songanddancegirl

and i think it’s outta sight

he is gnomic  +wears fuchsia glasses   owns a home

tall +Victorian  little shop of horrors?  bursting flowers

all things Alice

my brother says he is grooming me  possibly to be the

catwoman to his gnomeman   he’s trying to get you into

his lair ape   that’s his M.O.🧌

i used to sit on a bench across from said lair  listenin to

hurtin cowboys +faded rockers  most dying or dead   now

i cannot sit there  as capedcrusader appears  almost magically

like those tiny red ants  currently swarming my bed🐜🐜🐜

but the chiaroscuro is finer near his haunt   my white boots

soft+cowgirl  take me there  all on their own  flirtatious old

woman   M.O.

yesterday the smallish man in pink glasses  invited me in

there were  pulleys+puddings  and faded dreams in a corner

Go Go boots are back bitches!   mine  now splayed

__

Summer of Love  .. do take note re: the upbeat flavour of this poem..🌞🌻

lost

all the portents pointed to it

ditto the dreams  the visions

the delirium too

the dead were travelling on buses

to have dinner with her  she too was

taking fairybuses  all over hell+gone

in her blue nightgown

to visit

her lost   (ape i have to get a bus  RIGHT NOW!)

yet it still did not dawn on anyone that

she would be making the final crossing

in a mere 6 wks

DUH   (dumbkopfs)

we might have escaped to Paris  where

she’d show me her haunts  now haunted

by her fragilespirit  dressed in silk moiré

she named me there  as she pranced to Basie

but we’ve used up all of our  one more onces   

+ i am left to age  in hipster parks

where i watch the mothers+daughters  in stores too

how they look alike  walk close  laughing   I’m sure

only I can see the frayingthreads  tethering them

to this spacetime continuum

those threads are gonna  SNAP ladies!  and like me

you will spend the rest of eternity  stroking the hand

of your    invisible mother

__

__

Summer 2023    ..please sir can i have once more?..

oh he’s swift

there are so many ants in my house right now

the carpet is covered in antshit  a foot deep

does an ant shit in the woods?  do u?    🐜🐜🐜

husband #3 does  +uses a branch aprés  but then

he is scottishgnarly  +never sorry for the shit   he

wreaks    +yes his shitstinks

(but not as bad as his hockey gear)

this week as i sweated over my latest artproject  a

glue-maleficence shitshow   ants glimmered  +stuck

to bits of my brothers  +to Jesus too

(i’d hole punched their pics)

you see my family is in the process of a resurrection

rising up out of the ashes of a brother  the graves of

our mother +father  now covered in cheappink flowers

(the shul bilks us for)

i’m not sure i want to be an artist anymore   i just wanna

buy italian cowboy boots  +star in spaghetti westerns  like

Gina Lollobrigida   my husband’s doppelgänger

(u see i adore a buxom man)

no  i want to grow  6 inches   +be like Taylor Swift

smarthusband said: when i see Taylor  i go biological

whereupon i kicked his haggis ass

__

Summer 2023  ..mamas don’t let you babies marry cowboys..

these birds

my father taught me how to catch birds  a brother

calls me Tippie  daddy said: carry a saltshaker kid

if you can throw some on it’s tail   it’s yours!

for years i slunk in tall grass  with salt + a dishtowel

until i was about 53  when it came to me  these birds

were catching me

time stands still when you hunker in grass  the pact of

Faust  who even had a black poodle   Mephistopheles

ditto me  his name  just Blackie  (father’s burst of creativity!)

over the years the birds grew  bigger  one taloned a brother

another scooped our mother  father was actually carried off

by hundreds of wrens    one with a dowager’s hump  now circling  me

i chronicle this at art school   my project seemingly sombre  is

actually rather uplifting  you see  after the dismembering  there

will be a gathering up  motherfatherbrother et al.  now taking tea

why with all of this positivity

who knows what mountains

i will climb  what streams i will ford

stop rolling your eyes

and tell me  what are u

grateful for?

__

Summer 2023  ..next poem.. sunshine+daffodils..🤟

this poem is a huck

i re-crucified Christ this morning  with my new

holepuncher  bought for a dollar  at the dollar

store  where almost nothing costs a dollar  anymore

what a score!  i labelled it a tool of transformation

along with a tool for crucifixion  a slender #11 blade

exacto knife  now sitting next to my mother’s huckmesser

a weapon of mass destruction if there ever was one

used on  chickens  cows  and such  to separate spirit

from bone   i once used it on a brother’s foot

he resembles a chicken in many ways  but that is a story

for another day 🦹‍♂️   exposed sinew + blood  did not make

me popular  around our house

these tools sit on my art project  pictured above  it’s about

the nature of memory  are we passive witnesses? is memory

a mirror?  an altered state?  did u find a Red Queen there?

my archive showcases the 1st pandemic year  the beginning

of the end for my  Queen-Mother   OFF WITH YOUR HEADS !

