songanddancegirl

CUT

I CUT LIKE A BUFFALO

Jack White  the one who got away  has a lyric that goes:

I cut like a buffalo  This could have many meanings  though

I doubt the majority of you have pondered this into the wee

hours   However  the buffalo remains an animal dear to me

My rodeorake of a Dad had me on one at 3   And I fell hard

for The Rifleman’s son Mark  at 5   Daddy bequeathed me to

him for a small tithe

The term  cut  is often used by boys  I grew up in a pack  which

for a glam fashionista is akin to being raised with wolves   One

bro in particular  a wolf in sheep’s clothing  continues to howl at

the moon  at odd intervals  on Yom Kippur  The holidays of Judaism

being synched to the lunar calendar   Hence lunacy blooms

But I digress   Cut  refers to the puerile fascination with passing gas

And I bring this up  as I will cut like a cow  every time I don the $2,000

silver cowskin jacket made by a sassy Havergal grad  who sold me the

reeking piece of flesh   An ill sewn  overblown testament to the size of

her girlballs   Sadly the pink silk lining is sagging   The lining of a cow’s

intestines being a shetl delicacy  called  kishka

And my kishkas are what this design poseur took from me  along with

$2,000 dollars flushed down the porcelain hole  Same place I flushed my

limpid tadpoles at 10  when a friend of rakish Dad’s  a gangster from the

‘track in Buffalo (!) said: Set them free little cowgirl  Set them free   And you

know how that story ends  Tadpoles not swimming to virgin tide pools in B.C.

Perhaps I should flush the unholy silver cowhide  +free my shetl soul from its

lifelong attachment to bourgeois finery   The bovine girls I grew up with had

parents far more nouveau riche than we  +teased me mercilessly for my lack of

closets stuffed full of dresses   Still at night  my chandelier dreams  often give

way to scenes on the Great Plains  where I  cut  like a buffalo  +ride like there’s

no tomorrow

__

Cut /verb – make a speedy + sudden departure from people + places + everyday

eviscerations of the soul

Summer 2018

..though I cannot promise anything  I will likely not be as bitter come -17..

TOO FAR

WE HAVE COME TOO FAR TO TURN AROUND

Dark clouds cruise the CN tower   Power mongers skitter

at Queen + Bay   It was 40 yrs. ago today  English Professor

Barry James  49  (so perhaps dead?)  said: Ms. Atkins you

are likely too young to fully comprehend the concept of being

trapped in a life not of one’s own making  of what it means to

be a prisoner of fate

But now I do   Luckily ensuing decades saw many Houdinis

Beelines to: a hotel (2nd almost husband 3 a.m.)  the airport

(same bloke)  parent’s spare room (don’t ask)  Once even a

segue to a brother’s attic  where lonely+Rapunzel  I waited

Now a new course of study + Professor beckon   He is young

enough to be a son  so I suspect he has yet to figure out the

dirty truth about Mcfate

I will not give it up to him   No matter how hard he begs during

office hours   Unless it is on bended knee:  Pretty please leather

skinned redhead    He a Lolita scholar  where Mcfate waits in the

person of Humbert Humbert   The pervert + pedophile   The good

news is  that once the whips+scorns of time have had their way –

there is medical marijuana!

If you are still alive Barry James  + reading this poem  I hope you are

on some   This +numerous prescription drugs  whose side effects are

identical to the disease   Now buoyant with false hope  unique to the

new THC  you will care not a whit about the members of the animal +

vegetable kingdoms inhabiting the White House of 2018   Nor that

democracy as we know it is being swept out to sea

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Canada Day 2018🍁🍁

..for Justin Trudeau.. who knows more than he is letting on about the new THC..

