songanddancegirl

SLEEP

IT’S BECAUSE OF LIFE THAT I CANNOT SLEEP

There are 14 leaves left on my tree  +a mad white

squirrel gesticulating at me (did he just flip me the

bird?)   Rogers no-showed after 3 hrs. on the phone

with: John  Infar  +Brett   This left me shouting

obscenities at Lexi  in Kuala Lumpur  who was sorry

I felt this way  But no more appointments today   I see

it was your husband’s birthday this week   Awesome!

But there are more important things afoot this November 5th

2014   Poor Barak will be a lameduck until 2016   & in Ottawa

a 15 yr. old girl was sentenced to 6 1/2  yrs.   for running a well

oiled human trafficking machine

On this day in 1954 Godzilla was born  Back then he was known

as Gojira  1/2 gorilla  1/2 whale    A hybrid beast born of our

destructive capacities  meant to be  Nature’s revenge for  The Bomb

Later spotted atop the Empire State building messing with Hedy Lamarr

It’s always been true that few things make one’s heart race like a good

revenge fantasy: Gorija comes upon the Rogers truck    He lifts it over 

his head +begins to eat it for lunch   Then he makes his way to L.A.

where he has recently earned a star  on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame

O Gorija  take me with you!  In about 2 days time  there will stand my barren

tree   + the albino squirrel will shit all over me  Divine retribution for invincible

optimism  & a precious wildness that simmers in the jaded botch  that is me

__

There’s no shortage of tormented things. Far from mirrors I feed

dreams of fame+travel, extraordinary men offering me necklaces,

words that can be eaten they’re so sweet, so warm, so corporeal.

Adelia Prado  1981

Late Fall  2014

SUPERSTAR

J.C.  SUPERSTAR

The fatbirds are in the trees  last count 660

Their sqwaklaugh spreads through West Queen

West  making even the holiest hipster feel foolish

Like on Saturday when Falstaff shouted at the well

shod Opera crowd: YOU ARE ALL FOOLS!

Then laughed a bellylaugh causing chaos to his fatsuit

Is Toronto becoming a reliquary of fallen media darlings?

There’s Rob Ford  +now Jian Gomeshi   He has not been

charged with a crime  +the allegations have not been tested

in court  Yet it seems a sport to pillory  and dig up the latest

viddy   This time: bondage +beating  during sexual activity

Of course if Jian Gomeshi is found guilty  he should suffer the

most extreme penalty  Sexual violence is not pretty  Ditto sucker

punching one’s dates  +shielding teddy from the harshest of realities

What strikes me  is that few ever talk compassionately about the

glaring need for therapy  or ministry  until it’s too late

It always felt like Rob might harm himself   Until cancer came along

+claimed him as it’s patient  he was routinely humiliated   Jian now

eviscerated  is M.I.A.   So I ask you gentle reader: What would Jesus say?

__

Late Fall  2014

CRACKED

MATERIALITY IS NOT WHAT IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE

I came upon a city of white ghostly porcelain people

2000strong at the corner of Avenue Rd. & Bloor today

An alchemical in-between a bit like Pompeii  All are frozen

mid-bite  mid-dance  mid-romance   Were they ever more

alive than now?   Were you?   Was I?   The scent of their

regrets hangs above the room   all ethereal  gloom+doom

The Artist-Maker (it’s cool to call artists makers now +not

return their calls when they beseech you)  sits at a work table

like a demented Goddess churning out people to fill cities  beaches

+graves    Today back in the real world they discovered a mass grave

in Iraq  with all the men of the village buried in it  (from 12 -56)

What of the women +girls?    More wives for the emir  of course

It seems relatively easy these days to build armies of women slaves

We hope against hope there are not copycat splinter groups   While

on boats+planes bound for the West   the radicalized look homeward

with misty eyes  & wolflike grins

__

Inspired by:

GHOST

A  GHOST  OF  A  DIFFERENT   COLOUR

Getting ready to celebrate  Dia de Muertos  here in

the West   Loads of fake bones & skeletal clones  +white

ghosts  (can we be a little more inclusive with our

horror paraphenalia please?)  

