songanddancegirl

MESSIAH

NO MESSIAH    FOR  YOU

The world is full of Soup Nazis   trust me

Yesterday we lunched at a place where:

All You Can Eat  meant  All We Say You

Can Eat    If you left food on your plate

they charged 1$ per morsel

 

So you don’t waste   crude woman with

yellow pallor informed    And NO you cannot

take said morsels home   Is this even legal?

Forlorn   & certain of poisoning we tossed and

turned   into the early hours

 

Today I arrive at chilly-café where words are

forced daily from cells of brain    A woman

goose-steps toward me  CLOSED FOR THE DAY

She bites me on left arm   A cross between Mussolini

& Rhea Perlman  Slash for mouth   No soul  No charm

 

I make a beeline for the bar across the street   It is

closed   We’ll let you in  but only if you’ll watch tv

There’s a release to be signed   and a strip search

Is this day getting better or worse?

 

On the way home I park my stubby little car in a teeny

tiny spot   & yes I barely bump the Van behind me

A man emerges  after a while   No smile    He begins

examining his bumper   with urgency    I step out smartly

as food poisoning kicks in    & I vomit all over him

 

Returning home there is a thin legged spider in the drain   17

minutes of battle  until vivisection reigns    I lay weary   bitten

on the floor    Only to learn much later that   in the tussle

the chain about my left ankle    is no more –

 

We are at home and warm as if we had escaped

the gaping jaws     (Robert Lowell    Christmas)

__

 

“Um, excuse me, I – I think you forgot my bread.”

“Bread, two dollars extra.”

“Two dollars? But everyone in front of me got free bread.”

“You want bread?”

“Yes, please.”

“Three dollars!”

“What?”

“No soup for you!”

(George and the Soup Nazi, in “The Soup Nazi”
Seinfeld episode 116)

 

 

 

SPRING 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOW

ONE  DAY  YOU  WILL  NOT  KNOW

WHAT  YOU KNOW  NOW

Today my horoscope said: Look around for a

metaphorical shortcut for gliding off of Everest

to a Sherpa village below   Take a more direct

route   I laughed out loud  then stopped laughing

 

3 days ago the Winter of 2014 ended  yet it remains

arctic-like   Birds are confused   Circadian rhythms

are arrhythmic   There is too much light at the end of

the tunnel  & a petition is going around to bring darkness  back

__

 

 

SPRING   2014

 

 

FOREVER

BATMAN  FOREVER                NOT

I for one do not believe George Elliot

said: It’s never too late to be what you

might have been   There is no evidence

to support this   and she was too smart

for trite

 

What she certainly meant:

You grow into    what you become

And if you do not gentle reader   then you

live a fantasy   For who you might have been

never existed   except for in dreams  liontamer  rodeogirl  batman

 

In faded pictures we grin   dark dust brushed

away reveals: dukes-up batman-boy & longish-lean

bookish girl   Soon the images will disappear  in photo’s

returned by cousin   dead 4 yrs.

 

Don’t believe that we are going to a place where courage

won’t help   A dark sky  a moon too big & white    If you

ask me   the light’s winning!

__

 

 

 

 

SPRING  2014

MYTH

THE  CURATION  MYTH

In his Ted Talk   Chris Hadfield  a.k.a. Canada’s

Commander Tom   told us to walk through spider

webs if spiders are what we fear   There is only one

spider in Canada with venom  Who believes that?

 

What if Chris is wrong?  He’s an astronaut  not an

arachnologist   But you will have to decide this for

yourselves   Go ahead  I dare you to   Even Dante

knew it was important to: Be afraid of what can   hurt you

 

In our culture we suffer from mass PTSD   Is it cathartic

to regurgitate violence & degradation ad nauseum?  Does

this not cause habituation?  A vicious circle?

 

Let’s go back to the Greeks:

Kathairein – to cleanse

Katharos – pure

 

Somehow our needle is stuck   & we look through a

darkened glass   at a black screen   Why show us Carcosa

repeatedly?  Our latest tv hit: a raped brother & sister grow

into monsters  ritualistically torturing women & children

 

So I ask you: Who took   the cleanse   the purify  out of

catharsis   and substituted  voyeur?

