songanddancegirl

we are so lightly here…said Leonard Cohen

are we Len?  i mean yes to: you know she’s half crazy..and that’s why

you wanna be there..  Jack knew too: the only ones for me are the mad

ones..mad to live +burnburnburn..

yet so many rage against the cage

where there’s always free cheese

we are here too heavily  

c’mon   rattle those chains

when the rest of you were busy being children

i was busy being a saviour

of children

of adults

of the world!  

she’s got the whole wide world in her hands

when the rest of you

were being children   i became a monk

(Frank Stanford  Arkansas 1976 ..2 years pre..3 bullets to the heart..at 29)

lately there have been  signs

24 kettling hawks   8 low planes

over the dead

starkdark underbellies

dropping leaflets at the cemetery

SUCKERS!!

a light on this poet’s face  at her bro’s place   at sunrise

for whom does the bell toll   this time?

(sunrise over Frances Atkins’ dead body  circa 2022)

Ernest +Frankie   shotgun suicides  gnaw off a foot to fly  what with all

the testing to see if yer gonna die  cuts insouciance off at the knees   old

brittle gimlet me   fabulous roman candle    descent into bathos ain’t pretty

i know that priest with the giant gut  sucked 14 yr. old Frank’s lifeblood  at

the monkery  flayed him  as boys without fathers  are more vulnerable to be

they always promise refuge   don’t they just

i was pursued like this all my life  

the boy with the wild hair they called me

i made promises to death  + kept them

(Frank Stanford  at 23..)

i am not here lightly   no Holly Go   sailors sold me into captivity  at 3

the dancing she-bear in chains  the girl with the wild hair  of a cajun whore

i knew many children like me  in the trenches of humanity

suckled by lions+tigers+bears   +priests

much like Frankie

poet  swamprat  prey

__

Fall 2025  ..for Frankie & Apesie..

the tailor Muttle Kamzoil

he had a way with words

he had a way with witchywomen

with a football

tallish  handsome

not strong

not the silent type

beautifulloser at heart

this the rub

his father Charlie erased him

before he began the race

SCRATCHED

like the lamed ponyboy

oh his impish grin

+cruelstreak

his rise

and fall   and rise               and fall

his last breaths on a yellowed

florida bed   raggedpallet

ancestor visitations

he spoke  in arcane handsignals

HUT!!!!

sister christian

witness extraordinaire

her bro’s band of angels

all in cleats

she flew home then

to tell

his pretty mama

__

Fall 2025   ..he rises yet..

..but we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.. says Haruki Murakami

No?

why do i write my autofictional narrative/confessional  prose poems?

all diatribe   memoir-esq  +rage   always prone to hyper-vigilance +amygdala

hijack-ers   especially  re:  bugs  serial killers  +narcissists  (what’s the difference?)

they’ll eat you alive  clean your slim bones dry   dem bones  dem bones dem

dry bones   1st 65 years in a rage   last 7 in grief   pandemic  cancer maximus

a brother  and old mother  crept away  +on+on+on    now it’s  rise up time

from perpetual  fightflightfreeze   un-Anna Karenina me  the train already upon

her as she decided  to rise  does memoir try  to pin down the un-pinnable?  nail it

to a cross  where it withers  forever a relic  mementomori

maybe the past shifts +transforms  as we do  how-what-who  is remembered

maybe it’s all a mirage  hallucination  feverdream   did big Paul Paladino exist?

a small time mobster from Buffalo  circa 1968    did bovine Jackie Gaudaur?

(who should rot in hell)

how ’bout blacksonavitch?  poodle extraordinaire  he who spoke 5 languages

held my hand in the night  when parents cussed+squealed  +wild animals entered

the suburban backsplit   made off with my 1st husband   and where now Difranco?

frogman in the Great War  dance teacher  gigolo   your family reads like a 

broadway play!  said my de mentor  who was not fond of  over-rhyme   his

own father in a ward   mother married the handyman  who beat her

..my father is frothing at the mouth..his hair  is disarranged..his eyes crackle

like electrical storms..his fly bursts..his cock emerges huge+wet as a wriggling fish..

my father was a classics specialist and died from a torn heart when i was 9 1/2..

