songanddancegirl

DESERT

THE SENSE OF FEAR SPREADING OUT FROM SOME FANATIC DESERT

My art+culture critic may be depressed   A giant raccoon decomposed on his

street  It was 32 degrees:  A cloud of flies gathered. Then it began to bloat,

as steamy rain poured down on raccoon paste.  I think he may be a poet

Personally I would point him in the direction of Bob Marley  +suggest his

mantra for Fall be: Russell don’t worry ’bout a thing  cause every little thing’s

gonna be alright   Corny as this may seem  It is not  These very words calmed

the fears of a generation  + did wonders for my terrorized child clients: Therapist

you can hit me with the biggest stick  & it won’t hurt   Try it!  

Russell has a 6 yr. old boy   Held his hand the other day  on the way  to Grade One

I humbly suggest walking him to school until he’s 22  when he’ll wave good-bye  &

head to Tisch   Each year the ghost-boy Alan Kurdi will follow behind U2   into a

future where: children don’t die on lonely beaches as their fathers fight ISIS   + the

Chibok girls have come home

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Fall 2015

FEAR

FEAR FEAR

the things that i fear are inexplicable

+ primitive   things like: cars backfiring

a footfall too close   flying bugs+bogeymen

a ratty squirrel eyeing my hand   certain music:

think the shower scene in Psycho    psychosis +

crooked sailors in parks  with hairy chins

the things that i am not afraid of: the ttc   being alone

driving U.S. 1 through big sur  terrified mother in tow:

what a girl!   flying to Europe solo   8 weeks at 26    walked

holes in boots in Paris    2 a.m. handsome swede rings my room:

can I bring you a pill for sleep?

not afraid of Euro-creeps   another slimjim  pulls the goalie  from

Pisa to Pompeii  fuckyoufreak   I say!

gritty bars in New Orleans where murder comes so easily:  girl  

lots more famous people than you have slipped on vomit in the

Vieux Carré    as i bandage bleeding feet at a bar called 13   And yes

i am still alive   +still not afraid of death   just the:

in-between

the neither/nor

the almost made it  didn’t she

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Fall 2015   for my little brother jma  who thinks I am afraid   of: everything

SOUL

AND YET  I DO THINK I DO HAVE A SOUL

Dirty-obscurity of massive  limestone caves

millions of square feet of abandoned underground space

4 +6 yr. olds found there Thursday   taken away from Brittany  23

Living in a wooden shipping crate   Kansas City  USA

Small hands eat from a dirty dry cup of  ramen noodles

Police ask: Why aren’t you wearing shoes?   Because we

don’t have any   While worlds away Germans smile at

migrant children    Paradise Regained

One dead little boy face down by the sea  2 or 3   Front page

of national newspaper: Some images demand to be seen

precisely because they show us the world as it is  +in exposing

its cruelties our conscience may be stirred

Yet the necessity of this indignity against Alan Kurdi seems entirely

naive   Alan needed to be wrapped with ceremony+civility   How about

some respect for the toddler  whose mother+brother also lost at sea

search for him daily   While the father who paid $5,680 for passage on

a  dinghy is busy fighting ISIS in their hometown of Kobani

And on railway tracks all over Europe migrants refuse the bread+water of

police who lure them to giant camps   Same tracks that carried other trains

stuffed with families told to pack with haste:  Take 1 suitcase  & you will be 

given a warm shower when you arrive  

__

In honour of the militant migrants refusing to

get off of the trains  giving NEVER AGAIN

new meaning

Fall 2015

MOTHER

THE MOTHER OF ALL WOMBS

If a dead womb could talk   would anybody listen?

In a recent breakthrough  Dr. Matts Brannstrom has

transplanted wombs from dead women  into the living

He has even used a live Grandmother as the  donor womb

for her own daughter  who just gave birth to a son

(University of Gothenburg  Salgrenska Hospital  Stockholm) 

It’s one uterus bridging 3 generations!  said Dr. B.   The baby

was named Matts  too   Whether you consider this Frankenstein

or Divine matters little   Similar operations are planned in Britain

France  the U.S.  Saudia Arabia  +Turkey    The man-made womb

has  arrived

The new wombs are good for 2 pregnancies only   Experiments

with robotic surgeries are underway to shorten the 12 hr. operation

Will these wombs receive a burial?  A 21 gun salute? or simply be

consigned to a drawer in the morgue  marked: Mother’s Matter ?

The most critical questions though  are not logistical  but moral+

mystical   Who would your son meet inside of your mother’s womb?

The ghost of your infant psyche in the throes of a primal scream?  +

what implications will there be psycho-analytically   years later when

said boy is trapped in the massive-mother of all complexes

(kill your father+marry your grandmother) 

Did Dr.Matts give this any thought?  Highly doubtful   Removing a womb

is unlike any other operation  you must steel yourself to the cries of those

almost-born   the organic matter of whom clings tenaciously to the mother’s

entrails   It really is more of a delicate grafting of one human being onto another  

And as for little Matts  he is destined to a life fetishizing   conjoined twins

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The most famous pair of conjoined twins was Chang & Eng (1811–1874), 

brothers born in Siam. They travelled with P.T. Barnum’s circus for many

years + were labeled: the Siamese Twins. Chang & Eng were joined at the

torso by a band of flesh, cartilage, + their fused livers . In modern times they

could have been easily separated.

