songanddancegirl

mothership

who remembers the first nosefull of earth in Spring?

musty  moist  feral  fecal?  as a child  also feral/fecal

on the edge of our ravine

ready to plunge into forestnettles  with neighbourhood

hellhounds on my tail  one murdered his mother  103

slashwounds     Jerry can you hear me?

my own mothership  now a blinking  MOM 💥 on a keychain

a lasting essence  also of early Spring  her April 4th arrival

conjured  annual birthday blizzards

and a wicked nor’easter for her burial  we shivered+froze  as

mother blew snow into our faces  i told you i was going to die!

now the   indignant ice-queen

(a brother at the crypt)

mother a conundrum of

gentle/fierce

innocent/streetsmart

especially re:

pickpockets+perverts

__

Winter 2024  ..RIP Frids..🖤💔

it’s not all jagged scars + stretchers

when i told him to shut his eyes in the bowels of

the hospital  at 2 am   my eyes remained quite open

i was still  seeing  witnessing  recording   bleeding out

for the record  i do not have brain cancer  i merely brushed

up against it  violently +PTSD   who cared for me?  the cherry

trees in the park    even in the dark

as i staggered home  a carcass  all animal inside  now eight months

on the  otherside   the numbing has begun  dissociation  that human

coping mechanism  the one that allows us to push through bardo states

where  we do not know  if we are dead  or alive  this way to survive   🔜

holocausts  vivisection  cancer  divorce  beartraps   as old Carl Jung has

reminded me:  the human ego can withstand  excruciation  crucifixion   and more

of course there is a tipping point Carl   into the river of  NO RETURN

but i am still paddling   and i’ve decided to embrace the grey  this winter

and make it into something beautiful   like Frida with a gangrenous leg

like the scars on my

motherfatherhusbandsisterbrother

intricate etchings  on bloodied snowangels

so  don’t cast the first stone  don’t judge my suffering  i will never be

the same  near hopeless creature again  and that’s progress  motherfuckers

anyone out there brave enough to join me  in the holy abyss of hope?

WOW   that really cleared the room!

__

..Nick Cave decided to be  happy  as a form of revenge  after his

15 yr. old son fell to his death on his 1st acid trip..

Winter 2024  ..bodhisatvva of pain  rises up..🦅🦅

..if you are looking  there are signs everywhere..

ask alice

foot stuck  in rabbit hole  rabbits cower

forest used to be magical  where did the

magic go?

lost in synapses of MRI machines  rabbit

holes magnetic    aliceaprill   held inside

while technicianrobot  with dead eyes

searches for her soul   AWOL  these long

years  of living the dream  old house deshabille

is getting to thee   no?

strange mustyholes  black rot in floorboards

moistghosts flatten themselves  +enter   they

number in the hundreds  maybe thousands

they pity you

tethered still to matter

what’s the matter?

__

Winter 2024  ..to look these things squarely in the face..

would need the courage of a lion tamer.. Virginia Woolf

non attachment blues

the psychologist  at my local cancer hospital  all giant

black frames  gravitas  +Morticia Addams  talked to me

about  anticipatory grief     it’s a thing

the only person for whom it was a foreign concept  was

a geriatric psychiatrist  at a retirement rez i frequented

she was in serious denial

many of her patients would be dead  within 8-10 days

give or take   when i told her about my pre-grief  for my

98 yr. old mother  fading  fabulous  +acerbic to the max

the doc said: don’t kill her off so fast  i guess she failed

compassion  at shrink school   5 months later  mother

walked through the valley  of the shadow of death

perhaps it was the doc’s revenge  for mother telling her

you don’t take a good picture!  to which she replied   i

don’t get paid for my looks

clearly

i hear

mother

chide

so how are you supposed to  know  what death feels like?

a dying friend asked   well  by every deathbed you’ve ever

sat at   by every witnessing  of medical science in action

torturing/healing

torturing/healing

you’re people

in the end  so reluctant to let them go   you have to beg

borrow  +steal  the hemlock  but really  it’s pretty simple

befriend  the dualities

hold terror in one hand  +hope in the other   and learn

to juggle with aplomb  without shitting oneself   without

scaring the shit out of  the dying one

whose red shoes

have recently

been  spotted on

the feet of angels

__

We heal and test our heart’s resilience by lingering within

the unbearable. We find our hearts much stronger than

we presumed, and what we thought unbearable to be

nothing of the sort..  (Nick Cave  The Red Hand File  2024)

Winter 2024  ..one day i heard persistent childcries ..croak+nervepierce..

bluejean babyqueen

tripping on lysergic  at 14   the Blind Faith Virgin

holding an airplane  launched my  OBE   veinous

breastbuds     beyond alarming

6 am  hydroplaning along suburban blacktop  gotta find

my house  where Mephistopheles lives  a.k.a. blacksonavitch

the non-faustian poodle     where now most loyal friend?

yea tho i made the devil’s bargain  17 yr old pusherman   goddamn!

i shall fear no evil  we threw said spawn off the bridge  up on Choctaw

Ridge  later Dave jumped  (they’re always named Dave or Cheech or Lu)

but then..

at dinnertime mama noticed i hadn’t touched a single bite  she’d

been cookin all morning  gribnez  flunken  and the like  my fugue

so deep   my jeans smeared   all sacred substancey+sticky

vague murmurings   Rabbi Kelman

Lee  can you pass the apple pie?