Do white people think that all ghosts are white? Casper was

white  +a generation of cartoon loving children became white

ghost lovers   Somewhat along these lines  Oprah opined to

the cast of FRIENDS:  I think y’all need to get a black friend

And though I am a member of an invisible minority (my nose may

give me away in certain circles)  I suspect that my ghostly avatar is

is Jew   through+through

__

GOD

WELL  I  CAME  UPON  A  CHILD  OF  GOD

curated samitches

curated kids

curated beau

Faux pond beside which I write this poem

In my gentrified hood  I have to look hard for signs

of putrifacto  (this a.m. a rotting bat   holy batshit!)

The alchemists spun straw into gold  maybe my local

hipsters can transmute boredom into curated passion

They sit in our parks in hoards at mid-day  Are they all

.com millionaires or just millennials without jobs?  In the

40’s they’d have been in foxholes  warplanes  +graveyards

Today there’s nothing grave about my 20 somethings  They

are super-beautiful  Dustypink cheeks meet overgrown beards

They are so hip it hurts   in places where  I used to be hip

In flowerchild places   In Quaalude bacchanalia places

When Zimmerman plugged-in  reverb woke up an old beast

birthing the Judas’  who crucified their King    Were those

simpler times?  Or just as sublime as the 50’s  when folks were

fried for selling atomic secrets  to Russian spies

Ethel Rosenberg’s brother recently died  He confessed that he’d

lied    Sent his sister to the chair to protect his wife    CAN YOU

BLAME ME?   he cried

The great mythos of our century  is that we are LIBERATED

Except that all of the LIBS   have just made us slaves to curated

ideologies  This week two 16 yr. old girls have embraced the term

feminism  They are: Girls Who Code  +they have invented a video

game: Tampon Run   Soon they will be on park benches  their faux

hippie skirts  swinging in curated breezes

__

Their voices thin+high+meaningless+at the same time profoundly

wild+sad   Life was created in the valleys  it blew up onto the hills

on the old terrors  the old lusts  the old despairs    That’s why you

must Wake Up  (William Faulkner As I Lay Dying 1930)

MID FALL   2014

FACE

PLEASE  REPATRIATE  RENEE ZELWEGER’S  FACE

I want to plumb  with dreamy morbid ardour   the

tentative   half finished  half born  thing   that is

middle stone age    fear loss vanity serenity chaos

wisdom defiance freedom self-loathing  +botch

O this longsinewydance through claustrophobic

corridors   of memory

Who is choreographing this show?  Hope the camera

man adds a touch of glow to our peaked pallor  now that

we are 1/2 way there    Where?     Is death life’s final

scorekeeper?  Or is life  death’s funhouse?  What’s the

frequency Kenneth?   What’s the score?

When the glorious Mrs. Reaper appears  will she be your

grandmother’s doppelgänger?  Before she spirits you through

the eye of the needle  she will want to know: Who must you

say good-bye to  before you go?   And your entire life will pass

before you    a la Ebenezer Scrooge

__

A final sense of being right out in the cold, unkissed.

My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.

John Berryman  A Stimulant For An Old Beast  1959

Mid Fall  2014

O CANADA

WHEN  CANADA  GOES    IT’S  ALL  OVER*

For Cpl. Nathan Cirillo  the Reaper looked like

Barbra Winters  former Naval reservist   His angel

of death   She told him: Everybody loves you  We’re 

all trying to help you  Your parents are so proud of

you    But they could not stanch the blood from holes

in his chest

Who was CSIS kidding ladies & gentlemen?  Leaving

those young soldiers to guard the War Memorial  without

bullets in their guns   The editorials everywhere say: We are

still standing   The True North strong & free    Except  NO

it’s not

Yesterday I heard a racist slur  on Yonge St.   as 3 young girls

in black hijabs  crossed my path some scraggly Canadian screamed:

