songanddancegirl

FREE

BUSTED FLAT IN BATON ROUGE WAITIN FOR A TRAIN

NOTHIN’ DON’T MEAN NOTHIN’ HON  IF IT AINT FREE

Jack hammers jacking   Off my rocker with dogs

barking until 3 a.m.   Unholy Urban Quarter

Even the skunks have been displaced by hipster’s

skunky weed   I’m taking my neighbour to court  +

if I become Prez  I’ll send her to jail   Mark me

Last time I saw her  clouds of skunky-smoke wafted

around her hair extensions   They’ll never take my dogs

away    Today  wedged between a stinking squirrel  + a

dead chickadee  I write these words to insulate myself

from the meek

Now wrathful over Gordie’s impending leave taking

You will not steal the silence  nor wrest the last pink

macaroon from me    Citydweller!  I implore you:

Do not dwell on being free

__

(Peter Mansbridge to Gord Downie re: his terminal brain cancer)

Peter: Does it hurt?

Gord: No

__

How is it that we mortals get bright eyed

because a dress is blue and has a bow?

I take a sip and the water is bitter,

and I think: Sex is frail,

even the sex of men.

(Adelia Prado 1978  Poet Laureate  Brazil)

Fall 2016  smell that smell the smell of snow surrounds you

NOBEL

BLOWIN’ IN THE NOBEL LAUREATE BREEZE

Idiot Wind

Blowing through the buttons of our coats

Blowing through the letters that we wrote

Idiot Wind

Blowing through the dust upon our shelves

We’re idiots babe

It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves

(Bob Dylan)

__

Idiot wind  Blowing through America

The lowest have gone high  +the highest

have gone low  Cover up the truth with lies

Idiot wind   One day he’ll be in a ditch   Flies

buzzing around his eyes   Idiot base   It’s a

wonder you still know how to breathe –

Aprill Atkins Cameron + Bobby Zimmerman

__

Dylan is not an entertainer. What he is, as the

Nobel committee just recognized, is the greatest

popular poet of the past 50 yrs. He is spoken of

in the same breath as Keats, Shakespeare, and

Milton.  (Globe & Mail October 14, 2016)

Fall 2016

Bravo! Robert Zimmerman the Jew from Hibbing

2016 Nobel Prize for Literature

‘PHOBING

‘PHOBING AT THE MOUTH

He loomed over Hillary like a monkey  in heat

Was this a grope-able moment?  What if he’d

grabbed her by the pussy?  “Grab them by the pussy.

You can do anything.”  (Donald Trump on women +

the perks of fame)  Jane Goodall  expert on chimp

behaviour   studied his non-verbals   the chimp-man

body language: naked aggression  loud squawking  throwing

feces   thrusting of chest + pelvic region

It seems that under the ill fitting suit +santa-red tie  there

resides an un-evolved iteration of humankind    Before

agriculture  +religion  +standing up on hind legs   This lowest

donald-denominator has always been lying in wait  Think  Il Duce

Think Idi   Think about America as sleazy reality tv  How will the land

of the free ever be taken seriously by the short men in the East?

One  baby faced +chubby  wielding missiles +Dennis Rodman    The

other beady eyed +perpetually flexing flaccid muscles  often wrestling

with a bear   Soon the echo of laughter from terrorists in caves  will

ricochet through Aleppo  which will cease to exist in another 90 days

(Globe+Mail October 2016)   And Hillary’s perma-smile will deepen as

a strapping young man in a blue suit crouches beneath her desk  –

O America  land of equal opportunity

__

Fall 2016    for big bro M.A.  who generously donated the title of this poem!

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