songanddancegirl

how can we dance when our beds are burning?

our mother cannot die in the same bed

as him  mattress burned beyond recognition

in a bonfire   along with family money   condo

remade by rabbis daughter  with bucks to spare

didn’t care for our bourgeoisied palette   no!

+daddy’s ghost  sniffing a ponderous +schmaltzy

woman   fled    now dead for 30   the bed  where

mother will die  lies on bathurst st.

where jews drive like shit  +little fielding melishes

dribble balls +dart into traffic  their own mothers

brisketladen  +farbissen  many with 10 kids  as the

husbands twirl tallis strings   always smiling

__

..above the drawing room on the first floor , was the

bedroom, which was the birth centre; the death centre 

of the house. Both her mother and father died there..

(Hermione Lee   Virginia Woolf   1997)

Hanukkah  2019  🕎

dollface

life on the ravine  not all it was cracked

up to be  an idyll  with red sunsets  off of

western

facing

balcony

in a house where the family harboured

bankrobbers + whores  +gamblers

down the road  the forest turned blue  +

there lived my one truefriend  on a dead end

it was daddy who said she was a lesbian

ronnie shimmelstien studied ballet  +later pre-

raphaelite painting  we met in paris briefly  1983

she told me  sitting splayed on my bed  that:

while in law school at berkley

she

went

through

a windshield

her father flew her to boston  her face  now a

replica  with small incisions displayed  mapping

her pain  +self loathing  (my mother never loved me)

in her canopied room  shimmelstien  had a collection

of dolls  116 to be exact  beady eyes followed me  as i

gorged on white pistachios  ($$$)

it was in ’73 that her bubbie  was found in the ravine

clutching multiple dolls  +screaming   or was that my

cousin?

our childhood manor  full of savants

+vaunted

sales giants

heroes unt saints

__

Winter 2019/2020

ain’t born typical

50 yrs.

come+gone

on the lawn

a large black

poodle   not

mephistopheles

blackie to you

verst to me  (no not after a salami  that would be versht)

slim girl   13

with braces

protruding

standing beside the tree

now thicktrunked +veiny

not unlike me  (not so thick  just vainy)

50 yrs. have come  +gone

see the lawn  where i sunbathed

with a dead cousin’s bride

sexy+blonde  beverly  she was

found with her lover in a closet  (a week after the wedding ceremony)

which mother went to  in detroit

father escaped through the milkbox

while “babysitting”  never to return

brother burned with a fever  (as per usual)

but fever broke on sunday

pus-ey tonsils stopped reeking

though brother never did

so were our parents mere figureheads?

or CIA operatives?  why don’t u tell me

and brother  i will gladly pay you tuesday

for a hamburger today

__

Winter 2019/2020

andanotheroneandanotherone

scanning obits

obligatory  purgatory

don’t want to miss   anyone

why are so many dying by

their own hands?   why so

many 1950’s birthdates?  (duh)

scanning obits for ourselves

one day last year  october 24th

to be exact   opened the paper

+heart fell flopping  like a tuna

to our townhouse floor  left tracks

of blood+gore

there was my brother!  longhair

flapping  glorydays over  no one

gave a heads up  how about a fucking

heads up people!

how about a guidepost or 2   i mean

what exactly is next  ????  or must we

continue to navigate without lights

these longish corridors?

yesterday the power went out at the

Eaton’s Centre   but the 100 meter

xmas tree did not !

you cannot

extinguish us

like fleas  mister

or maybe you can

__

Winter  2019

of zebras and men

i think he’s interested in her

a blacksuited shoesalesman

looks undertaker  but dapper

we’ll take him!

but will she?  used to booths at

el morocco 1943  sat with marilyn

regularly  home to  bombed-out

bomb-shells

we reproduced the zebra print on a

wingback chair  with a taxidermied

head above  not hers !  but a zebra’s

last night  he knocked  3 am  livecam

recorded the kiss  but something amiss

not the gentleman caller of 46  (charlie

the bastard out of texarkana)

no!  our shoesalesman boldly planted one

alas she hit him with the metal sitz-bath

sitting in the vestibule

as mr. zebra winked  our father’s laugh

a jazzyriff  on the injustice of an early

death   echoed  from a frozen cemetery

up on bathurst street

__

mother holding court  el morocco  1946

(far right)

