songanddancegirl

who who who

a great raptor of the night  visited me  recently

these large birds of prey are rarely seen  in the

day   i saw one once  waybackwhen  on a stump

at a fork in the road  (ask not for whom the bell tolls)

30 yrs ago  when joints supple  +tinkerbell  now rigor

+cronish  could be worse   (ya right)  the great owl is

not to be confused   with hawk mythos   the hawk  a

pure  deathbird

2 took a brother  +several cackling bombdivers  scooped

our mother  they squawked + cawed in evil gaiety  as she

lay  covidbidden   mother+i sat  on opposite sides  of a

screen door    waving whenever she woke

little did i know   the hawks were inches   from snatching

her away   in 82 days   at sunrise   while owls can be harbingers

of imminent death   they are mostly all about  transformation  +

magic  long the compañeros  of witches+urbanjewishshamans

one generation

slips away  (leaving behind boxes of photo albums +such)

one generation

makes its

steep climb

death the soil  of life

up at the cemetery  our ancestors stir  the hawk circles  the owl

sits  on the yet uncarved stone  as motherfatherbrother  exchange

pleasantries    resist fate!    light out for new territories    learn to

dig   the mystery! 

__

Winter 2023  ..amor fati..and move on fer chrissakes..!

ain’t no sunshine

on paper  she looked like she was afraid of

her own shadow*  especially that  ie., (split off

parts of oneself  reaching back to the realm

of our animal ancestors..C.G. Jung)

taught to worship mammon (who wasn’t?)  +the

power of men   when i told her in another time  man

worshipped woman  (google it)  breasts thighs butts

yes  google that too    she became indignant

she simply didn’t believe it !  ditto when i told her

there were zillions of stars in the sky  well i never

see them  urbanpoor  removed from school at 12

though spelling bee winner + published poet at 8

(Montreal Gazette circa 1932)

Mother saw her first sunrise  at 93  in the same

room in which she died   ape i saw a giant orange

ball in the sky  i thought it was a spaceship!

5 yrs later the same mothership  came to take her

she lay fearless for 15 hrs  as lifeforce ebbed  she

who had given birth to multitudes  what is this  am

i going to meet my maker?   (what nerve!)

the orange ship landed on the balcony  her maker

a Clarke Gable doppelgänger  or was it Roger Mudd?

lifted her  ever so gently  a lithebody now  slender of

limb  like Vivien

he lit her cigarette  she dragged deeply  frankly Clarke

those little shits i raised took all my vices away   now

pour me a stiff Courvoisier!

__

*(mother’s Courvoisier bill the 8th wonder of the world)

Winter 2023  ..you can’t give her one more day??..🥃l’chiam..

wait up

wish i had a zipper  from third eye to my toe

much like the scar on my father’s body  sternum

to ankle   (..they cut me from stem to stern..)

mother+brother’s scars  more of the psyche

though  chest  bladder  +around backs  too

stitched +sewn  into fabric of souls

with this zipper (also a feature of couture dresses

+bodybags)   i would unzip myself from this mortalcoil

+make a beeline for New Mexico (bucket list rodeodream)

in addition to buicksized scorpions 🦂  i fully expect to find

my dead peops   motherfatherbrother   tumbleweed +free

free-er than i will ever be

until i take my place beside them

when daddy holds out his hand

and lifts me to my steed 🦄

__

Winter 2023  ..until we meet again..

kansas shmansas

did u know there is no bigdipper in the southern hemisphere?

the constellations are different  +brand new  much like life

after losing a final parent  + 1 brother

groundshift + weary

but HARK !  what light?  what fish?  what do u know about fish?

can an oldjew  learn new tricks?  as in  snorkel on a Curaçao reef?

REEFMADNESS  about to begin  12 degrees from the equator

your Spanish+Portuguese kin went in boatloads  1650’s  after yet

another dispersion of your peops   sadly too  slaveships brought

1,000,000 Africans   in chains

so what do u expect to find?   sunshine✅   your soulhole✅

+ the courage to return home   to finish your final 3rd  with a

little  dignity  dignitas   should that become necessary

__

new territory

new territory

Winter 2023    …then there were 3…

lions+divers+bears

the travel agent said  all lugubrious+fearmonger:

line two gives you $50,000 should you find yourself

dead in the water  of your Caribbean distraction

distraction from:

mother’s death  +  bodybag munchkin  who you kicked

HARD  in the ass   as he tried to escape your wrath   for

attempting to lift   BIGMOTHER  nearly twice his weight

instead  you entrusted the heavylifting  to a strapping blonde

amazon  named Sue   beautiful +bosomy  +goddessy   a Venus

of Rezindorf    if there ever was one

an early Venus statue found 25,000-35,000 years ago

but i digress  maybe i am expecting to find mother  on a Curaçao

beach   sunworship+bronze  redhair-halo  bangles+cig   glamour

to spare

i don’t so much care  that they want me to pre-pay  for my own

bodybag  just incase   it’s the price that rankles   now oldish  with

meagre pension +thickening cankles  $4,000 USD  for a blacksac ! !

