songanddancegirl

AND SHE DOES NOT

AND  SHE  DOES  NOT    LIGHT  UP  A  ROOM

9 a.m.

She worked for years at the  Toys R Us  warehouse

People said she’d been to university   was married

owned a home   When her husband left her  she went:  

(storyteller makes a circle motion at her temple)

11:11 a.m.

The morning radio show explores  meta-morphers 

game-changers   One who left radio after 7 yrs. to be a

work-from-home TV critic    Talking-head said:  Wow!

Changed your life now you’re cool   Neat!   (not poetic license)

2 p.m.

The happiest girl I have ever seen walks by at the

Royal Conservatory     18    braces on teeth   pink case

for flute   blonde hair  semi-wet   smile of one who has

no Judas  no mortgage  no circle at temple    

May she stay free   steer clear  of trite radio personality

who does not know the difference between:  revelation

& mental masturbation  A modern day anchoress who sucks  & blows

but mostly sucks

11:11 p.m.

Happiest girl in world plays her flute  cavorts with Pan

at Pagan gala on Cherry St.    Woman with circle at

temple is cured     Radio host is the Fisher Queen

__

Fall  2013

DESITIVELY NOT

DESITIVELY  NOT  IN      KANSAS

The nice man at  Jacob’s Hardware Electrical & Plumbing

410 Queen W.  asked:  Where do you go when you click your

heels together?  (poet in pink metallic brogues)  Arresting stare

You know where    Jacob Hardware man: Can I come with you?  

Arresting smile & trip over raised strip in floor   Don’t know where

I’m going anymore   Your faith is better than a wooden clothes dryer  

(get ’em in chinatown sunshine)     Now fix that f***ing  floor!

__

(Desitively Bonnaroo 1974. Mac Rebennack  with Allen Toussaint and The Meters)

Fall  2013

DAISY

DAISY  DOES      HURON

reed thin lips  no smile  cold-blooded reptile

full make-up by 9 a.m.  tommy hilfiger redux

daisy buchanan at 60    heritage village on  Great Big Lake

husband large  affable   deeply tanned     i want a  REFUND

__

Fall  2013

IT’S ALL GREEN

IT’S  ALL  GREEN        TO ME

One day the gardener said:  (in his best Charlton Heston)

Ma’am that tree is dead   then he stared off into the distance

It was time to leave our High Park street   One neighbour a

reputed war criminal    another  dead on his porch after 4 yrs.

of merciless cane-banging   11 years have come and gone and

a gaggle of geese make their way South  honking like Illinois Jacquet 

I am trapped  in a green village  on a blue LAKE (with a trampoline for the grankids)

While   at a concert 2 nights before   Patti Smith  screeched and spat  & then spat

some more:  Say No to Syria   Say No to Obama    Edward Snowden is a Nigger

The world is a noisy place    A new pedagogical theory says:  Everything is better

in groups          Shoot Me

__

I like to watch Eve.   Chauncey The Gardener    (Being There  1979)

Fall 2013

YEEZUZ

YEEZUZ  DIED  FOR  KANYE’S  SINS     NOT  MINE

Is narcissism innate   or learned behaviour?

Was God the original narcissist   creating    miniman

in  His  own image?   Giving us an unconscious

a.k.a.  the minigod inside   Constantly shooting:

images memories visions oracular premonitions  onto

our inner-screens    You know   the one behind your    eyelids

(Your personal Steven Spielberg?)

Why else would we be so obsessed with ourselves     with our experiences here?

A perpetual state of post-traumatic stress   mechanically

reliving the minutiae   in our constant nocturnal emissions

This condition may in fact be   a biological imperative    practising ourselves

the infinitesimal scripts     Is this  unhinging us  or healing us?

There are some who have no time for this    A handful of Buddhists

and the rich    Apparently the rest of us have no OFF switch  What if

you could selectively turn off your memories?  Who would you be?

Take the woman in the greeting card store    Lost her daughter at

age 24   to  leukemia    My mother asked:  How do you live after that?

Robotic smile:  Who says I am alive?   Don’t push  Stay focused  Those aren’t stars

__

And God, I am told, is a canoe -shaped hole in all of us.  

