songanddancegirl

BEFORE

BEFORE THE FALL

to die of the beauty

of this light

of these reds + golds

of these flickering pods

of shadow

of these greens

oh the sound of this

autumn breeze

crinkling   swish

+ birdsong

__

October 21, 2000

FALL  2016

FARM

PARCHMAN FARM

the barbed wire

the smoke stacks

the chains on the gang

the railroad cars in line

the line of Humanity

the guitar wailing out

the cries of the lost ones

on Parchman Farm

on Parchman Farm

when we were young

__

September 24, 2000  

for Illinois

on his 42nd

*(Parchman Farm is the oldest prison, and the only

maximum security prison for men in the state of

Mississippi)

Fall 2016

PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE

PLEASE DO CONFUSE THE END

WITH THE BEGINNING

She is gorgeous +dark skinned  speaking

a singsong French   Pneumatic breasts ride

high +bounce  Mesopotamian goddess material

in urban jungle  devoid of horizons  +round

feminine hills   of magic +deep wells

When God was a woman thighs+bellies  buttocks

+breasts  were worshipped   The age of uroboros

No shortage of fecund   Great Round  now extinct

Numb citydwellers uncertain where end begins +

beginning ends   Not realizing  that they do not

The whole point of the uroboros is infinity  but if

you have been programmed to believe in straight

lines  +greying male sky Gods  poor you    Perhaps

the Rabbi who stopped at Gethsemane before being

nailed to a tree  knew  that: the vertical + horizontal

can be dangerous in the wrong hands  And that no one

has ever been  or ever will be  crucified  on a circle

__

October 6, 1998:  21 year old Matthew Shepard  a buoyant,

diminutive, openly gay Wyoming student, was found bloodied

and comatose in a field, strung up in a manner later described

as a crucifixion. 

Fall 2016   ere of Thanksgiving   RIP Matthew Shepard

WORLD

I LOOK AT THE WORLD AND I NOTICE IT’S TURNING

Have you noticed the bizarre quality  of today?

Not 1  but 2 men with pizza boxes  bumped me

The 2nd fell to the ground  his box crushed by

my left breast   I don’t know how  he was diverted

Pepperoni perverted+torn  on pavement  Pizza man

inverted +gently weeping   What story have you told

yourself  about today?  What connects you to history?

I look at you all   + I see you should be   stripped of

your phenomenology   of your politics  +phobias   of

your performances

When the existential nakedness  to end all nakedness

will lead you directly to your inner-most selves  And not

in the opposite direction  like say  the world wide web

It will be a little like birth  a little like death  when the

sound of your name echoes  + fades    How many mirrors

must you look in to know  that the wall you see behind  is

the trueblueyou    With  nothing  in-between   And no one

alerted you    Until now

I look at you all   your bodies: a cypher  acting out your spirit

No guru  No teacher   Only exiled poets+cows   lucky prostitutes

+ old sidewinding men

__

I sleep a drunken sleep,

judging the beauty of the world negligible,

craving something that neither dies nor withers,

nor avoids meeting my hard, ravenous look.

(Adelia Prado  1990  Alphabet In The Park)

__

About Adelia Prado: She says to herself , I am a simple

person, a common housewife, a practising Catholic. Her

family were laborers; she was the only one to see the ocean,

to go to college, or to dream of writing a book. At 81 she lives

in Divinøpolis, Brazil, a landlocked state of rugged mountains,

mines, and baroque churches. She began publishing her poetry

at 40.

__

Fall 2016    First day of 5,777  lunar Jewish Calendar

RACE

DOES THE RACE CARD HAVE A PLACE IN DAY SURGERY?

the pretty activist of colour  with a mesmerizing

fuchsia lip  skin a lovely coppery sheen  head partly

shaven   chastised steve paikin for saying that much

of the new assisted housing  is so nice you would

never know  low blow steve p   a man who usually

with one eyebrow askew  skewers  the man   though he

is a successful white jew  wonder if activist knew?

where we come from you don’t want to draw attention

to yourself  especially while travelling in much of the mid

east  or any neo-nazi hot spot  i.e.,  parts of france  + yes

germany   somehow the mind finds a circuitous route back

yesterday as we huddled around our soon to be surgeried

sister   all 5 of us    yes 5!   in a small waiting area  where the

rule was 1 family member per patient

but then we’re stereotypically pushy   a holocausted people  who

in 2016 dare you to: grab the baby from our arms  +catch it on the

tip of a bayonet   May the bones of the dead be resurrected  enfleshed

+ may the year 5777  be one of miracles

__

I saw an officer make a flinging movement with his arm, and

something rose up into the sky like a fat bird. With his other

hand he aimed a pistol, and the bird plummeted to the ground 

beside its screaming mother, and the officer shot the mother too.

