songanddancegirl

HOORAY

HOORAY   FOR  THE     RIFF/RAFF

It was a dingy bird with a yellow crest at its

throat  Hobbled by the door of Bacchus Roti

I didn’t want to look too closely   Would it be

a doppelganger of the 3 legged dog who chased

me in the park? (right foreleg long gone)

Or would it have a mangled wing   & a mangled

song?

Here comes the roti-lady   squawking   She has a

way with birds  shrimp   goats    In a moment or 2

Parkdale becomes Eden   The man running in circles

snatches the bird  from the gnarlytree  & lights out for

the territory   ahead     O this neighbourhood  built on an

ancient riverbed  with hipsters now 20 deep   at Walnut St.

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O to be radical  young  desirable  cool!

Stanley Kunitz  1971

SPRING  2014

POCKET

A   ASS   POCKET   FULL  OF     BLUES

and a scotch full of boob   Is anyone as cool

as the old Delta crooners?  Wake up on a grey

day in your stinkin city   Problems of the world

wearied   You wonder how the young man named

Bowe  a POW for a ¼ of his life    will fare

Will the released Commandos of terror  take down

another tower?  Will Bowe take a wife?   Resume his

old life? Or has he been turned like Brody  on Homeland?

Now contemplate the 2 cousins  14 & 15  found hanging

from a mango tree  Uttar Pradesh  Wednesday   India will

further revise its gang-rape laws   There’s some strangefruit

Billie Holiday   &  a band of angels wrestling with the ropes

Why the blues were made for times like these!

Just look at the ecstasy on the Howlin man’s face

Lift you out of the mud   & blood stained trajectory  of our

21^st century   Just listen carefully   The crossroads are everywhere

Juno Beach 70 yrs. Friday    Normandy looking clean & tidy

Blood swept out to sea

How low can you swing?

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SPRING  2014

PONY

YOU  KILLED    MY  PONY

Life is a combo of :  choices  judgements  forks

catalysts   gamechangers    will    genes   history 

skeletons  repetition compulsion   an  albatross or 2

And a lover who reminds you of : Joseph Stalin

Built a Gulag just for you  with rooms full of roses

in your favourite colours    Cupboards stuffed with

curated vintage     A huge diamond or 2

And a gilded cage for your small bad heart

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SPRING  2014

NIGHTMARE

WELCOME  TO  MY  NIGHTMARE*

My clients   2 four yr. olds   are not native

to this land   Kidnapped and brought over

under cover of night   They are not native

to crackhouses or police cars  They are   survivors

of: child porn  babybeatings  starvation

In our modern city   in the 21^st century

hidden in apartment blocks & shelters

Police knock & spirit them away    2 a.m.

A strange car drives them to foster-homes   all alone

They are native to the: war-zone  foxhole  closet

The truth has no heart  & life is long

__

*(Sam’s refrain at the start of every single

therapy session for 3 yrs)

FALL  2011

SURVEY

SURVEYMONKEY

Are you the blowsy embodiment of

the prevailing narcissistic delusion?

Do you have a chore whore?  Spend

your life wanting  getting  & emptying

only to need a re-fill?  Do you covet a

2nd tv  with fancy technology  invented

5 seconds ago  that gives new meaning to:

remote-control  soul-hole?  Do you have

 the words: wooden puppet on your t-shirt?

When was the last time you noticed a scent

other than the All-Protector  emanating from your

leathers?  Do you lead a master class in acting

every time you answer the phone?  Feign happy

busy   enchanted?

OKAY  I will stop torturing you  gentle reader

If you answered yes to 3 or more questions

something is festering in your pop-up life  & they

won’t want to harvest your DNA    Stand very still

something epic is about to happen  in 136 seconds

Did you miss it?

Ya me too

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Bonus Questions:

* hands up if you think life is pre-ordained

*hands up if you wish you could start over again

SPRING  2014

DEVASTATIO

THE  DEVASTATIO

Now used to Winter’s wasteland

we stagger into Spring    Cherry blossoms

corrupted    covering our streets

In  bankrupt daze of Summer we’ll

run from all that blue: umbrellas  canopies

pools and Margaritas    O false beatitude

Winter our beloved   & infuriating Queen

will not be seen for 183 days    So here is a clue

city-dweller: quarry the light   fill your cups & barrels

Greet the coming rigor mortis as royalty    & you will survive

once more with your little white face   to witness the return

of   Spring!     March 21st  2015

When terrified spring flowers shudder at our feet

Your winter-devastations  likely the best thing about

you    will stubbornly retreat

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SPRING 2014

SUN RA

WHEN CHARLIE MINGUS SLIPPED SUN RA  THE ANSWER

Vatican releases molestation figures 3,400

credible cases since 2004   To sleep perchance

to control your dreams   zap brain with gamma

waves during REM sleep  (Goethe U Frankfurt)

Only 250 Blue whales left on the planet

A final frontier of debauchery   cheri?

