songanddancegirl

BAD

IT’S BEEN A BAD YEAR FOR ROCK AND ROLL

And pretty young girls with cancer in the room

next door   She was just 16  big Latino family

Generations sat at her feet  as cells multiplied

inexplicablemente

Old grandmother on her knees  looked homeless

hunted   weary    Heart milagro tucked into shroud

Bed stripped of sheets   Empty chairs in hallway weep

Chica headed for long sleep   Earth smells of green  as

new spring  marches across towns +cities  waking things

that had been sleeping    Hola! 16 yr. old Persephone

________

for Joey Atkins  a mensh

SNEERS

CLIPPED BEARDS & POST-VALENTINE SNEERS

All of Toronto scowling today  as usual   Though the ice

is melting  +sun at its most beautiful  hanging over

Trinity Bellwoods   Tributaries run hip purebred yellow

As Gucci clad West Queen Westers smoke skunky pot

Cannabinoids don’t make a dent in penchant for snarl

Is there no one in the park today  newly cancer free?

No one giddy with freshreprieve?   Trees are waiting to

sprout leaves  +birds gathering to shit on these  moribund

hipsters  come Spring!

__

Rising Up For Spring

Winter 2017   for a hero: Kelly Bourne Atkins

LIMERENCE

IN LIMERENCE OVERLOAD?

If love is the glue binding our tribe  disinterest is

the solvent   Not hate which is equally binding   It is

much more difficult to grieve someone who: lied

demeaned +loathed you   Trust me I know   Years ago

such a relation died via suicide

Research points to the release of neuro-chemicals  in fresh

intimacies  that act as anti-depressants   The opposite is true of

troubled associations   Here  bile  stomach acid  +cortisol  the rule

A festering anti-limerence may even cause disease   A feeding upon

oneself  as Roger Chillingworth fed upon Arthur Dimmesdale   The 

unpardonable sin  in Hawthorne’s Scarlett Letter

But it was Emily D.  the only female Transcendentalist  who knew that

love commingles heaven+hell    While ardourless science stomps all over

love as fate   It’s really about simple proximity   Location location  location

My 3rd husband waxes romantic  yet I moved onto his street   +had a

washer and dryer in the basement!

Might something more complex have been afoot?   It is true too  that when I

am caught in the most venomous of tempests  he generally shows up unexpectedly

One frozen winter’s eve some years ago  as I crested a snowbank  filled with evil

intention  +bile   a hand gallantly appeared   I felt his familiar gaze  +glared into

that Viking face     Clearly for me  there is no escape

__

If you can’t take it, get out.  I can’t take it so I lie on a hotel bed dissolving

into chemicals.    (By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept  

Elizabeth Smart  1945)

Winter 2017   Valentines Day  for ASC  year 29..

FEMINISTS

REVOLUTIONARY MILLENNIAL FEMINISTS

My mother is one  +at soon to be 93  she wears her

feminism like a beatified Saint Joan   She alone taught

me the girlropes   She was always way ahead of her time

Be smart

Go to school   +keep going    +going

Be brave+bold  in ways you couldn’t be in 1940

Respect your body

Hold your head high

For chrissakes learn how to use a computer!

(she began 10 yrs. before me..)

Joie de vivre is real beauty

It’s ok to be pretty  fashionable  smart  +tough as nails

It’s ok to leave relationships that don’t work  make you hurt

or demean you

You’re nobodies slave

When I told her that there was a time in history when God

was a Woman  her response was righteous indignation  When

was that?  she spat   It was before our time  but you’ve kept

Her spirit alive against all odds   +She roams free in all of

your girl progeny

__

Valentines Day 2017    for Frances  Rock On Queen Bee!

MOST

WE ARE HERE FOR A FEW HOURS  A DAY AT MOST

At 3:42 this morning a friend wrote me: your site sucks

Now a driving snow falls around me  clinging to merlot hair

Turning it into the silver fox  it wants to be   Was it a lack of

civility  or just ballsy honesty?

