songanddancegirl

Saint Zaida

a king among men  a gentle man  tailor  always clean shaven

clean shirt  suit-pants  boxing in the rocking chair  laboured

breathing  we left him in the mountains  at 87  where they don’t

cut pizza   dumbest bastards God ever created

Zaida  humble  what did he have?  a sewing-box  + his gentle dignity

i saw him last night in the street  he was going home  a still warm

corned-beef on rye  for the apple of his eye 🍎 (without kimmel!)

in his pocket   for Freda

mother told us the 10 cent sandwich was better than a lobster at Del Monicos

Zaida’s head can still be seen  in the window on our suburban street  beside a

giant black poodle  named for salami    the glory days!

Zaida’s Star of David

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Winter 2026  ..for Joseph Marlieb+Blacksonovitch..brothers in arms..

smell that smell

i was curious yellow  about those blonde-haired-blue-eyed boys

at our largely Jewish school  where jewfros were de rigueur

à la Bobby Zimmerman  and homes reeked of  flunken+ashes

ashes to ashes

these boys were different  one shoved a knife into my thumb  on the

way home from school  father was not impressed  Keith went to juvie

+stuck his tongue down my throat  upon his return  father not apprised

then there was Randy Eames  a blonde godboy  who reeked of danger

+Dean   did these boys know of novel ways  to screw  a Jewess Queen

in training?    probably

i never did find out until much later  when confronted with a feral

foreskinned accoutrement  i fainted   but seriously  i did like the

carnal smell of near violence  wafting off of these boys   +i still do

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First days 2026  ..beginning with a bang..

barnowl blues

this wretched domesticity  i’d rather be among barn-owls

than damp laundry  where moths have had their way

unholey  rank cottons  silks   wool eviscerate +webby

one dress  of the thinnest unborn lamb   shredded from

breastbone to hip  moths feasting in my $13,000 cherry-wood

armoire  made by Moe  a white-haired man  with too thick fingers

oh you must do some cherry for the lady!

to replace that  from long ago  rent in a damp suburban basement

by a pencil-thin accoutrement   Paris continues to elude   worms

crawled too  over aubergine wedding suit   holy-holey!

invisible mending made it worse  you simply cannot restitch a

heart   gaping-gash  now can you?  soon a burst-bursa  much like

the one  on an ancient poet knee

woe she be me

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Winter 2026  .. the year of metamorphoses..🦋

reverse-birth

my old bro gave me a book recently  with the following

inscription: Apes  for that special time when you need a

break from reading about…Death!!

it’s all about our rock n’ roll heroes  in the Canyon  Laurel Canyon

where perhaps one of the greatest bacchanals in recorded history

occurred   led by the freak-savant  Phi Zappa Krappa himself

a veritable Oz  filled with 16 yr old  groupie-virgins  sacrificed at the

altar of Dionysus  the smelly goatgod  also a fave of this bro  whose

frequent refrain to this budding child-poet  left much to be desired

you just stink a little bit

perhaps what he missed is that  all or most of the Laurel Canyon

rat-pack  are quite dead  no one escapes the Reap  not even Krappa

have no fear  all of my recent death studies have led me to quite  an Edenic vision

Death is the most peaceful experience one will ever have  bar none

getting there can be tricky  but oh those moments of letting go  pure

nirvana  a going home  the final act of the earthbound manimal

most akin to that first act of blood+amniotic fluid  the circle now complete

hey bro  you can finally move to Montana! a place where reverse-cowgirls

abound  Bardot a recent arrival

instead of incessantly spinning

that tune

as you have been

want to do

since 17

(when i was 17  it was a very good year)

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Winter 2025 -2026   ..time for new material!  RIP Brigitte Bardot..

only eighty-seven days until spring🌸🌸

light inching back  creeping  crepey  like my leg-skin  i used to see this

on old ladies  mottled  blueblue veins  if blood is red  why are veins blue?

blood is blue  a child client told me  when blue meets oxygen it turns blood

red   is this true?   still haven’t googled it    go ahead

he with spiky blue hair  lost hearing in left ear  boxed by mother’s boyfriend

he raped her at a bank machine   i remain cautious to this day  always men

bedraggled  a few dogs  cigs  and shit smeared  near the one on my street

today a storm so fiecre it knocked my 300 lb husband to his feet  leaving a blue

streak  where his head connected with the pavement  he  majestic  alien  blueblood

often speaking in tongues     aye

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Winter 2025  ..u try being married to a norse god..🚣

last temptation of ape

i’m done with bucolic  bucolic places that break yer

blackheart   with their treacle  +twee   fuck bucolic

bonhomie   the wretched chowders   stinking of lost

or is that Anne rotting in the attic of the Gables?

Apesie is on the Palms to Pines Hiway  heading

to El Paso via Louzeeeana    Marfa awaits

a town too cool  to be cool

dark cowboys  kitchen snakes

resurrection

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Winter 2025  ..