Can we now return to the Mothership please?

Only if your heart weighs more than a feather

& your soul more than a flea   By learning how

to control your dreams   you may reduce the

emotional impact of life as we know it  & there

is hope that you may recover   though the Oracle

will be in a perma-state of PTSD

No more premonitions  No more déjà vu   Remember

when it was impossible not to be alive?  Now gradually you

will fall prey to: Scapadoobopbopaphobia   (*fear of freestyle Jazz)

A lamentable state  for which there is no known cure

__

Le Sony’r Ra   1914-1993

SPRING 2014

SCAR JO

HER

She searches the urban streets

& country roads around Glasgow

She is the man-eater  An alienated

alien  landed in the  *(spoiler alert)

nude body of:   Scarlett Johansson

Much has been made of her eyes

(aren’t they always a touch dead?)

Less about her ears tongue fingers

nose breasts   Though much of the

western world longs to catch a glimpse

White Swedish orbs  pneumatic like

Lenina’s in the Brave New World

Scarlett now impregnated  always

impenetrable  I will never reveal the

father’s identity  or the precise location

of my G Spot

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Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month

we flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete

physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects

of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello,

without any of the inconvenience.

Brave New World   Aldous Huxley

SPRING  2014

ANSWER

THE  ANSWER  IS     BLOWING

You couldn’t find a normal girl if you fell

over one   I said     Later in the conversation

he repeated this sentence verbatim   We were

on the same page   He wasn’t hurt   more bemused

Knowing too  that as his oldest friend my words have

traction   gravitas    fidelity

I am sitting by a fountain watching a couple of ducks

one with an emerald neck & orange feet   the other quite

ordinary   They kind of flop into the fountain   It’s not a

dive   & it’s not a jump   It’s almost unintentional    One

moment looking at the water   the next  in the water

So are we puppets of some other force that is driving us?

Or do we drive ourselves?   My friend would say: You make

plans  & the Puppet Master  laughs    He  who always ends up

with fire-eating  Go Go dancers   slim androgynes     This makes

him pretty interesting   But to this he responds: If I am so interesting    

what am I doing here?

This is understandable    His Bedouin parents circumnavigated

the Gobi until he was 9   then made a bee-line  for civilization

He knows better than most  that normal festers   & that the

Puppet Master is in fact one : Robert Zimmerman

A freak gust just tossed my statistics on pedophile priests into

the fountain where they will float amidst the detritus of winter

for all eternity

__

Oh hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man 
called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
His words of truthful vengeance
They could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more

(David Bowie    Song For Bob Dylan)

SPRING   2014  
 

MOTHERS

MOTHER’S DAY CANCELLED    CHIBOK   NIGERIA

1^st day warm enough to brave my bench

Phantom children scream under trees

Camp resumes in 7 weeks   Soon they will

be gnashing their little teeth in every crevice

at U of T   1 boy threatened to slit my throat

late last Summer   as I cobbled words on this

very bench

At this moment my main concern is that the

world pitch in to free the girls kidnapped en

masse in Nigeria   The same way they did for

the missing plane   Couldn’t the ships & choppers

be loaned?   How about a day or 2 for the missing

girls?   12-18

Head terrorist laughed giddily: I will sell them as

slaves   Infidel women must be sold as slaves or

married off  even if 9    Is there a connection between

the small boy wielding a knife   & the growing violence

seeping into the cracks?    Our Canada was home to

a mass stabbing   Graduation party   Calgary   2014

In Nigeria President Goodluck’s wife  Patience  had a

woman arrested for impersonating a mother of the missing

girls   The Mum’s were busy so they sent an envoy    Patience

was slighted   In the mean-time plaintive sounds of girlsong

can be heard  as the mother’s approach   in restless dreams

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SPRING 2014