songanddancegirl

SHINING

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

It’s December 9th   17 days ’til xmas   It’s 10 Celsius

Squirrel with white belly approaches me  confused +

hungry   Where are all the buds+cherries  +apples?

Where are the stoned hipsters on plaid blankets feeding

him delicacies?

Sun twinkles watery-gold  close 2nd to washed out suns at

Turner show  A.G.O.   If the global temperature rises by 1.5 C

swaths of Canada will be under water   And if the global temp

rises by 4.0 C  at least 144.7 million people in China will be

submerged

A man with a bushy grey pony  (or is it a donkey?)  inches closer

to me   He says: what with urban encroachment  farmland is

rapidly disappearing eh   And in several weeks 25,000 Syrian

refugees will be scattered across the land   Many are hesitant to

come   A desert people clinging to old parents in airport lounges

preparing for ice+snow

*see The Weather Network for tips on how to: Bundle Up for -26 C

(-56 with windchill)

My own immigrant ancestors came from from freezing steppes   ate

only root vegetables for 8 months of the year: Dad why did they have

to stop here?  Couldn’t they have gone all the way to B.C.  where the

islands are warm+lush  filled with fabulous Canadian flora+fauna?

Though in the end maybe it’s a good thing they stayed away from either

coast  as when temperatures rise we will lose Vancouver+Halifax    Moncton

may remain   Now the Albino squirrel  grown quite skeletal since Halloween

falls from a naked Oak  upon my naked knee  Won’t someone kiss my Dopamine?

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Winter 2015

H1N1

NO I DO NOT WANT YOUR H1N1 FLOTSAM  IN MY DRINK

At the Lightbox  waiting to see Peggy Guggenheim

documentary  barmaid with a cold wipes her nose

repetitively   Otherwise she is chic+bell-bottomed

Her hands getting sticky as I try to escape with some

dignity    Alas  no cocktail for me   (Ophelia-tinis/$21)

A man with green corduroys  +a woman with a limp

comment on my fresh style   They swoon for my fire-red

hair   I stare glassy-eyed  no tequila to ease my misanthropia

And  with my favourite literary critic Harold Bloom  I agree:

Ophelia went to a better place than had she married

Hamlet the Dane

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A creeping unclean thing he seems  His nasty poking +sniffling

at his mother  His traps for the King  His conceited perversion for 

Ophelia  make him always intolerable  (D.H. Lawrence too agrees)

Winter 2015    for Paolo Santalucia Hamlet 

EUPHORIA

IT’S LIKE THIS FRENZY EUPHORIA

What is it like when they call your name?

she asked Eddie Redmayne   He had just

won an Oscar for portraying theoretical

physicist  Stephen Hawking

Last night on CNN  Anderson  of the Vanderbilt

fortune +pale pink skin told us: for teens the 

boundaries between the real+cyber worlds

no longer exist    By 12 or 13  they live in a

participation mystique with their selfie-persona

We might pose the question: Do they even exist?

As any physicist worth his weight will tell you: the

human mind=reality    There are no trees in the forest

And the God called Zuckerberg takes no prisoners

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Evidence is growing that social media can influence

prosuicide behaviour. Cyberbullying, when directly or

indirectly linked to suicide, has been referred to as

cyberbullicide.   (American Journal Public Health 2012)

Winter 2015

LOW

SUSPENDING DISBELIEF IN LOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS

stomach turns  nausea roils  a tide of migraine creeping in

flat implement to side of jaw   cold steel rail impales inner

most self   seeks out final refuge   girl in wheelchair on saturday

said: hope is a form of courage   I say: courage is a form of

hopelessness on steroids    at some point the night weasels come

+you fight on    old bottles of old wine

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Winter  2015

CHOCOLATE

PERIWINKLE OVER CHOCOLATE FACTORY   IT’S 6 A.M.