What’s the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.
(Cormac McCarthy  The Road  2006)

The Hoodoo Queen of New Orleans

she half naked  +freeze  in a doorway  New Orleans  a white guy

with a Snidely Whiplash stache  fingers her  long   greasy hair

dance pig dance!   (Waiting for Godot  Samuel Beckett)

i am on my way to see  Indians  it’s legal to say that word in

Nola  where legal is a relative term   i step over   gilded splinters

potholes  my blistersbleed  onto urinesoaked streets

where Indians  dance free

then there’s  Lightening Lee  RIP   he who kisses me  on a soon crepey

cheek   spittle hitting husband #3   teeth white  +glinting   masticating

blinis   in the outskirts   Siberia on St. Claude   Nola 2013

later on  our cab is late  we wait +wait  the heavens open  all biblical  +Noah

a lean man lying on the pavement screams  YUPPIES!   who me?!  a barker

with the voice of a bell  chants   there is a house  

the sun has set

the gloaming begins  lighting the Vieux blue   a steamboat sits on the river

about to light out for  the territories ahead   whilst this Becky T  returns to

a frozen tundra   +10yrs a slave

at a retirement rez

in year 8   a woman named   Gay Gahzint  says to me: i was in the Holocaust  

but i never thought i’d end up in a place like this   her hand shaking  skeletal

my old mother-inmate  simultaneously  stroking+kicking   my black🖤heart

Nola fades

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Winter 2025  ..where’s the Gris Gris man when u really need him?..🖤🖤

The Swamprat Rimbaud🐭🐭

do the dead remember that they’re dead?  probably   not  

they’re too busy   now recovering  from being alive

spent   concave    desiccate

soon seeds

lately i channel a darkeyed boy-man  with thick fingers

girthy  +dead   ruined by his priest  +his young mother

who gave him up on his birth day

these lost children love in a broken way  or not at all

love=pain  degredate  unkept  bitter slayers of kittens

sisters  wives   dangerous chameleon types

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..please sir i want some more..

(Charles Dickens  Oliver Twist 1837)

Winter 2025  ..even if u eat yer meat..u can’t have any pudding..

for  Frankie Stanford   poet of the swamp   the monastery

the outhouse  ..i was made to cut the throat of a fawn.. i have

known the evil procreated in the offspring of the bad ones..

and for M.A.

..if it wasn’t for daddy..i’d be in jail..

of mice +marriage +men

last year of my 60’s  about to be  fairly ancient

the rabbi at my father’s funeral said: every year

beyond 70 is a blessing   Lee made it to 68

i am about to overtake him   down the stretch

he was wretchedly young  +bypassed  +breathless

i forge ahead into the rarefied air of Monson’s sermon

the good Monson  married my parents + a brother

also me  to Ricky  husband numero uno   later he

conducted the get  written in Aramaic  for 400 bucks

he said: tell him he has to pay half   but Ricky didn’t

marry another Jewess  so i never collected   it sits in a

drawer   gathering dust mites   who hora incessantly

marriage is like that  dusty  prone to mould  also not

something a rabbi can rent asunder  i have spent 41 yrs in

its confines  there is green mould on current husband’s back

there is a kindness about him  huge lumberjack hands  fierce

doglike +wily    but not as wily as me  is it inertia  or love?

what’s the difference?

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Winter 2025  ..till death do us part..

Ghost Ranch

he wears an expensive houndstooth jacket  great shoes

he is scion  +dropdead handsome  scion to dynasty  of

horsethieves  bootleg +bookies   he is horsey too    but not Lauren

she is in black   Rita-esq   would never wear black in life

thought she killed her mother  when poet was 5   Freda in

black cardi at her mother’s deathbed  very superstitious    writings on the wall

her mother’s stroke in a rocking chair  eyes rolled back

oh the horror  poet the small witness   a cousin  who just

died at 97   in Alaska   slapped Rita hard  across the face

these are not their stories anymore  +they are not mine

so why drag ’em around   like filthy rags?   why?  

nature of the fate beast  eh

she wears black regularly now  turtlenecks  slim cropped

trousers  long brown hair   take the ribbon from your hair

rail thin   spirited

she is not my mother anymore  recently freed from bondage

to  children  vomitous-dogs  rake husband   she is fearless

men line up

she flirts brazenly  uses her whip on an as needed basis  while

down here i learn to be motherless   +free of her dependency   not easy

now both on brand new trajectories   glory  glory   Hallelujah! 

will you know my name?  the one  you+Lee  Louis  Ella+Basie

gave to me   Lee  if it’s a girl let’s name her Aprill   the 2 ll’s

blinking  11:11  11:11  11:11    blue lilacs in your hair  i’d know you   anywhere

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Winter 2025  ..blue lilacs your deathbed song  3:10 am  14/11/22..

There is a popular belief that making a wish when

the clock shows 11:11 is a powerful time for

manifestation