Sue Goyette   Resist    2011

Fall 2013

TEARS

TEARS      OF  A  CLOWN

Tuffy Gessling   the clown  who donned

a mask of Obama   was offered a home in     Texas

after a national backlash called for his head

(all American clowns must now undergo sensitivity training or risk imprisonment)

A humiliated Tuffy cried last night on TV:  I never

tried to be a racist or nothing   I love all people no

matter their background   I live to make people laugh

Tuffy should likely apply to run the IOC*  a misguided

group who will bring  the Olympics to Sochi in 2014

In Russia where human rights are few and far between

my Great Grandmother would tell you: If a cossack kissed

a Jewish woman in the midst of a pogrom  it was a hate crime    

followed by acts of  unspeakable brutality

In modern Russia hate crimes of all kinds  including those

visited upon LGBT  are committed with regularity   This did

not seem to deter the IOC

I imagine Tuffy will wear a Putin mask  & carry a 400 lb.

sturgeon   when he cancels the Sochi  Olympics   of 2014

__

*International Olympics Committee  – selects the host country, investigates boycotts, 

doping, bribery, and acts of terrorism  at the Olympic games

** Putin has been known to fake photo-ops holding aloft fish he has not caught

Fall  2013

Therapist

THERAPIST      YOU  LOSER

I told her adoptive parents that my specialty was working with just this kind

of child    She had been taken from her young mother at 5   had lived in 2 more

foster homes by 7   One of the lucky ones   Forever homes are scarce for older

children  From 7 to 11  when she arrived on my doorstep   she had been running

away in search of her mother    She had also run from her mother  One night she

even broke into her friend’s house & hid behind the couch  It was the night her

mother squashed all of the baby hamsters   Our 1st session lasted 10 minutes

She was beautiful  & sullen  with hatred living in eyes & mouth  I have since heard

that whenever she is released from detention she returns to her pimp in the Niagara

Region               Her mother a distant memory

__

Fall  2013

Feathered

FEATHERED   FRENEMIES

The birds are aggressive today

cussing & fighting all the way      up and down

W. Queen West   Displaced by

chic boutiques  and the avant garde

I read about an app  that lights up (red)

the parts of cities  where hipsters live

New York  San Francisco  & W. Queen W.

All are  the new  red  light districts

So if you are in search of  breakfast  coffee

or a stroll   sans the  glarestaregrowl  

Avoid these zones   If the bitchiness doesn’t

kill you   the chickadees surely will

__

* 96% of West Queen West hipsters fetishize the authentic,

reinventing it with a winking inauthenticity.

The remaining 4% are just bitchy.

Late Summer  2013

PRAY

THAT  DRAGON  CANCER

is a new empathy game   & the challenge is

to get through it without crying   It’s about

a father whose 4 yr. old son is dying  of cancer

In the past   video game emotion  was limited to

competition  aggression  & the adrenaline pump

Apparently these new games push into deeper

emotional territory   beyond fights & races

They even have: Depression Quest  Tourette’s Quest

And also one about child abuse & alcoholism     In  That Dragon Cancer

the only way to score points  and make the dying

child stop crying   is to hit  PRAY

Antoinette Tuff does not play video games

She understands the power of prayer & empathy

intuitively  Yesterday she said to the young gunman

in Decatur Georgia: I love you  Everything’s gonna be  okay baby    

He put down his assault rifle   & prayed

__

*Today President Obama phoned Antoinette Tuff   but

the shooter’s brother wondered why Obama did not call

his family    

**hit PRAY

Late Summer  2013

THE BLIND

THE BLIND    LEADING

My brother &  I  drive down the street

A blind man catapults us back to 1963

Our father stopped the car & walked a

blind man across the street    Cars  zig-

zagging so close it still haunts   I wasn’t

even there    But the memory is embedded

along with giants & deep ravines

When I was down beside the Sea

A wooden spade they gave to me

To dig the sandy shore

Our father’s grave mysteriously re-sodded

I imagine he will appear at Woodbine soon

And we will dwell on this over cocktail hour     when old anguishes will disappear

__

Late Summer 2013     *Robert Louis Stevenson