HUDDLED

BRING ME YOUR HUDDLED MASSES  AND I’LL PISS ON THEM

(*Lou Reed  Dirty Boulevard)

Registered for a course today: Post-Humanism +Modern Fiction

wherein Professor Rhoda Morgenstern U of T  will walk us through

George Saunders + Cormac McCarthy   Both of whom write about

a time  situated historically  + yet beyond time   The details don’t

much matter  Appalachian serial killers  Brother/sister incest   Border

land sadism on the vast plains  where Trump’s orphans are currently

being scarred for life  emotionally

I posit today  that we are living in a  post-human  time   Our Gods jettisoned

+ soon to be A.I.    Fighting A.I. will require a steely vigilance  should you be

so inclined   Answer all questions with questions   This God is sly

No doubt the death of our Gods has led to suicide gaining steam in the culture

Where the highest stats are for middle class white males  adolescents   and

octogenarians   Untethered from the opiate of the masses  opioids have rushed

in to fill the vacuum   Overdose now competing with death by one’s own hand   Post

humanism is post God   Post soul   Post meaning   All of which takes us back to our

beginnings  To the biological imperative for finding meaning  ie., survival

Now in these fame-whoring days  souls parched and sere  we the huddled masses

skitter  To avoid being stamped extinct  by that namlessfaceless God  inside our lap

tops  +machines  One woman in Jakarta  54  fled into a Reticulated Python  in order

to incubate  +wait it out   The snake with bloated belly  was last seen near her sandals

slouching

__

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?  

(W.B. Yeats  The Second Coming)

Summer 2018

CARE

I DON’T REALLY CARE  DO U?

(*see 1st Lady’s jacket on visit to Trump orphans)

Solstice message from a bad witch  Longest day’s

journey into night well underway  Brutal dicktator  +

(illegal?) immigrant wife  undo thin veneer of civilization

separating us from naked apes  Her clothing choices speak

volumes about character  or lack there of   Style is character

as F. Scott Fitzgerald said

Those long red ties  ill fitting suits  +yellow beehive  small hole

for mouth  Melania dreamed of marrying well  back in Slovenia

+sold her soul for the Trump diamond (..if you want the Plotnick 

diamond..  it comes with Plotnick ..)    + a $39 Zara jacket with

a slogan right out of the: Dumbeddown Handbook of Mindfuck

America    No way is she smart enough for subversion

She who referred to her husband’s perversions as locker room talk

He who has been accused of sexually assaulting umpteen women

But the gilded cage of baroque bad taste where her parents now

hunker  is where the Trumps Snopes’  will return in 7 yrs. (the Snopes:

that ornery  duplicitous  barn-burning family of itinerant farmers

blacksmiths  bigamists  and bank presidents  out of William Faulkner)

When Pyongyang beaches will be filled with crumbling condos  Detritus

of buttonboy’s cock fight   Whose was bigger? (Napolean’s  reportedly 2.5″)

Perhaps the founding fathers we hear so much about  did not go far enough

with checks + balances   Now doing summersaults in graves  As pardons being

readied for bad men  +the number of children torn from parents  creeping into

the thousands

It is said that you cannot make silk purses out of sow’s ears  while the souls

of dictators + their wives  so easily crafted from pig-parts  will turn on spits

in hell  for eternity   A la imagery in Hieronymous Bosch c. 1550: yellow haired

beaked freaks + slovenly wives with spittle on chins  with fire licking fatted

underbellies

__

Summer Solstice  2018   ..Lock her up.. Lock her up..

FRIGHTEN

WITH WHAT EXACTLY WOULD YOU

EXPECT TO FRIGHTEN ME?

I read this week that a woman in Schenectady had

migraines so piercing  she called 911 regularly  Turns

out she has Lyme’s disease  undetected for 6 yrs.

Muscle spasms in the major muscle groups sent her

to the doctor who found Lyme antibodies

Recently a neurologist prescribed anticonvulsants +

botox injections in head: Your eye may droop  but we

give these to all the artists  (yes she really said this..)

In the 10 minutes  Dr. Cavalier spent with me  she spoke

slowly  perhaps to give the impression of a longish interview

The tactic failed miserably  The botox needles will cost $831.00

every 2 mths.

• screeching migraines
• infected ticks (likely from white field mice not deers)
• heart-lung machines causing brain damage in quadruple bypass
• 67 stitches for mastectomy

Late life perpetual sadness will soon fade  opening up virgin horizons

Where untrammelled snow + unscreamed screams will melt into rivers

running through arteries  To the sea of HOPE  at base of spine

Kundalini Goddam!  Yesterday a pristine 22 yr. old niece said: Swallows

are birds who always return home  That should be your tattoo   But I

don’t think so

Perhaps a vulture in full regalia  with a crown +more  An inyourfacefuckyou

to the carrion eaters who no longer frighten you   Nor do the pics of

Linda Blair  ie., exorcistporn  a forlorn brother sends regularly   And while

you used to have special readers for his e-mails  now they seem child’s

play   Compared to reality  of which art is not even a reasonable facsimile

This is a good place to get to  The putrefacto of the alchemists   On the

other side of which is a kickass pulled brisket   +bliss     Yes bliss   A place

where the Karma police will never find you

Now:

• invincible
• unbowed
• +fresh as a daisy

__

Summer Solstice  2018

MEANING

THE DYSTOPIA SERIES @ U OF T  AND THE SEARCH

FOR MEANING IN CORMAC MCCARTHY

He was 4ft.8   A rotund Milton scholar   He used fuck

as if he’d discovered it in an illuminated manuscript

Who the fuck knows what it means!  It’s a prose poem

It’s enigmatic  re: Cormac Mcarthy’s  Blood Meridian

C’mon head of English Dept. U of T   I want meaning

with my exegesis or what is it good for?  Absolutely

nothing   All of your Milton illusions  +biblical delusions

are not worth a mote in the eye of the Lord:  And God said to

Job  I’m fucking God!  That’s why I can torture you!  

(yes  head of English  said this)

If you cannot grapple with the deeper meaning of McCarthy

the greatest living writer of the 20^th century  you are not worth

your substantial weight in salt or your 150K salary   Even my

brother  a legal scholar  at that  had an allusion to John Milton’s

Paradise Lost   It puts your pithy fucks to shame:  (from Animal

House  spoken by Donald Sutherland: * plse.see below)

Back in the day  1978  U of T  my English professors were elegant

men   Musty with bushy eyebrows   I fell hard for one of them   He

spake Chaucer with his golden tongue: Whan that Aprille with his

shoures soote, the droughte of March hath pierced to the roote..   

And yes  he tempted me to his rooms where   But I digress

Now to McCarthy’s text:

Men’s memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from

the past that was not  (or as my 94 yr. old mother says: what was was)

Cormac adds a new twist to Hassidic wisdom  Not only is the past a was

no matter how hard you try  you cannot unlive your life

And no matter what you do  you will live out the same story  (Mother:

Man makes plans  God laughs)  ie., I’m Fucking God!   Do you really

believe in the sanctity +veracity of what happened 40 yrs. ago?  When

the Boss released Darkness  +you lived with a 24 yr. old husband  What’s

the difference anyway?   Now you live with another husband  64

And in the night your medical marijuana plays tricks   All husbands become

one   Cormac: Did you post witnesses? For where is yesterday?  Numerous

of my witnesses have fled   Some are dead   Those who remain grow foggy

And soon  their mittens will be affixed  with strings

__

Hear me man, he said. There is room on stage for one beast and one alone.

All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by

one they will step down into the darkness. Bears that dance, bears that don’t.

(Cormac Mcarthy  Blood Meridian 1985)

(I don’t dance for the honky amusements  Bob Dylan  1965)

SPRING  2018  

..if I could take one moment into my hands..

Bruce Springsteen   The Promised Land  1978

SPRING

SOME REASONS WHY SUICIDE INCREASED THIS SPRING

(+ DOES SO EACH + EVERY SPRING)

Woke up to another hanging  Anthony Bourdain  61  Joie de

vivre extraordinaire   Won’t see another Spring   Contradicting

statements from shattered friends: He was never happier! Never

in a better place   He was in darkness for days    Anthony drank

gallons of wine to keep heroin at bay   11 yr. old daughter now in

the highest risk group for: addictions  mental health issues  +suicide

1. all the light
2. the pollen
3. the social pressure i.e., all the sexy patios
4. all the beautiful people barely dressed + insanely happy
5. fragrance of rotting lilacs
6. the fecundity vs. your moribundity
7. apocalyptic certainty  (Globe+Mail  June 8, 2018)

Later in the day  attracted beautiful strangers  on the Bloor subway   An

Amazonian  too beautiful for Bloor + Dufferin    She sang uninhibitedly

Exuding Nina    When our fingers touched

Suicide Goddam

__

Cruel giants, mermaids, captivating spells,

a hunger for such things seemed to want to

play itself out within the desert springtime  and

its ambushes, its perfumes. (Denis Johnson Jesus’ Son)

SPRING  2018   RIP Anthony Bourdain

..who by fire  who by water..

..who by his own hand..