In bed with paper +Humbert  who looks at downed Russian

plane   Face of Putin wretched+elfin stares back at him   You

get the face you deserve   says Hum’s mum  a Lolita scholar

with  a dry sense of humour

I am currently attempting a  re-invention tour   My last career

was striking  only in its adherence to the unglamorous   This

time around I aim to re-vivify the haggard    Bring me your

immutably fatigued  your careworn minions   +with a macabre

sense of comedy   I will eradicate melancholia itself

Last week I hired a new staff member  within minutes she brightened:

I’m not stupid  I can see you have powers   I tried to withhold the truth

But now discovered  I had no choice but to hurtle her toward her newly

dead “Poppy”   Her severe depression  there for all to see  lifted     I know

on paper this does not sound like anything fresh    But any further follow

up would ruin its magic

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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.  

Vladimir Nabokov  Lolita  

Fall 2015

SHOW

IT’S A SHIT SHOW OVER THERE!

cackling co-ed intones   Trying to write a poem

Steel-grey day  pre-christmas light  17 gunned

down at a playground  Bunny Friend Park  9th

Ward  New Orleans  yesterday   Dead +maimed

celebrating  with Po Boys  12 inch southern sandwich

crawfish or couchon   merlitons+hot sauce

jacomo fi na ne

It was yesterday too that a five year old I know waxed

specific about what he’d do with all of his money: I’ll

buy a jet +some guns +shoot everyone who teases me

Tiny tormentors weighing heavily

Radicalized at 5 by gun-toting media-minions   Homegrown

super-hero nihilists coming to a playground near you   A descent

into de-socialized mayhem   But what if you had a teacher who

applauded you for living beyond the frames of violent video games?

Opiate for the masses of children

2 brothers of Daesh  1 blown to bits in his suicide vest   the other

dreaming of guns+planes+grenades  +Brussels   Today in lockdown

as lone brother relishes the silence of his final daydreams   His parents

hope he is killed soon

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When the shooting finally ended there was a deep silence.  Dr. Hefez

unfolded herself from under the table. What she saw was boucherie –

butchery.  “They were me.  The same hair, the same shoes.  Just girls,

going out for a night on the Canal St. Martin.  ( Dr. Louise Hefez  30 yr.

old survivor  Paris terrorist attacks  November 13, 2015)

Fall 2015

CULT

SMELLS LIKE DEATH CULT

Think about the streets of Paris  July 16 1942

Let us travel back to another reign of terror   To

Nazi occupied  Vichy France   To the infamous

Véldrome d’Hiver roundup 

Thousands of families were amputated  Parents put

on trains  Children as young as 6 months left to fend

for selves  Only later to be herded onto eastbound cattle

cars   One family had barely enough time to hide small

son behind a trap door

His bones found by prodigal sister  after the War    She

survived Auschwitz    Parents ashes scattered here+there

A strange smell emanated well into 1943   The pillaging family

did not know what to do  when no amount of fumigating could

expunge the scent of small jew

Paris has seen rivers of blood it is true  Heads on pikes 1792

Barack called the recent slaughter: acts against humanity   Have

they not all been?  The lights of Paris dimmed   A tapestry of liberté

A tapestry of blood rimmed tides

But  should we braid together past+present   +dig deeply into micro-

history  we can see  that YES we are all Charlie  + Hymie  +Zainab

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Jade water –  the Aztecs called human blood   They fed it – hundreds of

living sacrifices a day – to the sun   This  the only nourishment the sun

god would take  (Annie Dillard  For The Time Being) 

Fall 2015  O Bartleby O Humanity  Herman Melville  Bartleby The Scrivener

TEEN

EAU D’  TEEN SPIRIT MEETS THE WHIPS

+SCORNS OF TIME

Bush the roofer visited today  jovial diviner

Single-toothed +agile climber   Beaten down

by water   ice floes bursting through duradeck

membrane  Broken condom-inium hell   Once

was a  time sublime   No chattels   No urban water

creep

Yesterday Hamlet on campus U of T  mean age audience

18    Not the usual phlegmy coughers   Diseased boomers

nowhere to be seen   Sat among the mouldering teens   Smells

wafting up all around me: sweat  yeast  +sex    All instantly

asleep with Hamlet’s: TO BE  OR NOT  TO BE

The girl’s: thick+sturdy  lacrosse thighs   short plaid skirts

feral eyes  Loads of ginger headed boys  pink-skinned +

hunting   Teachers look pubescent too   tight pants   high

breasted   Dreadlocked Narcissus leaned in: Lady your

perfume is sick!