no way

and on another note  re: this trip  a brother sternly warned me off of

divers while there   these people are nihilists apsie!   also avoid  rock

climbers   this   though he neither  dives nor climbs

he has his finger on the pulse   as per usual

__

Winter 2023  ..oh the distractions..🏖

sister m

my father taught me not to let

animals suffer  i took that to

include

manimals

womanimals

sister morphine on the job for:

Lee

Frances

Marty

befriend the one who will sit by

you for  15 hrs  administering

morphine  thru an eyedropper  (if necessary)

be careful what u say to her

and do keep your droppers   +

your veins

under lock+key

__

Winter 2023 ..step right up..💉

shop til we drop

i went to the bench i have sat on hundreds of times

maybe thousands   hard  damp  human stained   on

a mission   i walked through mud  +pain

pain of trying to find my old self  pre her death  maybe

even find her there  where i had sat  imagining her

w  a  i  t  i  n  g

i

sat

and

sat

feeling into my newly hollowed out soulhole  reno-drill

behind me  carving out  hearts?  i left abruptly  so did

she    nowhere to hide from the  BIG EMPTY

walking home the sky opened  +down she came  in her

orange shoes  secondary infection  quelled   ready to

shop !

looking at hundreds  maybe thousands of beige sweaters

ape  that’s a dead beige   she’d say  my dead babe  who

wore alive   better than most

__

Winter 2023 ..when the snow melts in April there she’ll be.. 99 +free..

apsie in the bardo

i am reading the tibetan book of the dead

wow  are they ever hardcore when it comes

to the final 49 days  never mind the final 49    minutes

they tout fullthrottle  bareback  elite death

ie., the pinnacle of athleticism in leaving this

veil        NO OPIATES ALLOWED!

i wonder if they give special dispensation for

the choking death?  the cancer death?  i can’t

find that anywheres  in the 241 page tome

there should be a warning label  opening this

book may cause a fear of natural death so great

you will need opiates  49 pages in  (much like these poems)

I mean really  does it need to be so complicated

people?  when the actual death  of the dying human

is the most gentle breeze  you will ever witness

imperceptible creeping

into

hair

+veins

fingers curling

crablike

so why begrudge your human opiates  should

they be unable to breathe?  i guess they figure

it’s a slipperyslope  +of course  it is

you can start my drip

PRONTO

__

..not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won ..and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools..

(The Sound and The Fury  William Faulkner  1929)

Death is the hardest thing from the outside. But once inside you taste of such completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.

(C.G. Jung  after his near death experience from a heart attack)

Winter 2022  ..let my people go..

Motherpoppins

do u have someone throwing fairydust on

your head  everysingleday?  i do!  it’s my

mother  who recently fasttracked it  to heaven

Covidwasted  RSV sated  oh she fought valiantly

but finally  her magic umbrella beckoned   +we

watched her ascend   with the sun

she took me to see  Mary Poppins  at 10   i was

mesmerized   so was she   i kept asking her:

Mum  are they singing in real life? 

she didn’t know what to make of me  she worried

about my uberanalyzing  everything  you have too

much education for your own good!

her’s was folkwisdom  much like Mary P’s  +she was

ALWAYS  right   don’t carry money in your hand  you’ll 

lose it   fiver gone on TTC  at 11  damn fortune back then

+ much later  on my 40th   open your fist  +really look

at what you have  maybe you will appreciate it  MORE

Bravo Motherpoppins!

GODSPEED

__

Winter 2022  .. now what? ..

here’s mummmmmmy!

what does it feel like to just jump into your car

and GO?  and   oh i remember the opera!   for

the last decade  i’ve been in too close quarters

with  90+  yr olds

what does it feel like to have more than a few short

years months weeks days hours  to live in your body?

their eyes asked  while inspecting mine  still relatively

spry   though on the  slideside  of glory

crepey

creeky

creepy

one woman walked the front circle driveway  endlessly

mazecaught  her face fraught  could not say the word

death    maybe because her name was  Vita   what she

did say

we’re waiting  

we’re all  waiting  

she once told my now dead mother  i’m going to steal

your gorgeous scarf!   no need actually  her former

belongings blowing in the breeze  i have some now

quite lifeless  without her in them   stiff    uninhabited

perfume

scent

fading

but u know what i really miss?  her body   even quite

beautiful  in death  warmcold  softhard  cleanputrifacto

i’ll take her back in any form  but what will i do with her

when she arrives?   her scarves+furniture   dispersed

oh she’s

gonna be

some mad 

__

…what we call the beginning is often the end

and to make an end is to make a beginning…

T.S. Eliot

Winter 2022   ..cognac waiting..