songanddancegirl

ratatat

she was gnomic  +rat   small with 4 teeth +5 hairs  maybe 8

prettysweet  in a Chuckie kind of way   she was the security

guard at what might have been   a brother’s new home

except that while visiting the cemetery earlier in the week

he and i were cruised real low  by 2 giant hawks+their hawklet

this while visiting our parents graves

these very same hawks had carted mother away   snatched her

from the balcony  one fine autumn day   now a talon  glint-swoosh

amidst feathery clumps of LSU shell   +there was brother  lifted up  up    +away

all very Mary Poppins if i do say    these days i visit RatLady  who confides

she’d had a moist-on  for he who flew the coop  to live among the giant Raptors

where angels fear to tread     they’ve made him their leader

(all who are faithful  follow me!)

nowadays he divides his time  between swooping  +inserting talons into the soft

fleshy arms of old ladies on the street  soon he will come for RatLady  +lay her down

across his big-grassbed   +play with those 4 teeth   which appear to be quite loose

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FALL 2024  ..what would Zimmy say?..

don’t tell me what the stoics are doing

each day is a life  

Seneca

we tell ourselves stories in order to live  

Joan Didion

you can get new toilets  but if you put the same old shit in them

they’ll still overflow  with the same old shit  

Aprill Atkins Cameron 

amor fati  (love your fate)

Nietzsche 

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i remember when they lost their parents  mother wore black well  taffeta gown

Jacques Fath  Paris  1952   black velvet hat  with netting  i kept these all my life

in bags stained yellow   time colours moistcotton   skin too   where cigs held

where liver spots dwell

mother wore black  at what would become  her mother’s deathbed  +NEVER

again  the opposite of widow’s weeds   reversefuckingsuperstition !  a death

not pretty   old Sarah’s stroke  witnessed by 5 yr old poet   mother went all

Clytemnestra   pulling her hair out  running back+forth

bitchslapped  by a cousin in the garment industry   boy did mother grieve

HARD  for the rest of her life   (just like me  for her softhands+beauty )  mum

do you think your mother would have liked me?  she’d get down on her knees

and worship you    mother a gorgeous drama queen

father lost his mother  to brain cancer  she’d had a premonition  pre her

final Florida sojourn  if i die  don’t let your mother come to my grave  or

anywhere near me   this our final goodbye   i didn’t tell anyone   mother

visited her everyday

sat by her side  combed the hair  of her now demented mother-in-law witch

who’d hated  her Paris past   father wept  enfrailed+yellow  he’d caught his

mother’s  Hepatitis C   deathbeds germy   father weakened  +died soon after

a shadow of his former  football-self    she took his manhood to her grave

who by slow decay?   now i have lost both my parents  orphanpoet  who among

you will remember me  from this time in the veil of tears?  in the crucible of gutted

how i howled over their bones  their dust  how i healed  will heal  am healing forever

because i was given to them   because i was with them at all      LUCKYGIRL

they loved the shit  out-of-us  despite  maybe because of  their woundedness  every

Saint   broken a little   my young child clients   abandoned at birth  or kept  what’s

the difference?  starved  hit  raped  burned  +on+on   and you cannot make up for

these holes   you wanna be slipped  the answer?    you just were

__

Fall 2024  ..that was Paradise! +we were kicked out of Paradise..(husband #3)

..stay just a little bit longer..

deardiarydeardiarydeardiary

what do  Anne Frank  Marcus Aurelius +Thich Naht Hanh

have in common?  all diarists  Anne only 13   i too was a child

diarist   Ashkenazi   un-holocausted

my diaries were hidden  under my bed  and later inside the giant

hole  a crazy bitch poodle  (father’s designation for Dilly)  carved

into the side of the bed

also in the hole  my stash of black hash  a fair-sized piece nibbled off

of a giant slab  belonging to my BIG BRO  i was given the  smell test

by father  who unwrapped the  tarryblackblock  oh so carefully

BIG BRO’s bestie  Howard Cohen  had brought it back from an African

safari   pre-law school   what is it Ape?   father queried   i sniffed

i gawked   my druggie friends had ounces   NOT  keys!