Baruch ata Adonai

__

Winter 2024     ..can’t find my way back home..

the afterlife?

what comes after cancer?  is there a cancer afterlife?

one could ask  The Boss  whose wife often spends

3 months at a time in bedsores  with multiple myeloma💣

or ask   Chuck Prophet  who has recently risen from

metastatic invasion  +ensuing enslavement  to chemo

and radiation     unprophesied+shock

as old Epictetus proclaimed 2000 yrs ago  don’t seek

for all to happen as you wish it would   rather wish

that all happens as it will   then your life will flow well

face it  there is no grand plan  no universal design  it’s

chaos in the trenches  and we are all subject to the same

forces  despite all the shit they feed us  re heaven+hell

btw  (..hell is other people.. J.P. Sartre)

good+bad things happen to good+bad people  why me?

why NOT you!  being free  really fucking no holds barred

free  means accepting  that you have   zero control

that your animal body will grow old +die  that your luminous

spark  your spiritus mundi  will lead you to the otherside  where

the light at the end of the tunnel lives

how much better would human life be  if they taught you+me

to believe that   impermanence  is not the enemy  grasping and

clutching at the mast of an ever sinking ship  is

(..the bad news is nothing lasts forever..  

..the good news is nothing lasts forever.. H.I. Atkins)

real freedom is diving in   courage is allowing terror   peace is

revelling in your abandon  said Tom Petty  who at 66  sat on his

couch  dreaming of retiring

with wife+grandkids  in an Airstream   💥massiveinfarction💥   

from 67 substances used to dull the pain of various excruciating

animal-ailments    so REVEL!    for chrissakes   REVEL!

__

Winter 2024  ..this little light o’ mine  i’m gonna let it shine..🔥

trailing horny cherubs do we come

birth is way more mysterious than death  we have a shelf life

+death appears gestating  +oh so patient  right from the first

breath     you will  NEVER  be that fresh

decompose  bred in the bones  the stoics will tell you to meditate

on death every day  befriend the blooddrunk Reaper  who creeps

thru walls  doors  floors  + fancy cotton sheets   dampgrotty

now bestained with  a dot of blood  from inserting the port  for the

morphinedrip  the one you begged a dwarfish nurse for   you finally

won Olga over   with tequila  charisma  +your lipstickrictus

birth is a different story  created by 2 humans  coital+biblical  sometimes

in a tube  you the imperfect clone  chip off the old block head  you will never

be as exalted  as pure  or as wretched

all primalscream + what the fuck?  10 minutes earlier you lay among horny

cherubs  +there’s the rub  you never asked to come here  now chained to the

body of a human-animal    you  with your weak chin  +hottentot apron

in April i will be my father’s age

when he died  and i no longer know

if i am   dead  or alive

__

..angels it is said  often do not know whether 

they’re  moving among the living or the dead..

(Rainer Maria Rilke  The Duino Elegies  #1)

November 2024   ..now buzz off..

silence of the lambs

they’re eating the dogs!

they’re eating the cats!

they’re killing the songbirds in Afghanistan

women barred from praying  reciting poetry

singing +speaking loud enough to hear eachother

be careful what you ask for bros  when the last

songbird falls  the sound of high fives  of beer jingles

of soccer jeers  of mine’s  BIGGER  than yours  will

ricochet thru temples   emptied of the fairest sex

who birthed the beasts  now wreaking revenge

for coming

from  that place

vagina dentata + mucosa

so

MAN UP!    boys

__

..in Iran women can be stopped by the secret police

and subjected to body cavity searches on the street

at the whim of ultra religious men.. 

(Reading Lolita in Tehran  Azar Nafisi   2003)

Fall 2024     ..bearing witness to the return of hate..

duckdreams

ancient river bed  behind suburban house

pagan wanderings  of heathen children  find

sittingduck family  hysterical catching   running

screaming    duck-ecstacy

catching a bird my childhood dream  hasidic

salting of bird’s tail    a girl’s first meditation

how close can you get?  asked winking father

dishtowel trembling   in 7 yr old hand

these days  silverbuckled cowboy belts  wet look

pleather  baubled   bangled  decorative-bitch   near

taxidermied   hits of dopamine  no longer from duck

slaying   zarabird in 67 yr old hand  of tarred+feathered    fashionista

__

Fall 2024     ..ouccccch!..

deathbed blues

my parents were born in different beds  but they died

in the same bed  old mother 98  wouldn’t sleep in  that bed

for several years   pre  The Reaper  (father taken 35 yrs before)

and though a man sang tantalizingly from beneath the

sheets  she insisted on the living room couch  narrow +

facing the door    (they’ll take me feet first!)

her future death beckoned  from the big brass bed   always

visible  the bedroom un-doored  mother un-moored   father

a ghost  dressed often as a giant hawk  waiting for his wildbride

mother lay like Nefertiti  father like a fallen angel   no longer

football  +jazzcat   in the corner Ella+Loius whispered the words

to   April In Paris   setting the mood for   Le Grande Ascent 🖤

Frances & Lee  November 14, 2022

__

Fall 2024     RIP Mummybird+Daddybird…..don’t be strangers!