(In Utero  Nirvana)

Fall 2015      

NOT PEACE

THE TIME BETWEEN WARS IS CALLED THE ABSENCE OF WAR

I am walking slowly   scorched-earth kind of day   along

Wellington towards Bay   Just passed the military cemetery

at Brant  (most of the dead under 20  4 suicides)  when I

spot Rapier Wit:  For Everyday + Acting Needs     The long

sword in the window conjures up a Musketeer   Not of the

Mickey variety   more d’Artagnan in tight tights

(www.rapierwit.com)

The heat is getting to me   Stop at Collette for iced tea   There a

tall tan girl with bright bluish teeth  +quips mixed with upspeak

She brandishes a screechy  Ya Ya Ya  repeatedly     With my rapier

I outline her mouth  as her tongue curls around its tip  +with the hand

that is not twirling hair   an aggressive bird she flips

Perhaps time to take up serpents   A surreptitious asp  well placed  might

be more effective   Take out the creepy  Trivago Man  now sidling up to me

A horror of a Monday   at 34 degrees

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End of Summer  2015

SERVE

YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY

Resisting new forms  umpteenth re-birth    You mean

I must do this again?  Can I speak to the Superintendent?

Who is in charge here? an 8 yr. old boy asked me  our session

at an impasse  (No  you may not take all of your clothes off   +

Yes I’m sure your penis is nice  but it must stay in your pants)

Who is your boss?   he demanded   I don’t have a boss!   Everybody

has a boss therapist   What about God? Or is there a landlord in this

building?   28 yrs. later I can see where he was coming from   His

impotent rage laying latent  in me   at 36 in a dream  a giant skinhead

bellowed: SECOND HALF OF LIFE!   

No way to grasp what that might mean   Consulted an old Rabbi  equally

oblique:  The unconscious  is really  unconscious    I thought I detected

glee    Recently a grief-stricken friend told me  her grandmother’s brain

was seeping out   through her nose

Left me wondering what was the point of accumulating every single fucking

thing i know?   But then that is the wrong question    Can I get a witness?

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September 2015

PONTCHARTRAIN

AIN’T NOTHING HOLDING BACK PONCHARTRIAN

There is a perfect sickle-moon shaped wound  above my

right ankle   now surrounded by black+blue   Punctured

by a hunk of metal  hanging from fridge since 2002

It was the perfect storm   tanned leg picking up velocity

as upper body reaches for iced tea  Pitcher off kilter  smashes

on the floor   Metal impales summer leg   as blood+tea mingle

in perfect vampire’s brew

Anxious city dweller ruminates on flesh eating disease  until

about Wednesday   Sickle moon in soon autumn skies  waxing

to full  August 29   Tenth anniversary of the day the music died

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Hurricane Katrina was the eleventh named storm and fifth hurricane

of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the costliest natural disaster,

as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States.

Total fatalities 1,833.

Summer 2015

SWORD

SOMEWHERE HE RIDES WITH A CAPE+PLUMED HAT

HIS SWORD HELD HIGH

Khaled al-Assad  preserver of Roman antiquities   Columns

rising out of the desert in Syria!  No more   Born in Palmyra

retired octogenarian  What strangefruit is he?   Now hanging

from a pole  after 3 weeks in captivity

Islamic State abhors symbols of Western idolatry   Haters with

a flair for stagecraft: orange jumpsuits  carving knives +bulldozers

This brutal execution to eradicate paganism    A new iteration of

burn the witch?   Or loot the art of now gassed prisoners?

This  Director of Idols   Convenor of Infidel Conferences  taken to

the market square  charges against him hanging from his neck   Named

his daughter Zenobia  after 3rd century Queen  directed Palmyra Museum

for forty years   6 books   leading expert on Syrian culture+treasures

Had he remained a shepherd   he would likely be under a cold moon  his

tent filled with family   Mr. al-Assad  believer in destiny  passed through

the market square daily  +often paused under the canopy  leaning against

the further most pole  a private sanctuary  Blood red sun casting shadows

at his feet

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I was born in Palmyra. And I will stay in Palmyra. And not leave even

if it costs me my blood.  Khaled al-Assad  June 2015

Summer 2015

SHOE

WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE

to drop   one neon green runner  still dangling

on wires   since freezing february day  2013   crack

house larry has moved away  also a dj   5,000 tunes

1 blaring at  all times   now american staffordshires

bark into starry nights   +there’s no drying the tears of

hot crack wife

larry bought a bungalow down the street   same car too

+look alike wife   he is friendlier these days   +we no longer

complain   tunes now raising neighbour’s roofs    yesterday

as he slouched down street  pants hanging around his knees

crack house larry whispered to me:

I’ll be your your man    poet   climb aboard!

it’s twilight now  +the last green shoe  spins in wicked breeze

as old poet muses on lighting out for new territory   black keys

moaning ceaselessly    late august in the year  twenty fifteen

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Summer   2015

REBEL

REBEL ARTIST’S  TRAGIC ENDING

Time magazine   August 11, 1956   Jackson Pollock+

young mistress   +friend Edith in back seat   Elvis on

the radio   Wraps car around tree     He was drinking

heavily   Is artist-life  all it’s cracked up to be?   His drip

paintings no longer scintillating   Critics claimed he’d:

lost his stuff

Jackson was 44  had 17 yrs. more than Jimmy  Janis +

Kurt   ditto Amy     Now I direct you to the faces of Ella

+Louis   in late middle age standing before a mic   trumpet

in hand  voice of African goddess about to be loosed  Flowered

cotton dress  striped polo shirt   Could heal the world one ear

at a time   Sublime Goddamn!   To paraphrase Miss Simone

Music the balm of Gilead   Raise you up   Set you free    At the

Opera  on Saturday  a woman with hands hacked off  as a child

up on stage    Left un-dead  atop a pile of bodies   Sierra Leone

She told of an  angelic voice +plaintive honk  snaking through the

carnage-heap    Her hands a distant memory

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If I were a psychiatrist I would recommend a poem by Baudelaire

(or the music of Ella+Louis)  to treat anguish.

(Gaston Bachelard 1884-1962  Philosopher)

Summer  2015