gee dad what is it?!  looks like liquorice   OK  she doesn’t know what it is 

it was that easy!  my mattress hole a cornucopia  where mother regularly

found my diaries   and thought the hashish liquorice   she a true innocent

until winged   at 98

mother read said books in horror  and i was often pistol-whipped   in the end

i needed to invent a code  each letter of the alphabet turned hieroglyphic  with

pilfered pics  from same bros Playboys  illuminating my manuscripts

there was  Barbie Benton  lushboobs  brown verdant venus  +Dorothy Stratton

later murdered by a sadist   simpler days in the bosom of my family   jazz wafting

reeferburns  on Art Shoppe couch

giant mastiff beside father

often teaching him to speak

my parents walk on water

my bro on golden cleats

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Fall 2024  ..for Anne .. June 1929  Frankfurt – February 1954  Bergen Belsen

rabid scavengers of care thesickthelonelytheafraidtheold

Virginia Woolf in her essay  On Illness  said: ..illness is the great confessional

a childish outspokenness..truths blurted out which the cautious respectability 

of health  conceals  

she was right  i spoke in tongues of pain  to anyone who would listen

the man who washed the filthyfloor  the woman who brought the tray

of  rubberchickens+greaseymash

hey anyone in there?   you look alive   but you are not  nervesfrayed

too many scalpels to speak of   do they really use scalpels on virginskin?

one doctor shouted:  has she signed the releases?!  

he knew i’d sue his doctorass  if he killed my husband  or worse  maimed

him   whose Viking splendour all heldentenor  he should probably have been

an opera singer   not a hockeydangler   part-time wrangler   friend to buffalo

illness has had its way with my repartee  people run away when i enter a room

or act so weird  i start blithering about disemboweled cats    hey reader  

you still there??

Virginia knew a thing or two of illness  she walked into the river Ouse with

stones in her pockets  all Ophelia +streaming hair   dead at 59  her husband

Leonard at home with a pickled brisket  waiting for his brilliant bride

and waiting

and waiting

    not

__

Fall 2024  ..human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way..

..there is a virgin forest.. tangled.. pathless.. here we go alone.. (Virginia Woolf 1926)

ecstatic confessions

I’M DONE WITH CANCER:

just when u all were threatening to stop  reading me

i agree   it’s been a time of    metastatic-confession

and  it’s over                   for now

you may miss it  +beg me to return with my radioactive

wordplay  my surgeons have both run away    one to

Greece+the Peloponnese    the other to the Mayo

where they took my great grandmother Molly   at 33

5 kids  +dead before the youngest turned 3   Uncle Louie

the sweetest bookie in the family

so i’m done with cancer  you just wait and see   come back

dear readers  + i will regale u with endless stories of sunshine

daffodils  +pigs      be careful what u ask for

pure Carlton card hell  +u thought cancer was maudlin!  but

you’ll stick around   ’cause everyone wants their hope on a

platter   with the fucking thanksgiving roast-pig

this may come as a shock  but hope thrives   i mean THRIVES

in the bowels of my local cancer hospital  where the emaciated

feast on  Miss Vickies  smile at bald children  +hope they’re still

here  in a year?

hey  how ’bout in 3?

PLEASE GIMME  5     my big bro’s   BIG ASK

He was given 2

and ran with them

all the way to Mexico   where he bought pinátas

for the children of strangers

__

(I have always depended on the kindness of strangers..

Miss Blanche Dubois .. Streetcar Named Desire)

FALL 2024  ..Happy 5784 ..The Year of the Doorkeeper..+signs showing the way..✡️

old iron lungs

they’re looking for nefarious items in my lungs

blacklungdisease?  my dignity?  of late it has gone

missing   cancer a too public  thing   (oh it’s a thing)

strangers tell you to  STEP AWAY  from the stretcher

your husband is festering on   perhaps they could use

some people skills?

everyone wants a kind of  effervescent positivity  from you

which has really never been  your operendi   you’re trying it on

though  +it smells like teenspirit   long fermented hypocrisy

but  NEVERMIND   Kurt blew his brains out when Frances

Bean was not yet 2  one of my then child clients said: we can’t

know that therapist    yet i insisted on   the truth

the child’s grandfather had died in a river  grandmother  in a

burning bed    denial anathema    only grieving heals grief

ie., like cures like      (whether u like it or not!)

but waiting for a cancer diagnosis is a fucking altered state

sweat-on-palms  heart-sakluptnischt   (yiddish for heightened

arrhythmic pounding in the chest)

but i don’t feel any of that  i simply want these robotic oncology

workers  to step out of their  robot-suits  and surprise me with

some shred of  simple humanity

you know  the kind where we call  pandemics pandemics  on day 1

and  wars wars  especially when  walkie-talkies  become weapons

of  mass destruction

in that case you would have to value  TRUTH  over  SPIN   7 million

plus  have already died of the spikey-virus  post WHO’s denial    who?

(exactly!)

__

…the truth knocks on the door.. and you say.. GO AWAY  i’m looking for the truth..

so it does!.. (Zen+The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance..Robert M. Pirsig 1974)

Fall 2024  ..new beginnings..💣🌻💣🌻

..and truthfully.. some oncology workers..are loverly🌻

(Ari.. Anne.. Jill.. Steve.. Grace..)

tales o’ the crypt

i’ve heard tell the crypt is a private+stonecoldsilent place

earthy-embrace  with mouldering   but I’ve never imagined

my peeps alone   ever

they are buried side by each  with trinkets placed in coffins

one wears a brother’s scarf  it was cold on the  feld  that day

a wicked storm kicked up  emblem of our old mother’s rage     (i’m what?!)