It was beside the crumbling bell-tower  where final bluebells

bloom  we talked of Gertrude’s complicity   His sweat fragrant

+Oedipal   caught in the webby fibres  of my favourite Zara sweater

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O that this too too sullied flesh would melt   Thaw and resolve

itself into dew  O most pernicious woman!  Get thee to a nunnery

(Hamlet)

Late Fall  2015

ROMEO

A DIMINUTIVE WARRIOR   ROMÉO

See this man   Modigliani head  elongated neck

Leans against a tree  world-weary about the watery

eyes  Eyes that cried him a River Styx  Pallor greyish

yellow  tell-tale sign of years in cells   Roméo  Roméo

Roméo Phillion: Victim Of Wrongful Imprisonment   dead

at 76   Reminiscent of a child I knew  9 yrs  eyes also full of

un-cried tears  Locked in room  used bed as bathroom  Almost

climbed out 14th floor window   No one would have missed him

Step dad in prison for: breaking my mom’s face   May still be in

diapers  never toilet trained   Took 2 yrs. to notice office had windows

+2 yrs. more to look outside   The cell he was locked inside was locked

inside of him   Therapist crafting a key from base metals    A soul-food

alchemy   Eyes so blue  like her father’s   Countertransferential stew

Back to Roméo   31 yrs. in prison for a murder he did not commit   Twin

brother Donald in prison for 2  he did    See this child  Roméo    See this

mother  Yvonne   Father’s mean-streak ran deep   Sent twins away at 8 while

mother birthing 9th

Residential school for orphans+truants  St. Joe’s  Broke Roméo’s body  Spirit

scarred some too   Run by Brothers of Christian Schools  replete with beatings

+sexual abuse   Lost+living by instinct  a habitual liar  with no sense of right

from wrong  (Roméo’s obituary  November 7 2015)   Multiple suicide attempts

in prison  one with fishhooks sent down his throat

Charges withdrawn this past July   Roméo’s alibi lay buried in rotting police

records   Went directly to the CN tower on the day they set him free   Come

gentle night  Come Roméo  Take him and cut him out in little stars  And he

will make the face of Heaven so fine  that all the world will be in love with

night  (Romeo+Juliet)

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Fall 2015

HAMLET

HAMLET  A  400 YR. OLD NARCISSIST: DISCUSS

I am compiling a list of reasons to resist suicide   Other reasons

than as Hamlet posits: The dread of something after death   The

undiscovered country  makes us rather bear those ills we have

This conscience does make cowards of us all

For Hamlet  cowardice  +fear of the great wide open  turn the tide

against egocide   Why not send me your list? (#Itsallaboutme)   Surely

at the top of ones list might be: the pain this act would cause others?

But then again maybe Will had sunk into a depression so deep his eyes

saw only death  decay+betrayal  fast tracking the promise of the cradle

+heading straight toward the grave

Here is what a modern day Will has to say about this human-ape: Our capacities

for making ourselves unhappy  +for torturing ourselves+others  remain undimmed  

We are a properly puzzling animal  not very well suited to contentment or peace

(Alain de Botton)    Twice this week I have both heard+read that we live in the

shadow of a personal apocalypse  A mini-Armegeddon  Should this not breed a

dark buoyancy?

Pessimists are far better prepared for death  as are depressives for the giant meteor

There is a the constant dress rehearsal amidst the glory   Yes!  The bell is tolling for

me me me   And there is no shortage of incredulity over a distaste for the Reaper  Is

s/he not a parental figure?  Even more complex than those who brought you here?

Turn around +face the death mask   Carry it with you in your pocket   My own lip

gloss is so shaped   A daily dose of dress-up-hemlock for the morbid fashionista

Did it ever occur to you that the skull is our most democratizing symbol?   The

greatest leveler of them all?   No race  No creed   No emblems of wealth    No

preference for gender identity

We all have one buried  under hat+hair+skin  a rather thin protection for such a

personal treasure   One that remembers little  the body you have hauled around

Best of all  one who remains guileless +smiling  long after your last stand

So for all happy optimists  you may stave off said Reaper  with a tincture of

Egyptian mummy   Or for those too old for dancing  get yourself a monkey gland!

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Fall 2015