(David Donnell  Water Street Days  1989  Governor General’s Award  for poetry 1983)

Haruki Murakami   these wounds

+their perps  seem to have one helluva

staying-power

which is my hand?

which is hers?

__

Fall 2025  ..at 92  Rhonda  who killed her rabbi husband against a fence..

perpetually begged for a bowl of her mother’s soup.. (true story  inmate #666

Living Life on the Avenue  a now defunct hellhole mirage)

salvationgirl blues

title  compliments of spellcheck gods  a mystical

transformation of  halva  into  salvation  !!  which

i desperately need    but who doesn’t?

halva  a dessert made of sesame seeds  desertdelicacy     open sesame

get me out of here!  one brother had a serious halva crack-up   at 8

as the other bro ran in circles  with a behemoth on his shoulder

(it is still there)

   (where all hoopers learned to flop)

my brothers are nice guys   otherwise   leaning toward the

eccentric  +alienabduction   when the spaceship came they

clambered aboard   willingly

all of this as i herded the other leper messiah + 1 giant black poodle

into the cedar-closet   where we hid among  mother+father’s  clothes

silkgowns  houndstooth  the odd saddle  +some greasy black kief

our parents had fled years earlier  can you blame them?  salvation

it don’t come easy   and it likely doesn’t come at all  according to

buddhists  +stoics  everywhere

but once you know this  you western clingons to immortality   ruin  harm

+loss upon loss  are just lowly words  so fer chrissakes  try suffering them

with dignity   +fuck immortality

__

Fall 2025  ..Happy 5786..🍯  ..oh and there will be no certainty..

tripping the light (is not) fantastic

walking home from a fashionshow  my fave designer’s retiring

women hoarding taffeta dirndls  like they are the 2nd coming

what rough beast on slow thighs stalks me?   (thx W.B.)

in my local park  on this dark moonless night  gibbous waned

to a sliver  then died  (much like my yout)  a small man in black

pops out of the trees  he is menacing  +sidewinder

he glares at me  says he is hungry  just then trumpets blare!  lights

flash  +a giant black spider-y web  attacks my left eye  the guy in

black  tackles me  +begins to rub his tutu on my varicoseveins

as he runs away i hear him say: this bitch can sing!   i’d been crooning

Ziggy Stardust  as the Great Vitreous Detachment of 2025 began  the spider

in my eye  is not my friend   the Mayo says it will cling to me for a year

(the needy bastard)

there is a fragility to this stage of life  a drying out of everything  once

held sacred   lubricants are your friend   walk tall +carry a big dildo stick

(hey where’s your sense of humour?)  oh and do hold your head up  fer chrissakes

__

you’re  still

the greatest

little filly

of them all

(Lee Atkins  August 16  1967)

__

..but now all is different..a sudden moment of darkness at noon..

the ego is a  has been.. (Mid Life  Murray Stein  1983)

Now we Dance!  (Sprockets  Saturday Night Live) 

Fall 2025  ..the snow she’s a coming..

comme des fille

i sit in a Comrags onesie  black  with perfect seaming   a la Miuccia Prada

it gives pointy boobs to anyone over 13   later on Dundas St.  named for

Henry  the slave trader   i enter the temple of citygirl cool

doors closing  forever  at 8pm tonight   there is a store in west Toronto

all my changes were there   colourful windows behind the stars   yellow

citymoon  on the rise

fabrics more voluminous now  as oldbroads age  (hey i’m from the 50’s)

3/4 sleeves  dropwaists  husband’s falling like flies  now begins the time

of existing without our slain heroes   all our friends are dead   said Pete

   (now quite arthritic…go know!)

42 years of froufrou  these daze  denizens deshabille  +flirty  as we enter a

time of liminality  the Reap winks  we herd in for the grande finale  don’t be

bitter  old holyfool   just lie back  +be proud you wore Canadian  eh

__

Fall 2025  ..(not so) poetic vitreous detachment on the walk home..

oh bartleby oh humanity

i kissed sonny liston on his black neck

Sonny Liston used to run along the levees  steam rising off

his wide wide back  he reminded me of old father  a wide

backed football hero  steam often rising from his talltales

now both of their tombstones say: A MAN   Sonny+Lee

pedigree of a certain kind  of suffering   +a certain kind

of rising     up outta the swamp     chompchomp

hey  living up here with the dead

ain’t so bad  after all

says Mr. Liston

now is it Lee?

