songanddancegirl

BARDO

BARDO  THÖDOL

In a play last night the question

was asked: Would you return to

your body after making the passage

to the otherside   if you had the choice?

The AIDS ridden protagonist struggled

Like Hamlet he had suffered the whips &

scorns of time  enough  thankyouverymuch

With no desire to be plunged back into a

perpetual state of loss    But return did he

Buddhists & Hindus believe that the last

thought at the moment of death determines

the next incarnation  And  Proverbs xxiii 7

suggests:  As a man thinks in his heart  so is he

There is a vast system of ravines & underground

rivers in Toronto  where last thoughts ricochet

landing in the hearts of lost travellers

DON’T GET LOST   THINK BIG     Heaven is close to

Bathurst St.     Wrong turns are   frowned upon

__

Fall  2013

BIKO

THE  BRAIDED  STREAM

Stephen Bantu Biko  the founder of

the  black consciousness movement  in

South Africa   died on September 12, 1977

He was 30   & had been shackled naked for

days    No hunger striker was he     Autopsy

revealed brain hemorrhage from head injuries

Died on the floor of Pretoria prison hospital    No mercy

The holy grail of paleoanthropology posits :

human evolution is a  braided stream  and not

a simple  march of progress   In 2008 north-west of

Johannesberg in the Cradle of Humankind  a nine yr. old

boy discovered a 2 million yr. old hominid skeleton  a   transitional ancestor

with a small brain  not much bigger than a chimpanzee’s

Much likely a more humane creature  built for climbing trees

with fierce capacities for compassion  especially for their young

Memorized their mother’s voices  They did not prey on each other

Nor were they prone to: terrorism  mass-psychosis  or torture

Those were simpler times   The Mother-ship hovered    The light

at the end of the tunnel was  ON    And the last one standing had   an alibi

__

*in 1997   5 former police officers confessed to the Biko killing

to a Truth & Reconciliation Commission.  The men were never tried.

Fall  2013

DIPLOMACY

DIPLOMACY  BLUES

The dragonfly lands on my writing paper

matches my outfit   red-wings    The sky

hydrangea     It won’t get more maudlin       Stay

It feels like we are hovering on the precipice

Obama stammers   now grey & bent   He of the

mythology: No red States  No blue States  We are

the United States      No you’re not

I want a list of names      Now  scatter

__

Fall 2013

RIP

CHILD  BRIDE    SANAA  YEMEN

Rawan died at 8  after her uterus was

ruptured on her wedding night  Betrothed

to a man 5x her age   No Action was taken

against the man  14% of Yemeni girls are

married before 15  and 52% before 18

At my office in the trenches of humanity

I was asked to bear witness   Girls & boys

much younger than Rawan became child

brides & grooms  in Toronto   in large numbers

As I looked into their eyes many appeared to

be staring into space  as if half asleep or absent

And I hoped that like  *Shmuel in Auschwitz

these children: were able to convince their souls to 

not live inside of their tiny bodies, but to slip away

and sail to the door, and rise up into the sky

Clamouring to get out only made it worse

One boy often said: Therapist you can hit me

with the biggest stick and I won’t feel a thing   Go on   Try it

__

Fall  2013   *The Boy In The Striped Pajamas  John Boyne 2006

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