ONCE

WE WERE CHILDREN ONCE  PLAYING WITH TOYS

Storm clouds gathering  though not in the forecast   I

believe in the weatherman  +watch the weather for clues

It is the closest one can get to the Divine in a secular time

I stare penetratingly at the 7 day  +never fail to look at Paris

+ Rome

Left 1 husband in Paris   another in Rome   Overdosed on

limpid beauty  tainted-love  +lumpen strawberry risotto  Things

were much simpler weatherwise  circa 1965   in the backyard  The

weathergods were friends with your parents  who insisted you leave

the vinyl pool on steamy afternoons    Sky rumbling raucously

Frogs  pre blunt force trauma  family too  ( hey  we had to stun them

or they’d end up on driveway  frogs splayed under father’s Audi )  This

a sadness youngest bro could not tolerate  To this day he aches for the

children in Charlie Brown  They have no parents!  his refrain

Ours were quick  too quick to order us out of the pool  Always on the

lookout for lightening  +Huntington’s Korea  a famous childhood disease

back in the day   Our mother had St. Vitas Dance  +checked us for:

fascinendem tremendems regularly   Those slight tremors  the first sign

of shtetl witchery

Yet we had no fear  +played with the sparks nearing vinyl+metal   And to

this day we remain fearless  though the tragic news of Kate Spade’s death

wears on us   Reportedly from anxiety  Anxiety more dangerous than lightening

Her 13 year old daughter at school

Fearlessness ragged around the edges   No cure for fear of death by hanging  This

fate also that of a gentle boy with pinned ears  I liked   We often walked home from

school together   In Grade 11 he became a lifeguard at our camp  where  on a steamy

summer’s day  he climbed high up into the rafters of the main building

__

Summer 2018  RIP Kate Spade 55 +Jeffery G. 17  one of the smartest boys at school

HOT

HOT TOWN SUMMER IN THE CITY

Dierdre sat in the narrow yard of the semi in her highly

flammable acetate bathrobe  Chainsmoking   It was 7:30 a.m.

At about noon her father arrived  +ushered her in   She was

40    Months prior  Diego had left her for her best friend  there

most nights  drinking wine  with her forked tongue darting out

intermittently

A few months later Pacey moved in   Beetred all year ’round   A

private eye  with a red light on the roof of his car   Her father  a

Bell Canada lifer offered to get her a job   Our lights would flicker

when Pacey came   Later she went back to work at the neighbourhood

restaurant   It’s all I know   And with blank Bell Canada eyes  she

drank wine  +chainsmoked for another decade

__

*Diego’s sister continued to visit from Italy  +her 10 yr old son could

often be heard  well into his teens  calling to her from the yard:  ma

maaaaaaaaaa  ma maaaaaaa    Every once in a while   apropos of

nothing  either my 2nd husband  or I  will take up that plaintive call

While in my mind’s eye I see another husband  circa 1979  calling:

Ommmelettttte   Ommmmelettttte  in a faux Brooklyn accent  this the

name of the neighbour’s dog  who on a hot summer’s night went missing

Summer  2018   .. Ode to the sounds of Summer

MTV

I WANT MY MTV

To all of the bad listeners who think they’ve figured

out the game of life    Who no doubt ascribe to the

wisdom jackhammered into King St. at Brant: Rain is

nature’s drum solo   (cost to city $36,000 roughly)

You can all take your pensions  +your grey haired wives

Your superfoods  +your MTV  (wasn’t life so much better

in the early days of MTV?)   We’d sit indoors  even in Boca

Raton  and watch our stars careen around in pointy white

boots  No phoney Beatlemania for Joe Jackson   I recently

bought these boots at auction  they smell musty  like stale

British sex

You can take your pat answers  +your cliches: if not now when?

followyourfuckingbliss  et. al.   +face the fact that your soul  she’s

gone AWOL  just like everyone elses by 57   The last man standing

will be bullet ridden with suffering  NOT young at heart   Dick  Dignity

in hand     (no wankers allowed in heaven)  

__

Even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine this

miraculous world the Toaists call The Ten Thousand Things?

And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead?

What would you care? How would you even know the difference?

(Denis Johnson  Jesus’ Son  1992   RIP May 24, 2017  67  liver cancer)

Summer 2018    Live damn it !   George Costanza

AAC in her Joe Jacksons