But it was not a bird. It was not a bird. It was not a bird.

(In My Hands   Memories Of A Holocaust Rescuer  Irene Gut Opdyke  1999)

Fall 2016    Rosh Hashanah

WEPT

BY THE TRUMP TOWER I SAT DOWN AND WEPT

Hillary was wobbly on September 11th   +now the yellow

ape  + his beady eyed children are circling her tent  intent

upon having us believe she is neurologically unsound

This from a family of robber barons  whose youngest child

Baron I  has never left Trump Tower

Hillary no doubt re-lived the sights+smells of 9/11   Perhaps she

was even catapulted into PTSD  (+not PMS  as the Donald would

have us believe)  Hillary had arrived at the Towers  even before Bush

whose  weapons of mass destruction  theory   was still in it’s infancy

The scents that day were: burning flesh  +mayhem    The sights: mangled

bodies on pavement  Last moments alive in free fall from 80 floors above NYC

One woman whose clothes were burned off of her body  looked pregnant   The

young firefighter at the scene: They were saying she was just bloated  but no  

she was pregnant

Hillary saw carnage  +looked evil in the Bin Laden eye   Later she sat stoically

as Osama met his maker  Where was the yellow one that day?  Likely nursing the

heel spurs that kept him from active duty in Viet Nam  1968    This September 11th

three  non-contacted  Amazon tribespeople  who had walked out of the forest 2 yrs.

ago   escaped back   taking only an axe +their pet birds

Should the coward  who has never held elected office  nor studied the great books

(he reportedly speaks at the level of: Grade 3)   should he become President  the

forests will grow full  as decent people everywhere jostle the endangered tribes

This  as walls are built  +Muslims  +women who bleed from wherever   are pilloried

A laugh  3 parts cackle will echo on the empty streets   See Melania atop the Trump

Tower shredding her  Michelle speech   as Baron I is transferred to 1600 Pennsylvania

Ave. tout de suite  +the pimp to the end of civilization  points his stubby finger  at you

+ at me

__

As flaws go Hillary is a galaxy away from Mr. Trump, an intemperate

vulgarian who appeals to the grimmest recesses of the American id.  

Ms. Clinton’s shortcomings cannot be compared to Mr. Trumps; they

are not of the same genus. One is running a viable candidacy for high

office. The other is a bigoted boor.  

(The Globe & Mail Editorial  September 2016)

FALL 2016

JESUS

JESUS LOVES YOU MORE THAN YOU WILL KNOW  WOE WOE WOE

I just want to inject people’s faces 

You have to be a nurse for that

She was left money so she went somewhere

and had her whole body done

2 young girls with time to lose  shmooz at the

Thompson Hotel    Weird microcosm  of the

macrocosm

Listen  my own dentist said: If I had it to do over

I’d have gone into  eyes   that’s where the money is

Sounds like Graduate redux  though plastics were

big back then   No way would Mrs. Robinson wait

on a big brass bed  for my bitter dentist

But wait she did  for the lemmel Ben    Who no doubt

Elaine made osh+porrich of   (mincemeat in yiddish)

for visiting the orifice from whence she came   Forgiveness

is a funny thing  innit?

Ditto hope:  deceived   deferred   +finally extinguished    Or is it?

In Von Triers  Melancholia  the only characters who do not fear a

giant meteorite  are a depressed woman  +a young child   They do not

care that the apocalypse will be the shit abyss

Children largely immortal until age 8    The depressed woman  for whom

immortality is overrated says: Why make God wait?

__

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?

Vladimir: It’d give us an erection

Estragon: An erection!