__

__

.. i could smell Sonny Liston.. he was so mean looking

honey dripping down his chin like tears.. so i kissed

Sonny Liston on his black neck ..

(Frank Stanford  The Light The Dead See  1977)

Fall 2025  ..gator’s got yer granny daddy..🐊🐊

you’ve gotta serve somebody

we all served her  her wounds magical  +beacon

help me   save me

me

me

me

i wear her handcuffs   as jewellery  i wear her face too

more+more these days  aging face  morphing into hers

most powerful 1st friend   glamour to spare

siren

queen

of our hearts

queen

of despair

but

no one else then or since  has ever had  that special kind

of light  +never will   that’s why they call ’em originals

singularsensation

lovedmelikearock

walked her to the tomb’s door   you can do it!   i told her

you’re ready for your closeup dear   as her new hawk friends

escorts extraordinaire  gathered her up  (a large-ish hawk can carry 20x it’s weight)

now they send regular missives+signs   3 yrs gone by   i hear the deadfolks

are lining up to chauffeur you  in heaven  you aren’t missing much down here

just me  squandering my freedom     or am i?

you heard it here

freedom is as hard

a burden

as servitude

__

Fall 2025  ..for all who think you serve no one..🦅🦅

a little piece of a foot..of a heart..left in the chrysalis this summer

summer over  the stinkmess  the suck of heatsmokehumidity

oh the humidity  gnarly shitstained streets +people  city carrion

PEI a watery refuge in   THE BIG STINK

don’t make a big stink out of everything ape!

impossible

unlikely

unhinged wanderer

(i am so pathetically intense I can’t be any other way)

(Sylvia Plath)

now summer turns to dreams of moving  of shitty terlits replacing the

mean streets (shit emerging as a theme) where is Carl Jung when you

really need him?

in bed with Toni Wolff

as Emma  +Von Franz

neck   in the corner

(..the unconscious..is realllllly unconscious..  CG Jung  circa 1898)

the dreamscape:

moved to an apartment  it’s way too small

shoes now in the living room

balcony faeces faces a wasteland

of a house  a yard  garbage sprawled  creeping

up the trellis   we can’t stay here

she awakens with a scream  then back into the same dream  much like in life

you’re still here dayindayout  until you’re not  and you cannot leave without

permission   a permit   a chainsaw

now in a car  and lost  there’s a cop  hey constable!  she keeps driving  in the

direction she thinks will take her home  but if you don’t know where yer going

directions are meaningless

(..you set out for one place..and arrive in as another..)

(fuck Copernicus  1473-1543)

every child client asked the same question:

do you get paid to love me?

i ask you gentle reader  without irony

are you paid to read me?   no doubt

at this juncture   you feel  you should be

__

Fall 2025  ..work on sunshine+daffodils continues unabated..unsated..

..home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to

escape cease.. (Naguib Mahfouz  1911-2006)

back away from the toothfairy

my mother+i had the same dentist   during her lifetime we spent

numberless hours in his rooms  with views of Tim Hortons  + dirty

city sidewalks   he a tooth whisperer extraordinaire

he could sell a bicycle  to a fish

to quote Gloria Steinem:

a woman needs a man

like a fish needs a bicycle 

these days i sit in her lap  on the very same chair   in her embrace

(the sidewalks now shitstained)  ape this is a kaduchas  but on you

it  looks good!    mother was always my greatest fan

un-gentle reader  it is i who will lose her teeth  guess i needed to be humbled

but lest we forget   Icarus flew  (me too u envious fuckers)  gorgeous mother lost

hers at 19   Paul Newman father a few each year   a slow ignoble drip

i hurled the wretched prosthetic  on which he regularly gagged  down the

garbage shute with such force  father came to comfort me  from his new

farm in heaven   he also threw back his head and laughed

this he rarely did in life  it had to be really funny  or re: some human conceit

he’s full of shiiiiiit   a frequent refrain   father flew too   a cleated Icarus

handsome  don’t ask

but wait  aren’t those

sparkling pearly whites

in father’s resurrected head

hope springs eternal !

one day i too will be  tooth-ed  again

_

(..and if the Zaida had balls..he’d be the Bubba..)

Summer 2025  ..practicing non-attachment as i write..