In the dumbeddowndonald world it’s hard to tell   Yesterday

I heard Conrad Black say: Trump was charming  Funny   A great  

guy!  But who’s going to believe Unlord Connie?   Later I saw

Lenny Bruce on: The History of Comedy  which wasn’t that funny

Lenny was lying on the bathroom floor  naked   Dying from FBI

harassment  +bad drugs   He took on the Catholic church  at a time

when molestation by priests was still deep in the closets of every

diocese on Earth

I guess I don’t so much mind the friend’s honesty  though it stings

But you gotta know the his life would suck balls without me   Thank

you Lenny  for paving the way   for my salty poetry    RIP

__

Winter  2017

TINY

WE DON’T WANT YOUR TINY HANDS

ANYWHERE NEAR OUR UNDERPANTS

Sitting in a cool cafe  I have the urge to strip +Go Go dance in the

bay window  It couldn’t be as bad as Ga Ga’s gagworthy uncall  to

revolution  at the 51st Super Bowl last night   With all the pussy

shaking  no doubt the Donald  will make a bee line for her underpants

This morning my 93 yr. old mum tweeted: I wouldn’t give five cents to

see Ga Ga!   Me either   In fact my concert going days may be over

At the Drive By Trucker’s show on Saturday  I went out cold   Heat

prostration   +hard hip bods  profusely pressing against me   Ditto at

Trombone Shorty   Jazzfest T.O.  2013    200 degrees under that fucking

tin tent someone brilliant invented   Airless  soulless  hellhole  where groove

starved Canadians huddle each Summer

Had my 1st porta-potty experience there  Mrs. Phyllis Schneider accompanied

me to pee  +sold tickets to the lined up crowd  10 deep    She’s never been in a 

porta-potty!  she screamed    A rancid smell hit me like a ton of bricks  + I was

knocked to the floor  when someone eagerly bounced onto the commode next

door

As I emerged green behind the gills  the crowd lifted me onto their shoulders

Jazzfest prima donna  Comrags dress  sticky-sweet   After the show I headed

for Shorty  who I know from a Treme bar   Troy is shy  with lush t. bone lips

To see him reef is to enter an altered state  imagining all the possibilities

Today as we commiserated about concert blackouts  +toileting experiences therein

a wise friend said to me:  Freedom may be an illusion  which I am loathe to believe

though the certainty is slowly dawning on me   Now I am dancing buck (!)   in the

window at the Cygnet Cafe   +small Portuguese people are gathering   as the priest

from St. Helena’s across the street has entered with unctions  + a Chicago 58 salami

__

(You’re all alone and filled with fear, and the billionaire says

what you need to hear. He’s never worked a day in his life,

but he’s on your side.   Moby  2016)

Winter  2017     for Spooner

never stop going to concerts  

+never lose your sense of humour..

RESURRECTIONS

AND RESURRECTIONS

I have a friend who quoted Woody Allen

one day 25 yrs. ago   He said:  80%

of life is just: showing up

I answer now

And the remaining

20% involves:

kicking & screaming 

watching & waiting

lusting & alighting

&  goodbyes

__

Winter 2017    *written as Malcolm X  Fall 2012

MARY

MARY MARY  WHERE YOU GOING TO?

Mary died today  Tyler Moore   Remember her

throwing her pink hat into the air?  Did she turn

the world on with her smile?   Far too wholesome

+toothsome  even for then   You wanted to see her

a little messed up  neat skirt askew  after a few  too many

It was 1977  but felt more Laura Petrie repressed  than the

vanguard of Women’s Lib.   She seemed virginal in those

Audrey-esque suits  with small pointy breasts   Perhaps even

an Electra complex simmering underneath  for Ed    Gruff

father figure  sleeves rolled up   Perhaps even a seduction on

his desk?

