songanddancegirl

DRESS

NAVY  DRESS    BLUES

My new Comrags dress

is navy blue   A replica

of that dress from Florence

The cover of Italian Vogue   (1984)

on Patti Hansen Richards

White   for the wedding that

went missing

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Winter 2014

LEAVES

ALL  THE  LEAVES    ARE  BROWN

Digging in the dirt   Today so much

mud and water   Dirt floats   & Noah

might even have trouble  reclaiming

his projections   Dealing with his shit

This day is not for hope-squelched

citydwellers   You must have grit to

get through it   Like the man on the

corner waiting for the bus

A Bukowski dead-ringer   Face scarred

& misshapen   eyes sunken ships   Almost

feral   He will likely either:  murder the bus

driver  or jump into my car   & beat some

sense into me?

For not renting the apartment in San Francisco   20 yrs.ago

When I was plump with possibility & organic

granola   California  has a way of getting under

the skin  & in my 57th year  I can still smell the

fear  lessness   encountered there

Big Sur   Henry Miller long dead   & Liz Smart’s

ghost still weeping  by Grand Central Station

My thoughts perpetually creeping   to Divisadero St.

let me in

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Winter  2014

OBSOLETE

ARE  MEN    OBSOLETE ?

Resentment scented flowers   bitterness weed

Do you really want to wake up in a country

without men ?  Why bash them so heartily then?

Locate yourself in the thickness of things   If you

smile at the ape-man up there on the roof   he will

smile back   All thoughts of  jumping you  will vanish

He is youngish  not un-handsome  must have sisters

a mother  somewhere ?   Try this every day for a month

You will have him eating out of your hand   instead of

drooling on the shingles

Confront brutes    with words that rhyme

You will be the pied piper lady poet of your block

The man with the shovel out back will lay his coat on the

melting snow   and encourage you to join him     at the altar

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Winter  2014

REMAINDER

DON’T     REMAINDER   ME

Stanley Kunitz said: Poetry is mythology

telling stories of the soul   It’s adventures

in time  & in history

The soul dives into a body   builds a house for

an Ego   Jettisons said Ego   Soul now a fugitive

Free of the squalid human   Until the next dive

Nothing useful rhymes with motherlode   Our

adjectives cloying   Our clichés grating    But

dare  hire a poet     if your soul needs saving

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Winter  2014

GOOD NIGHT

GOOD  NIGHT      MARY  ELLEN

Ralph Waite   Pa on the Waltons  died

on Tuesday   He was 85   My father Lee

died 23 yrs. ago   He was 68    I thought

they would live forever

It is said that Ralph died at mid-day in

Palm Springs    Allan Mills  his manager

was  taken aback   Ralph had been in good

health

Both Ralph & Lee had Paul Newman eyes

Handsome  not entirely gentle men   Silent

types   with rivers of regret around the edges

The actress who played Erin Walton said:

He was like a real father to me   Goodnight

Daddy     I love you   

A gentle family drama  set in the Blue Ridge

Mountains   through the Depression & WW II

Inextricably entwined with mine

Bleak suburban playground   nouveau riche

& holocaust survivors    Life on a lush ravine

Ralph was our spiritual  father  back in the 70’s

He was an ordained minister  with a slow smile

that belied his battle with the bottle

When he said  Good night Mary Ellen  you could

almost taste your perfect future  apron  sensible shoes

family of  5       Those were simpler times

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Winter 2014     Good night Pa   Goodnight John-boy   Good night Blackie

EVIL

SEE     NO  EVIL

Gravity: 2 astronauts left dangling

in the cold ether  Nothing to cling to

but each other   Sounds a lot like this

real winter    & life itself ?

Space is called  the final frontier   but

that seems a more apt description of life   down here

Where for example heroin use has tripled

in Vermont  (Vermont!)   Headline’s scream:

There is a heroin crisis in the U.S.

In Space tears float   on Earth they gather

forming salty tracks    No one thought to ask:

Why are all of these Americans using heroin?

