doves crushed  along with

Frida’s right leg

golddust woman in park finishes her coiffure  places

a checkered jacket over her head  sleep of the near

dead  for 3 hours  as poet in silver pants + Jackie O

tee  tries to give her some dignity  by not watching

someone’s  motherdaughtersister  hobbled

 

but is that even the case?

 

she is always smiling  + has a kind of  flotsam-freedom

hey  i don’t need your dignity handouts   comfort queen 

but wait!     she levitates

are those doves?

is that a leg?

is this marian?

Frida?

Frida?

Freda?

__

Spring 2026  ..mother sighting trinity bellwoods park today..🧚‍♀️🧚‍♀️