Vladimir: Let’s hang ourselves immediately

Estragon: I can’t go on like this

Vladimir: That’s what you think

(Waiting for Godot  Samuel Beckett  1954)

____

She got into a green car  

pool table green

lit a cigarette,

and I’m sure she drove off to someplace magic

where people were always laughing and

the music was always playing

and the drinks were good

(i saw an old fashioned whore today   Charles Bukowski  1972)

First day of Fall 2016

MAD

WE ARE ALL BORN MAD  SOME REMAIN SO

Man sweeping debris  broom touches my knee

Eyes meet  its 33º    Tomorrow last day of Summer

Summer of high anxiety  scorching heat+humidity

He’s back at it   the sweeper   with dolorous eyes

Boots Landscaping & Maintenance  on tee    Don’t stand

so close to me   Smell of sperm trees  +rot  +squirrel droppings

Sweeperman sweats profusely  drips on my suede Sam Edelman

boots   Leaves a skull+crossbones stain

I weep + turn away   but not before he of the thick thumbs winks

Evil reaper of Summer’s deshabille    Summer when hope biopsied

found malignancy   Especially in Aleppo where children photo’d

with blood+white dust about their faces   Bodies rigid+zombie

Not Halloween for 40 days   Ditto Israelites wandering in exile   Now

we huddle haphazardly  waiting for the ice+snow already seeping into

Canadian bones    It’s in our DNA  eh?

The land of milk+honey 8 frozen months away   Walking on eggshells

for news of Gordie   On the eve of final  Hip concert  there was a full blown

rainbow    Full umbra over gnarly Toronto  promising happy endings

+remission   Only the meek know that the dawn is dusk backward   Don’t

wait for me

__

It’s Godot!  At last!  It’s Godot!  We’re saved! 

I begin to weary of this motif.

(Waiting for Godot  Samuel Beckett  1954  winner of Nobel Prize)

End of Summer of our Discontent

DEEP

THE DEEP CYANIC SKY     THE DEEP CYANIC SKY

So Cormac McCarthy repeats   All The Pretty Horses  pg. 202

Is this a sky you have known?  A sky you have been ravished by?

Is it even  knowable?  As it hangs over this fable of Mexico   A

magical land filled with pretty wild horses  febrile young men   +

the Goddess Mary still weeping for her crucified son  well into the

new millenium

He of the cyanic eyes  bringing the Word to huddled masses  Now

the Pope worships at the temple of Zuckerberg    WORD   (see photo

Pope embracing Facebook Jesus  Septemeber 2016)  This week horoscope

advises: be like the wise wild child in everything   But between the child

+everything   the world lies waiting

Don’t be seduced by too witty oracles in Art & Culture magazines

My childhood friend  whose sister was bitten by our bulldog  recently

lost her mother at a gas station  when a truck rolled over her   This

mother  small for an adult  lived in a 10,000 sq. foot house   round of

face   +impish grin

Maybe she lived with crushing sensations in her lower extremities  Maybe

she dreamed of giant trucks under azure skies  +fields of cyanic daisies

growing by the river of Babylon    Don’t believe any form of knowing  will

save us    Oracles be damned     The future isn’t what it used to be

__

ORACLE OF DELPHI   8th Century  BC

One of the main stories was that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied

state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke

gibberish which priests interpreted as enigmatic prophecies.

Fall  2016

*vapours have been known to flow from crevices in the ancient riverbed

at Trinity Bellwoods Park  frequented by poets+perverts alike

CONSTELLATIONS

IT WAS ON WEST QUEEN WEST THAT I SAW

THE CONSTELLATIONS

Last night a huge meteor streaked past my

window  right in front of the glowy-red CN

Tower   Every night a light show wizard at

the switch  He must be on lysergic acid  Some

nights the show induces vertigo

But this light show was the real deal  +billions

of years old   Not 48  +disconsolate on Front St.

It flashed by as my brain strained to:  a) determine

if a nuclear attack   b) make meaning of the bluey –

green ball of fire  with a yellow tail

I already miss it  +know that I am as likely to see it

again  as are the 323 reindeer struck by lightening in

Hardangervidda Norway  to rise from the dead   Grassy

mountain plateau covered in carcasses    Is that one with

a red nose?  (see photo: Globe +Mail  August 30, 2016)

And as for meaning  maybe there is no meaning  No grand

scheme  No raison d’être   Just a lot of ancient shit  not backlit

floating around in my life   in our lives   Waiting to escape through

brokenhearts  +mysterious black soulholes    (saddest line ever!)

My friend told me that his new mantra is: LIG  Let It Go  This is noble

Mine is  They Shoot Horses Don’t They    No  truthfully it’s:   LTYT

Lie Through Your Teeth   Just face it   No one’s interested in your deep

truths   or in something you didn’t do

__

Fall 2016

(August 29, 2016, NE sky , over Ontario,

confirmed by Global Meteor Records  +NASA)