Freida  who loved life  more than life itself   regularly ate 6 ice cream

bars  in the wee wee hours   of sleepless nights  whilst serenaded by

unknown men   a maven  a heroine   though a useless shrink said:

they will interfere with your lithium  (mother was NEVER on LITHIUM!)

said psychiatrist  also spat on my need to  pre-grieve mother   dead

within weeks  at 98   dont kill her off yet   said she   i marvel at such

colossal stupidity!

you don’t take a good picture  mother told her

i’m not paid for my looks   clearly!    and not for

much else    either

our crypt is a busy place   unfetid  unwormed   you see  our parents+a bro

are  NOT  there   just some dancing bones  +ash  along with the hearts of

our child-selves   who mourn most pitifully    with wailing

post-bardo now   cutting the rug  at our starry ole homestead   where

the  rest of us will  oneday   land   father has  Muddy Waters  at the ready

Ella+the Duke too  +dog Satchmo  whose GIANT tail  thumps out  West End Blues

every great i have ever read  has pointed me in the direction of   NO DEATH

merely transmutation  why it’s bloody uroboric!

no mud  no lotus

no death  no rebirth

your spark inextinguishable    *(see the 1st law of thermodynamics)

__

FALL 2024 ..there’s no place like home..

The Scarlett C

it’s not shame really  it’s more like having your

number called   and all of a sudden  it’s public

Cancer  has entered the building

all stigmata + Ash Wednesday  mark of Zorro on my

forehead  slipped thru a crevace  into the shitabyss

but it’s not all fecal     and i think to myself

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

in new ways   in ways i never did

when i was too busy  worrying about

EVERYSINGLEFUCKINGPLAGUE

known + unknown   when i was a warrior

of    WHAT IF?   and   WHY ME?             (why not me?!)

    oh the sadness of victimhood

fuck all that  the gurus are right

what you   RESIST   PERSISTS

and finally  i fully accept the universal

shitshow   of being a humanwoman  hooked

into the fucking  space/time/continuum     for now

__

FALL 2024  ..for Cam..🦄 🦄 🦄

(as soon as i stopped fighting it all…i won back my steelydignity)

summer of blurrrrrr

whirlwind of tubes  beepingmachines  25 staples in a leg

and a crazy balloonlike contraption  taped to their heads

incase we have to  go back in

sounds like war  what is it good for?  adrenaline cortisol

grief  shock+awe  plentiful   now spat out into civilian life

six months lost     am i dead  or alive?

according to Unamuno: life+death are wretched terms to

which we are limited ..in this prison of time+space.. he hated

civilization    i hate everything   (Charity Royall +AAC)

clearly more dead

but today i am spat   into a low German cafe  the girls beside

me  are likely dead too  but they resist  the mortis  + in the lull

between bites of greasy-sourkraut  pinkish grizzel  on a white tee

highly curated affectation  +thrift   it’s difficult to feel alive

beside  the most shallow jive  known to mankind   you catch

my drift?

but i won’t let these Gen Z grifters  eating 34$ salads   with shift

jobs from 7-11 am  2 days a week  spoil my return to the life i wrested

from oncologists   +brothy turkey dinners    (barfacious to the max)

__

FALL 2024  ..we rise..

read my lips

people often stop and say: your lipstik matches your

glasses today    a sub-standard banalité  my reply  in

a sub-growl: yes it does shlub !

i mean  would you say that to someone?  hopefully you

are a person of  imagination sublime   and you would

likely say:

your lips are a trip

that shade of penispink

is a mix of  science  beauty 

and  mystery   may i run

my thumb  over them?

YES  you can   i’m sure by this juncture  my fans

have noticed  this is my first post-apocalyptic  ie.,

radiation subjugation in a dank summer basement poem

YES  radiation is done  burnsfading  lifeforce forcing  its way

back   running free at Golf Town  while i sit in my local park

looking at newborn twins   quite hungrily

thinking of a Trini friend  who died yesterday  at 60  on his 2nd

honeymoon  his laugh a reggae-lilt   we often sparred dramatically

but patched things up   over mother’s deathbed

where i wrestled a shortguy named Mordecai  to the ground

as he tried to hoist mother   befriend me at your own risk

but please do!

radiation burned thru my bitterness   now a pristine-dream

of a  motherless child   waiting by the Rivers of Babylon

mum?  mum?   muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum?   is that you?

__

Summer 2024  ..OVER.. not a burnt offering anymo..

And God said to Abe: take your only son Isaac whom you love

+offer him as a burnt offering on a mountaintop..

Here a pyre    there a Varian machine

GO CAM!