Recently the Holy See  was criticized by the U.N.

for child sexual abuse  & opposition to: contraception

homosexuality   & abortion in child rape + incest cases

This would appear to be another  final frontier

It is also true that 1 in 3 high school students:

are anxious all of the time   can no longer sleep

& often feel like crying inexplicably      

Soon gravity too   will be obsolete

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*(in California alone there are at least

five Re-habs costing $45,000/month)

Winter  2014

CIGARETTE

CIGARETTE  SELLERS  OF   3 CROSSES SQUARE

Warsaw ghetto 1940   Orphaned Jewish

children sleep on streets & in cemeteries

hiding their identities

Easier for Ignac Bloomberg   sandy hair

blue eyes   Not so for darklings  hearded

onto trains

The boys had names like:  Conky  Hoppy 

Toothy  Frenchy    SS Officer fell for Frenchy

First an advantage  Later disappeared into Gestapo

headquarters

What do you think they did with Frenchy?

You cannot conjure anything so depraved

Or maybe you can   They kept him in a cell

where Dr. Mengele visited daily  for tissue samples

Ignac survived through what his son later called:

balancing extreme fear with extreme hubris   In 1947

Canada took 1000 children   Ig was one of 3 cigarette

sellers from Warsaw who  made it out

Can you hear the ghostly trains crisscrossing Europe?

Night skies blood-red   Carrion cars forge ahead

One loaded with the near-exterminated

Your Aunties & cousins   my father said   We tried to

get them out   but it was too late    By then Canada

had decided  none was too many

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Winter  2014    for Frenchy

SELF-PROMOTION

SHAMELESS    SELF-PROMOTION

I am a bit conflicted  about my upcoming

Word Event   You see I peak between 10 &

11 a.m.   It starts at 1 p.m.   long after I am

pumping out juicy marketing ideas:   cookies! hatpins! bookmarks! 

Hi-wattage smile   Unearth family charisma

often illusive & indolent   At least said  Event  

is on a Friday   When at sunset a second-soul

will alight   to help me fight despair   

Today it is well past 3  and I sit in a library  19th C

Windows onto a gorgeous courtyard  entombed in

ice   Fountain wears a shroud of white    Water barely

visible   Icy ejaculation will burst forth  come Spring

I sit beside rows of books in the  Canadian Poetry Room

The Gay Grey Moose

Distinctly Narcissistic

Foreplay

The Pioneer Woman

It is difficult to be pithy with the weight of our

word-history  all around me  From Cohen to Carson

Two poets who I am sure never coaxed readers with

promises of  bon bons  bijoux  and gift cards from

Come As You Are

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Winter  2014

GARBAGE

SEX  &  GARBAGE

Some say that my perfume smells

like cigarettes & garbage   It’s called

Back To Black  Aphrodisiac  It’s french

& the nose is the Hennessy heir

Better than piss & vinegar?

Who says garbage isn’t sexy?  rotting roses

blue cheese bits  blood  cinnamon  & chocolate

A vampire’s paradise

I will continue to hold my head up

high   And though you may slink away

I am brand new & garbage redolent

Ready to face the day

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Winter  2014

KNEES

ON  YOUR  KNEES       MUSE

The new it-girl of British Poetry  studied

at Leeds  & Goldsmiths College   She’s an

up & comer   I have found many references

to her boyfriend’s  ball-sac  in her new book

Yet does this encourage me to: Go for broke     No  Not really

My hero of poetry  namely:  Charles Bukowski

used words like: piss  vomit  whore    & a whole

lot more     He didn’t rhyme much either

Charles was beaten to a Pulp  (name of his 26th book)

daily   by his demented German father   His adult face

pitted   His body scarred for life    A raging alcoholic   & a

Post Man  (name of his 33rd book)   Charles delivered the

mail until half insane   for 12 yrs. in L.A.

He finally found a benefactor  & moved out of vomitous

basements  to a nice house in the burbs   Charles could be

drunk on stage   kick his wife   but he was Dark Knight for life

A defiled God of letters

So it is hard to imagine that  ball-sac  is all that stands between

me   & it-girl infamy     Yesterday a florid man said to me: 

If  you want to make brave music you gotta serve somebody

Give me 45% of your profit  & I will give you a table from which

to shill your poetry  

At this point  ball-sac  is looking like it may have legs

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Winter  2014