Winter 2019

i did it my way

my portuguese housecleaner  shrugs each week

+with eyes existential  she says:  it’s a life   vasco

+unafraid  she stands at the precipice of yet another

expedition into the BIG unclean

hermione lee   virginia wolf’s biographer  makes a

similar observation  how to distill a life?  how to begin?

was virginia  just  an insane incest survivor  who would

suicide at 59?

hermione  an oxford don  +maria   have much in common

pragmatically speaking   a life is a face   virginia’s:  cartoonishly

long    deep hooded eyes   reeking of skinless vulnerability

with loads of black humour about the lips

a face made for walking into   a river

My brother’s face   all square jawed symmetry   darkeyes

steely with war  defends against love  against father’s excision

pre-birth  +without anesthetic   can u see the cancer?    no

but yes  to bravado   yes  to chain-smoking cigarras

and yes  prick him +he bleeds   profusely

square jaw  belies the fester of a wounded dear   it’s a life

no river   no stones in pockets   a different pyre   days of:

bentley  camel-coated   with a small island in the caribbean

named for him    prodigál       these days long over

his sperm donor  riddled with the cancer  too

the streets he walked  now covered in a fine white dust  with blue

bonemeal  gritty on the skin  in the wind  where without caution i

scattered him   previously with stealth+creeping  i visited a mound

at a school

and dug

__

Fall  2019

untoothsomegrin

i carry a little tooth  in a bag  and it

ain’t cute  only 200 bucks!  said my

dentist as he handed it to me   while

in his mind’s eye  dreams of the good don julio    danced

it is small+jagged  with fauxpinkgums attached

take it on vacation!  said dentist blared  and

through my benzostupor  also prolonged chatter

re: elton john  for 3 hrs   upside down

his hands  with knife poised above me  like

the butcher of bathurst manor   but u know

i shouldn’t complain  one of my bros carried

a bag of a different kind

eviscerated and chemical

he wore black gloves

to his grave

__

Some people find they can lead an almost normal life during chemotherapy.

Just as long as they remember to wash their hands frequently after taking

their gloves off.   (Canadian Cancer Society, 2019)

FALL 2019  ..here’s to gumming the worm..

jesus was a jesus freak

forgiveness

a work in progress?

some people believe  and these

specimens are the ones who have

never had to forgive high crimes +

misdemeanours  yet they rave on

they will tell u forgiveness is linear

it is not  but they also know jesus

better than u do

Carlos (my painter): i only wanted to live until 33  when jesus died

a blank stare

Carlos: jesus!  u know jesus!

yes i have heard of jesus  carlos

forgiveness is a circle  uroboric+snakeswallowed  eating itself +u

anyone who imagines it a slamdunk

has never fallen into someone else’s wound

all festering +quicksand

__

Fall 2019  .. she who sleeps with snakes..

rockmysoul

wildchild of the forest  hunting+being hunted

by the boy who murders his mother  purdonfarm

murderballads  murderous rages  angina festered

festooned with 67 heartstitches

stem to stern  (they’ll carve me from stem to stern)

father lamented  pre  bypass-interruptus   much later

underbelly rages  still very much alive   burst forth in

the daughter of the goal oriented brother (my ass)

insidious+masturbatory   i.e.., jettisoning connections

pouncing with moneyed teeth  as in: i own u bitch

i am the richest one of all   mirror mirror on the wall

how can i look at myself at all?    no longer rocking

in the bosom of abe ape

__

i did mean that in some vague way we are the same person,

not separate people.  francesleemartymeharmanjason .

Virginia Woolf  The Waves  1931

Fall  2019  ..i seem to have misplaced the m and the y  in my name..in addition to a limb..and a brother..

girlyman/manlygirl

some people wish i were

a full time man  enough of

this whishywashy girlyman

shit

u can’t have it both ways ape!

this is not a chosenstate  manly

girls  not the chosenpeople  rather

a hybridization   a bastardization

or maybe just intellectual masturbation!

probably

__

(hey bob   i don’t break   i’m just broken   in)

Fall  2019

August 16/1969  in autograph book from Lee:

..to the greatest little filly of them all..