songanddancegirl

STRAFE

GOOT  STRAFE  ENGLAND

100 yrs. ago a Weapon of Mass Destruction

was used for the 1st time   April 22  1915   On a

day when Spring gets into the blood   Ian Sinclair

Canadian Highlander  Ypres    Then a  HISS   +

yellow-green chlorine gas  poured over the trenches

5,730 canisters

Soldiers were running hither+tither like madmen

crying loudly for water, spitting blood, some rolling

on the ground struggling to breathe   The thing was

that WMDs  were already illegal in 1915

So who was Fritz Haber at the end of the day?   The

chemist responsible for these fledgling gas attacks

said: It’s a way of saving countless lives, the war will

end sooner   Fritz’s wife  also a chemist  did not agree

She shot herself with his pistol

Later the British  +the Americans sided with Fritz   both in

the Battle of Loos   +twice in Japan where 106,000 were killed

atomically   Japan too was not immune  carrying out biological

warfare in WWII   Wells were poisoned with cholera+typhoid  +

bombs were dropped with plague infested fleas

It’s hard to point a finger   Fritz was just a chemist   the others

Presidents   Dictators  +Prime Ministers   Think Brigadier General

Jack D. Ripper  a fictional madman with his finger on the trigger

And while you’re at it  think  Kim Jong-un

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Spring  2015

REAPER

BROTHER’S REAPER

look at dzhokhar  21   pale-caught-in

headlights-stare  doleful +dangerous   a

convicted terrorist    sentenced in boston

to death     limbs finally at rest    8 yr. old

martin richard will stop knocking on his

parent’s door   martin bled to death on the

street    his parent’s asked for clemency

sydney corcoran  badly burned  +her mother

who lost 2 legs tweeted: YES   after friday’s verdict

now the brothers tsarnaev will terrorize parts unknown

soon to be re-united in a place so hot  human skin is

vaporized in an instant   +the streets of your town will

be  safer

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Spring  2015  (boston marathon bombing: 3 dead  264 maimed)

AIR

THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE AIR

see bridget bardot in the video: there’s something

in the air   see how there is a shining light about her

eyes  her time in the sun  you can taste the fecundity

bridget’s immortality   now bag-ladyish animal activist

my time in the sun?  yours?   maybe it hasn’t begun!

the last person who said i am not hopeful  knows not

of the enantiodromia  years in the making   what was

underneath is on top   what was on top is underneath

turning the earth with a spade & a parade of horses+blue

dinosaurs+dodo eggs pop out of your father’s grave    my

cousin worries about the water-table  +what it will do to her

mother’s bones   i was painstakingly positive   i said: that’s

where we’re supposed to go  become earth again   go home

her mother-in-law had spoken of decomposition  because she

was a cruel woman  sometimes the earth is hard and caked over

in such cases there can be no turning of the soil   rendering the

bitter   mortal   not hobo

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Spring  2015 and every stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band

BANALITY

THE BANALITY OF RICARDO KLEMENT

droopy eye  evilsmirk  a not  not handsome face

fugitive SS officer led the race to snuff out europe’s

jews   no mere cog  sent to gallows in 62   eichmann

apologist for everyman who looks the other way

a hot  +steamy day mid-century jewish ghetto   survivors

now in bungalows  neat rows on a ravine   daddy won’t

join the shul   god wasn’t listening    +in the night you

heard their screams  waking out of recurring dreams

a friend told me her mother  a russian jew  32   slept with

one eye open  +a hammer   their house smells like herring

+tears  +gas

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..and were there not forewarnings   those 5 yrs. churn in my 

soul   i have grown thin   i’m hungry     Marc Chagall  My Life

The gas is visible to the condemned, who is advised to take several deep

breaths to speed unconsciousness. Nonetheless, there are often convulsions

and excessive drooling. Following the execution the chamber is purged with

air, and any remnant gas is neutralized.  The bodies can be removed with great

caution, as pockets of gas can be trapped in the deceased’s clothing.

Spring 2015

EPHEMERALITY

EPHEMERALITY BLUES

do the birds get  squawkier every Spring?