Mary’s own father died of cancer in 92  after an unsuccessful

suicide attempt assisted by Mary   Her only child Richard died

when a gun went off in his hands  at 24   There were stints too at

the Betty Ford   Real life savaged the ingenue   Dark eyed + lush

lipped   Demons flattened themselves against lithe frame   Ed now

plays a psychoanalyst on TV    Doesn’t look like Ed  anymore

When our TV stars start dying  we lose the demi-gods whose

visitations in our living rooms  where our parents rested middle

aged bodies  were the glory days    When we really had it made –

Your choice   you can cling to your past  or to your future

__

*(creepy orange DJT  signed an executive order to have Mary

buried in the White House rose garden) 

Winter  2017    RIP Mary Tyler Moore  1936-2017

LIES

ANY CHILD OVER FIVE KNOWS THAT

ALTERNATIVE FACTS ARE CALLED LIES

Even the anarchist Emma Goldman repeatedly arrested

+deported  cited the: generous heart of America   And

knew that the beacon for  the wretched refuse of the teeming

shores  of the earth   America   gave the huddled masses 

the golden door of immigration

Yesterday the  banality of evil  broke free once more  Unseen

in such healthy doses since being coined at the Eichmann trial

in 1962  Rampaging through airports across the globe  as the

hater with yellow hair  pounded his Tarzan chest  Yes  king of the

neo-jungle  where white haired grandparents give him an A+ for

his 1st week’s performance as liar in chief

Echoing the average citizens who at first simply attended to the

menial labours of the Reich   Yesterday families were torn apart

None is too many  is too many  once more   Alternative fact: this

is not a Muslim ban   Fact: Christians will be let in

Making America safe again  involves  making America hate again

+ in giving ISIS fuel for butchering  bombing  +beheading  with

impunity   Has chief devil worshipper Bannon  of the shaggy hair

+hangdog smile  never heard of homegrown terrorism?   Fact:

All Jews will wear the yellow star of David  on front+back  the better

to hit the target  coming +going

__

The Truth:

No person accepted into the U.S. as a refugee, Syrian or otherwise,

has been implicated in a major fatal terrorist attack in the U.S. since

the Refugee Act of 1980. Prior to this 3 Cuban refugees carried out 

attacks killing 3 people. Perpetrators of major terror attacks have been

mostly U.S.born citizens or permanent legal residents from countries

not included in the ban.

Winter 2017    …Repetition Compulsion….The Old Colossus

PUSSY

THE RECLAMATION OF THE PUSSY PROCLAMATION

If you looked closely you could see the undercurrent

of despair amidst the sea of smiles  the sea of pink pussy

hats   In a parallel world they marched nude  covered in

honey+feathers  sweet+savage Joan’s of Arc  ready to be

burned at the stake for de-throning a pussy grabbing despotic

billionaire  with pouffy yellow hair  +a sucker-like mouth

Women with: Pussies that grab back  on placards around the globe

Women whose erogenous zones stretch over their entire bodies  Far

superior to their masculine counterparts   Jim Pfaus  professor at

Concordia U  has catalogued the: truly remarkable variety of

orgasmic zones among women  including the ignoble earlobe

Next thing you know the repugnant boy Prez  will be sniffing out

earlobes  (When you’re famous they let you do it  You can do anything

You can grab them by the pussy)  Women still protesting basic human

rights  Dozens carried the placard: Can’t believe we’re still protesting

this crap!   In 2016 a woman professor was kept in solitary for 3 months

in Iran until near death:  for dabbling in feminism

But while Putin may have put the Donald in  can pussypower really take him

out?   Maybe come 2020  But in the meantime on a freezing Toronto street last

night  a skeletal woman approached a male friend    She was naked from the waist

 down   I’m working   she screamed

__

And even you want nothing more than a plate of eggs at some sidewalk

cafe.  As he smiles like a man who knows how to crack a safe.

(Tracey K. Smith  Life On Mars   2011   Pulitzer Prize winner)

To be sane in a world of madmen is in itself a kind of madness.

(J. J. Rousseau)

42% of U.S. women voted for Trump. Among white women it was 53%.

The people we saw Saturday simply reflect the Democratic base. The lesson

of the women’s march is that women are as divided as the country. And the

secret of defeating Trump is not more identity politics, but less.

Globe & Mail   M. Wente   January 24, 2017

Winter  2017