__

 

Song of my soul

My voice is dead

A place of black stars

where tears are unshed   (The King In Yellow   Robert W. Chambers)

 

 

SPRING  2014

 

 

SWEET OLD WORLD

SEE  WHAT  YOU  LOST  WHEN  YOU  LEFT

THIS  WORLD     THIS  SWEET  OLD  WORLD

Dr. Hazen Gandy child psychiatrist said: Commonly

it’s cutting for the 12-17’s  slashing arms  thighs  bellies

with razor blades   Gives the body a whole different set

of inputs  Allows them not to feel so awful inside   & we’re

seeing 10x more kids  than 10 yrs. ago

 

This world is taking no prisoners    Yesterday Mick’s

girlfriend was found with a scarf around her neck   kneeling

Mick’s skin looked so thin   you could see the frayed edges of

his soul

 

Dr. Gandy went on to say:  Greater numbers of mental health

professionals are  on the verge  themselves

 

The blind leading   There is a global existential crisis:

I am empty

I don’t know who I am

I don’t know where I am going

 

The Mother home at lunchtime   glasses of milk   cookies

& Gilligan   Your dog hiding in the same closet for 13 yrs.

Ready or not  here I come   Same house  same school   In an

 I know who I am   kind of world

 

The children I have known in the temenos: cigarette burns

elective mutes  scaldings  & worse   incontinent at 10 

Where’s my dog   & the Dad?

 

Trillions of dollars are being spent on the BICEP2 experiment

What was the Universe like at less than one second old?

Isn’t this just another form of the existential crisis?

 

We are empty  We don’t know who we are  We have no compass

 

It remains difficult to know what even one trillion dollars could

do for those in the mental health trenches  They might be able to

construct a  safety net   one that stretches from the South Pole

(site of BICEP2 tests)  to Nunavut    Across the Straights   and

around the globe    Maybe even teach our police  de-escalation

techniques?

 

Another pundit  Dr. Kathleen Pajer  Chief  Psychiatrist in Halifax

will have the final word:  Most of these kids don’t have a diagnosis 

Leaving doctors mystified

__

 

Looking for some truth  dancing with no shoes

The beat  the rhythm  the blues  The pounding of

your heart’s drum together with another one  

Didn’t you think anyone loved you   See what you

lost when you left this world   this sweet old world        

(Lucinda Williams)

 

 

SPRING  2014

WISH

WHATEVER YOU WISHED FOR

YOU WILL WISH FOR AGAIN

Is there something messianic in our

fervor to find out what happened to

the Missing Plane?  They grow shrill

on CNN   Anderson is knitting his uni-

brow  & hyperventilating

 

At a dinner party on the weekend between

risotto a la whore & key lime pie  there were

hijack theories  secret landings in Afghanistan

Martian kidnappings   Could it be the Taliban?

 

If Osama could orchestrate 911 from a cave

surely something is afoot   Where were you

when the plumes of smoke appeared?  Did the

2^nd plane destroy too   baby messiahs everywhere

on the day that hope escaped   our clutches?

 

So now flight MH 370 is  reality tv   Soon even you

will be able to fly a Boeing 777   Hishammudin Hussein

Malaysian Minister of Defense  &  Acting Minister of

Transport said:  Yes it was disabled

 

All Right   Good Night  Ping  Ping   Ping   If you do not

know this reference  you likely have spent the last week

in a cave   Pray For MH 370   If Possible Come Home 

(sign in airport Kuala Lumpur)

__

 

 

Winter  2014

THE CIRCLE

THE CIRCLE  MARRIES     THE  LINE

What if time is circular   not linear?

What if eternity  is real  and not just

a word drummed up by religion  so you

know how long you will rot in hell  when

you break one of their rules

 

What if you keep repeating the exact

same life   over & over  again?   This

would explain déjà vu   ditto NDE’s

all uncannily the same

 

A meaner theory than reincarnation where

at least you are given a new identity  upon

your re-entry   And doesn’t everyone think

they were  once rich  famous   & brilliant?