This year a choir   begins at 5 a.m.  led by a

robin taskmaster   it is 9 p.m.  +he is  still

shouting   as a new batch of moths attack me

+my woollens   i don’t even bother to brush them

away   they flitter in front of my face reminding me

that i am alive

that my wardrobe is alive with larvae  +that at

almost 60 there is a wild beauty  exhuberant+

perfect about the slow leaking    & receding  of

my story   a very wise woman said to me today:

you can buy a cream for $10,000 +it won’t do a

damn thing for the skin on your legs    i nodded &

mumbled something about  the body no longer making

moisture

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keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be

we forget all too soon the things we thought we could

never forget      Joan Didion

Spring 2015

DOVES

WHEN DOVES CRY

there was a man who looked so

dangerous we waited until he’d left

before exiting Grand Electric   a burbon

+taco joint down the road   1/2 squeegie kid

1/2 Charlie Manson  skin pink  now pacing in

front of the lcbo  desperate for a drink   or

someone to dismember

girl in store next door   says her boyfriend was

beaten to a pulp  last week   squeegieman wants

more hipster blood    i say to my brother: don’t

look them in the eyes  +when they ask for money  

say sorry    not   sorry my friend     on this week’s

episode of favourite show  our folk hero  shot in face

he called his mugger  son    as in: son this is a mistake

today a guy wears a: what is love? sign   a large man naked

to the waist  delivers an open handed slap  to love-junkie’s

face    does he turn the other cheek?   hell no   he slashes at

the cherry trees  only 10   +2 yrs. old     fully pink for a week

or so   new grass covered in shredded massacre   hipsters weep

+sound like doves

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Spring 2015  soon none of this will matter snow will annul all talk of love

666

666 LIBERATED

all is quiet in the sambisa forest   the stoning

the explosions  +the crushing by tanks  stopped

the silence is full of un-screamed screams   the

freed women+children  some in shock  others

bewildered  line up for tea   +a stew of baobab

leaves

many of the new babies in rags   suffering from

malnutrition   warlords  of forced marriages  didn’t

provide board  just rooms  malaria+rape commonplace

Lami Musa 27  forced to marry the man who slaughtered

her husband  the whereabouts of their 3 children  unknown

now she is walking home with a week old baby  born in captivity

the military will turn survivors over to the National  Emergency

Management Agency   new home a dust blown refugee camp set

among baobab trees

Rachel Yehuda psychiatrist NYC  has found that children of mothers

with PTSD are 3x as likely to have it   +6x more likely to be depressed

+anxious    sunset in sambisa forest  piles of stones  crushed bones  +

land mines     pink skies+resurrection

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6000 yr. old witness to Boko Haram

savagery the sacred African Baobab tree

symbol of immortality

Spring 2015

SMELLS

SMELLS LIKE    SOUR GRAPES

tiny cherry trees in full blooded bloom

petals corrupting city girls who lay splayed

on blankets in park today   smell wafts up

parts: coconut oil   macaroons   +money

this is West Queen West   honey!

paper says Ondaatje  +Joyce Carol Oates will

boycott PEN dinner for  Charlie Hebdo    you

can bet they were  Charlie way back in January

seems that spring has turned them surly  +utterly

shameless

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april is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the

dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots

with spring rain.      t.s. elliot  the wasteland  1922

 
Spring 2015

DEUS

DEUS EX MACHINA

there is a robin redbreast shrieking in the

tree across the street from my Juliet balcony

the cacophony begins at 5 a.m.   the lone

trumpeter of Spring  i have named him louis

no! not that louis   that would be corny  which

i never do   it’s the louis from france  this shrill

robin  my sun king   he rescues me each morning

from ghosts +clutching sailors  who lately fill my

dreams   O i am ready for the coming Spring!

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But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? 
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. 

Spring 2015

GET BEHIND ME SATAN

DOES YOUR FAVOURITE POET HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR SATAN?

John Milton sold Paradise Lost on April 27  1667  for 20 pounds  5 up

front  +3 more 5 pound pays  Paradise Lost didn’t even rhyme  +blind

Mr. Milton dictated it to scribes as he lay in bed  Not simple times: war

plague  the great fire  all conspired against him    It took 4 yrs. before a

contract was signed

I want a scribe  +a contract too   Some people call me the poet of gloom+

doom  But that is not true  I have just mailed 3 poems to the Humour Issue

of our country’s finest poetry journal   The one entitled Bitched should get

in    Hands up all who slapped their thighs while reading it  (April 1  2015)

Perhaps my scribe might cheer me up   He can begin by: licking salt off of

my limbs after a work out   +gradually move onto pitting Bing cherries   &

placing them on my forked tongue  one dark cherry at a time  He might then

scurry about my boudoir collecting words from shadows+closets    +all

manner of orifice  where Satan usually hides them   Somehow I doubt that you

are still slapping your thighs ladies&gentlemen

Realistically   Satan seems more my purview   what with a bird’s eye view of

Hades from my consulting room   where desperate children fled our modern

plagues  day in+day out for an eternity  Hands up all who vote for sending this 

poem to the Humour Issue

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Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block

to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely those of humanity.”

Matthew 16:23

Paradise Lost  Paradise Regained  John Milton

10 books  10,000 lines of Verse

Spring  2015   Who you calling dark?