DON’T BEHEAD ME

__

*New York Times Columnist  Robert Cohen

Mid Fall  2014

THERAPY

CASTRATION THERAPY FAVOURED FOR SEXUAL PREDATORS IN THE WEST

Africa pried open for all the world to see   The W.H.O.admitted yesterday:

A botched response to the Ebola calamity   Now the entire world is Ebola blue

The virus no longer wicked & away   On Saturday a bridal shop in New Jersey

was closed    Ebola nurse had visited with her soon to be married sister

Then there is Boko Haram selling off Chibok girls like cattle  at 25-1000$ per

head   Some executed   Some committed suicide  The U.N. reported that: captured

teenaged boys as well as girls were routinely sexually abused

While in the Middle East  the estimated number of enslaved Yazidi women+girls

has reached 7,000   The Islamic State is proud to admit their viciousness  using

religious rhetoric as a shield   Most of us just think they are sexual predators hiding

behind  The Word    It’s an enslavement project says Matthew Barber  U of Chicago

While the U.N. says:  jihadi abuses may amount to war crimes

One young mother   after her husband+father were killed in front of her   was

dragged by a bloodspattered captor  to the house of a man of 80  She escaped with

her baby  as her new husband slept

Don’t be naive  Don’t believe  that the girls will be returned   They are being held in

schools  community halls  prisons  +houses    They will become spouses  to the

leaders and emirs   Let’s face it   The girls have disappeared   In Nigeria  Goodluck

Jonathon is running for re-election   He says: We will bring the girls home 

Mr. President  what type of services will you offer to your country women?  Who after

6 months in captivity no longer own their souls

As weary grows the West   As empty grow the beds   Do you feel well?   Are you

feverish yet?    You loiterers    You tourists of the war zones

__

Mid Fall 2014

WAR

THE  NO-NAME   WAR      (HOW  ABOUT  WWIII?)*

Woodsmoke in the air  just received T.O. glare from

petite mother with tiny tot   This rankles  +prickles

My kindly has gone missing  as I sit here hissing a tune

Even find myself glaring at hardworking squirrels   +lanky

blonde children   For pity’s sake why are they not in school?

Today Barak & Angela met with the U.N. security council

to outlaw jihadi-tourism  Many of us are wondering just how

they will accomplish this   What are your reasons for travel

today Mr. Terrorist?   Perhaps this is why petite mother scowls

She knows her kid will inherit a  headsonpikes  kind of world

Thought we’d finished with this by 1792

Found a new park today  where eco-friendly parents escort unholy

group of children    most barefoot on ground full of rocks  glass +

excrement   Kids now running for the ice cream truck   20’s blowing

in the breeze   I thought such parents were against the evils of white

sugar?  One boy wears an: I’m Not A Role Model  tee   I begin to wonder

if woodsmoke is from a scented candle

Without Haji Obama we would lose our heads said  Sheik Mohammed Bozan

It seems that illness is in the forecast    while back at the U.N. Barak &

Angela dance  real slow   Was a time when poems flowed about ochre

leaves  +scent of coming snow   Not a single mother wears lipstick here

in my new park  *(MAC City of Sin could do wonders)   While  off camera

there is a scraggly wolf   scaling the Gates of Heaven

__

*(Name For War Against Islamic State Could Come By Wednesday)

Headline  Globe & Mail October 15, 2014

Mid  Fall  2014

NEUROTIC

TO  BE  OR  NOT  TO  BE   HAUNTED & NEUROTIC

Now 1/2 empty  in shimmering dilapidation   remembering

the days of kittenish anticipation   Almost spoiled the sweet

Thanksgiving spuds    Too much chaos in old psyche  to use

utensils with care   Sauce does not fair well   ginger allspice

nutmeg in heaps  tastes earthy  old  unsweet   (throw the

orange mo fos out   my inner poltergeist screams)

How To Re-Invent Yourself at 60  For Dummies   the book is

called   1/2 of me wants to crawl under a rock   1/4 wants to

eat cake   1/4 wants to soar once more   before rigor motionless +terrific

__

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are

emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you

are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know

what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. 

William Faulkner   As I Lay Dying  1930

Fall  2014