Few will tell you they were Hitler

 

Could this be what Freud was getting at with

the discovery of  repetition compulsion: our

un-conscious determination to repeat the story

of our lives right down to marrying the same

man 3x

 

Dreams would appear to be the telltale sign

showing us how different people in our stories

are actually the same person  but in disguise

 

Yet even seasoned dream-analysts will misread

the signs showing them that: wife #1 is wife #2

therefore wife # 1 is wife #3  (Axiom of Maria)

 

The most fascinating aspect of this  timeascircle

theory is that: 9 out of 10x’s  you wake up in the

middle   near the beginning  or ¾ of the way to the

end of your story   Only once every lifetime do you

wake up on the last day   Yet you know this day

intimately  from all of the repetitions

 

Dreams also show you your death   Most don’t

notice   the rest  forget  by morning   A few know

with a clear eyed certainty how the last day will

end   and they work on this  death-wish  with an

existential psychotherapist    But there is no cure

 

Take Anna Karenina   Tolstoy wrote the book before

Jung & Freud discovered the un-conscious   He was

onto something   grasped the circle   knew the uroboros

inside-out

 

At various times in her life Anna has a re-curring dream

& horrifically  it unfolds in her final moments  before the train

is above her  before the train is above her  before the train    

is above her

 

So   is the first  read-through  the best?   Before you  know

something is fishy?  Before you look at the man you are

about to marry  & feel that you have known him forever?

Or you look at the man you are about to marry  & for 46

seconds  you have no idea whatsoever  who the hell he is

__

 

Let the script revel in tricks & transformations   when the

film is broken   let it be spliced      The Magic Curtain  1971

Stanley Kunitz

 

 

 

Winter  2014

LAST

THE  LAST    SUPPER

He’s 24 yrs. old  now under ice & snow

His obituary oblique  He will be missed

by his girlfriend Rylie  & his dog Shadow

Sleep tight  the final phrase

 

In the photo he is smiling broadly   dark

curly hair frames his face   Grandfather a

war hero  mercifully pre-deceased his boy

Family’s shining star   Father a jovial man

no more

 

Today Spring feels almost possible  birds

chirping at 4:26 a.m.   Outback the rugged

man  has a beer at 10   Whistling a tune on

the fire escape    By noon the family arrives

at Cemetery  north of city

 

Ice  snow  & mud  covered by a tarp   Family

will leave before mini-bulldozer re-fills the

hole   Do they cover the mound  to make it

genteel?    Gentle?

 

So that we  may remain in denial for a few

moments more?  The churned up earth is nasty

& un-gentle    It will do it’s job   hold him fast

Outlast wood

 

This year there will be no Spring

No Resurrection    Everything is broken

__

 

 

Winter  2014    RIP  K.B.T.

FREE

LAND  OF  THE  BRAVE     HOME  OF  THE  FREE

Dario Franceschini   Italy’s Culture Minister  is outraged

ditto for Cristina Acidini (Curator)  It seems that  Armalite

a  fine quality U.S. Fire Arms company  has used a photo of

 Michelangelo’s  DAVID   for their blow-out   Spring sale

 

Many Italians took umbrage  one tweeted: Why don’t you use

your own bloody monuments?   Perhaps the Liberty Bell  with

a huge pile of  AR – 501 bolt action rifles below it

 

Sadly the Bell  lost some it’s cachet when Taco Bell announced it had

purchased it  and changed it’s name to: Taco Liberty (April 1, 1996)

Despite protests  company sales of tacos  burritos  & enchiladas rose by

more than a billion dollars that week

__

 

Winter  2014

 

LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

A  MAN  NEEDS  A    MAID

At least 4 maids went mad in our front hall

The last one  Lucy  shouted obscenities  &

kicked the dog    We were consoled by the

fact that she didn’t pull a  Dexter  and chop

up little brother  He grew up with a penchant

for horror   His favourite film  The Shining

 

The first 3 were named Mary   1 stole pictures

of our mother visiting the Continent   They were

found later with captions: Paris was fantastique!

Sounds like the onset of madness  to me

 

In my mind’s eye   I see the 1^st Mary  all dressed

in blue  with stigmata on her cheeks   Her son in

prison for crimes he never committed   Not prodigal

Never returned   Mary now straight-jacketed marching

toward a cruiser    Each day she wept into our baths

salt mixing with dove mixing with neurosis

 

The one named Brenda (our 1^st not-Mary)  fell hard

for my 16 yr. old brother   Bestowing the kinds of

kisses our mother would never have dreamed   She

later ran off with our neighbor Rubin   Stepmother to

Lilibeth & Hilda   now a suburban Queen

 

We lived on a deep & fertile ravine  where wild animals

& satyrs cavorted   While out front Cadillacs of various

colours gave off a gold-toothed gleam   When we drove

out to farm-country our father lowed convincingly   & all

the cows for miles around chased us to our mother’s screams

__

 

 

Winter  2014