her favourite refrain

the very same hawks  who carried off a cancered brother  now

returned to carry off our mother  5 bomb dived me in full PPE

on the balcony   as she lay covidridden on the couch

their screeching woke the near dead  scattered throughout  her

retirement rez  a stopping place on the banks  of the river Styx

certainly all the children who  placed  their parents there

will

reconnect

in hell

___

Summer 2023  ..OFF WITH WITH YOUR HEADS ! ..

does the MQ9 Reaper Drone have my name on it?

of course it does  without a target on my head

it will find my fontanelle-depression  that’s where

the tectonic brainplates  gap out

a girl in grade 3  Rita G.  had an inexplicably softhead

section  upon awakening one morning  we all touched

the spot  furtively  some boys hands  dropped down

i wish i could forget much of what i remember  (Rita! really?)

forgetting must be just as important for survival  as remembering

my 98 yr old  just dead mum  forgot a lot

brisket

my father

lost children

but she  never  forgot  every nuance of my  age-ravaged face

ape  why don’t you dye your hair blonde like the girls on CNN?

you’re too young to be grey  (!)

as i walked her to her grave  we held hands  both our heads

the exact same shade of silver   (Pantone colour of 2023)

i want to remember those final years together

our best + our worst   when i became her jailer   and she

remained  my freespirited sprite-child   barely made  for

these saltmines

__

Summer 2023  ..i liked having parents better..

i’m 66 yrs old + i look just like my mother

the dybbuk that is grief  has had his way with me

toes just emerging  from his  ma  maw   jaws of life

will be required to extricate the rest of me

who knows when that will be

my quarters are  wet-verdigris  a hellhound barks

incessantly  anchoress of mother-ripping  a flowery

moss  growing on my extremities

it is dark like the grave in here  rank too  with the

faint scent  of  rotting bakedgoods   when i emerge

i will require  a mani-pedi   a will  +an undertaker

preferably one who does not charge 12 grand for a

hearsemobile + a candle made from pig tallow   it is

in this chamber  that i have become a beacon

for lone travellers   newly rent of a mother’s hand

__

Summer 2023 ..don’t leave me with these people..

give me your hungry your tired your poor – i’ll piss on em*

give me your lost:  heart  breast  bladder  womb

+ i will stitch you back together?  resurrect you?

eat what is left of you

my new guru  Rick Rubinski  ( it must have been

that  back in the shtetl  no?)  has the exact same

silver lid as me   plus a long goaty beard

which i am working on   now a few stragglehairs

bearded lady poet  soon  my old mother sat quietly

as i plucked hers   even when i grabbed skin

no  i jest  she bit me hard  +cursed like a saviour  which

she was   the saviour complex  runs deep  in my family

straydogs  men  sexworkers  gamblers   et al.

Rick implores the emerging artist to  gather   gather the

seeds  +notice everything   perhaps i will add this   to

remembering    everysinglefuckingthing  i know

yet  this wisdom goes contrary  to that of my meditation

guru  Jeff  who drones on endlessly about  emptying  oh the

bi-polarities of  self actualization machination

i don’t recommend it   stick with single malts  +psilocybin

love your quiet desperation   +run like you are young  from

fatuousbeards    like me🐐

__

Summer 2023  *Lou Reed  Dirty Boulevard  1989 ..not produced by Rick Rubin (ski) ..

man plans god laughs

fuck the spacetimecontinuum + fuck death?

i read this on a mug  in a hipster shop   but i

was afraid to buy it  lest the Reaper take umbrage

i wanted to give it to my mother  whose lifelong

fear of death  was wasted on the most perfect +

peaceful leavetaking  i have witnessed  to date

no  choking begging  or random egyptian gods

Ram Dass is rolling in his grave   he implored us

to   be here  now   to which my mother replied:

I’ll tell him when he gets here

for her  time was  relentless +hungry  i was just 16 !   (motherfuckers)

think how fast your 40’s went   your 50’s a quickblink

of a watery eye   but i goddamn guarantee you  time will

slowdown   at 90

for the: waiting watching wondrous extravaganza  that is

death  replete with  the most beautiful breath  u will  ever

take    lifebroken   beggard   bewitched   +free 🦅

__

Summer 2023  ..would it kill you to be extravagantly alive? ..

66 bottles of pills on the wall

long gone are the days when you’d toss birth control pills

into a bag  +take off  eh   they were in a dial-like contraption

my 1st boyfriend paid for them    a 16 yr old sex worker??

arriving at the aeropuerto  the 20 something security guy

would pull them out of your purse  while leering at your

youth scented privates    smells like yeastylust

now fast forward to present  some 60 yrs later   many

body parts no longer work  megaruin spreading   flatuland

+crepey

you swallow so many pills a day  it renders Valley Of The Dolls

child’s play  where now Jackie Suzanne?  in repose/decompose

you say?    Jackie the Queen  of ambidextrous autoeroticism

a sister-in-law had merely mentioned: wiping yourself when you pee

fuck me !   once on a whim  birth control firmly in hand  i flew to Ipanema

where i glittered briefly

__

Summer 2023  ..now huddled in my motel room sucking on a ventolin inhaler.. woe