songanddancegirl

fiancée

Little Fiancée Of The Atlantic

car crash coma at 17   at 20 first trans-atlantic

solo   sailor florence arthaud  dead at 57    remote

gorge argentina   helicopters touched briefly  then

fell to the ground    filming the reality show

DROPPED

a hero in france   her eyes fierce beacons

inscrutable glare   stares out of front page

news   hair leonine   mouth screams don’t

fuck with me   skin leathery    wizened brow

the whole of a story is never told   when she was

a girl her passion was to catch a bird   countless

hours spent crouching in tall grass   her father said:

if you can shake salt on his tail   he is yours

birds filled the sky on the day she died   birds guided

her over the frigid+black atlantic    they carried her

out of the gorge yesterday at dawn   arthaud slid gently

+elegantly into ceres gravitational embrace    a dwarf

planet with a dusty outer crust+a rocky inner core

__

Winter 2015    20 days to Spring

CURIOUS

WHY SHOULD HE PICK SO CURIOUS A PLACE

We left him on a frozen hill beside a stand of Pines

Slick white snow  churned earth   dry+brown  looked

trucked-in   How deep can you dig in 23 below?  First

thud of earth on wood  a shockwave through the crowd

Dead-silence   Thud  Clomp  Thud  Clomp    Clomp

until 6 ft. under ground

Hearts freshly rent  trudge back to civilization  for coffee+

knishes   A glance back to snowy knoll  & behold a fiddler

madly fiddles   New ghost takes tentative first steps  barefoot

in the snow   Sun glints off of trees   his laugh echoes   as old

ghosts form a receiving line    Turn back one last time  now

hoisted up above their heads  new-ghost  horahwild

An empty chair floats close by  waiting for his earth-bound bride

Last night she dreamt of a blind man running his fingers over nose

+lips      Clomp  Thud        Clomp

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Winter  2015       for S.R. & L.R

HARD

A  HARD  SPRING  IS GONNA FALL

flawed ice sculptures on the lawn  there a

giant snake  slick+sheen-clean  +white   ice

pellets overnight   friend’s husband in a chair

gave him 3 yrs.  he lasted 4    funeral sunday

first above zero in 98 days   my serpent will be

melty   slushbrown   crown of thorns

resurrection a month away   time of pagan eggs

chocolate rabbits  +last suppers    REBOUND

said my amazonian shaman in the California hills

28 yrs. and still  reverberates  especially on days when

shit’s creek overflows

__

(amazon warriors removed a breast to enhance archery

skills   survival of the fittest is not for sissies)

Winter  2015

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.   Bob Dylan

BOX

THE DROP  BOX

Some baby-hatches in China have been so

overwhelmed in recent years that they have

been closed

Little baby boxes by the thousands piled high

UN committee on the Rights of The Child will

ban the box soon  in cities near you

Out in March fields  crocus+babies grow  Snow

covering toes  sun warming noses +wings   Nearly

two thirds of all babies left outside die  before being

found by birds+dogs

__

Winter  2015

W.W.W.

WORLD  WIDE  WEBS  WE  WEAVE

A new term has been coined ISFG (Islamic State Fangirl)

radicalized in their bedrooms  on twitter  tumblr  +murdr

Post millennial groupies to beheaders   How can they have

missed the well staged executions   orange jumpsuited  bloody

desert mirages stuck on replay   OMG gutwrenchingly awesome!

tweeted one recruit

Messianic fervour +magnetism  can whip up female hormones

alarmingly (Yasmin Alibhai Brown  The Independent)    A sad

commentary on humanity   Today Bebe  the uninvited guest of

Barak said: The enemy of your enemy is your enemy (btw Bebe

John Boehner is your frenemy)  Among the enemies of the Free World

are violent warrior heartthrobs seducing our daughters

They see it as emigrating to a better life  They say they feel free

(The Guardian)  More beheadings please!  tweeted another recruit

But can this really be?  Mass rape  oppression  +the new crucifixtion

as aphrodisiac?  Everything they need to know is on the Internet  even

what to pack  in the new  jihadibridefieldguide.com

__

Tonight’s the night, come on surrender
I won’t lead your love astray, astray, yeah
Your love’s a weapon
Give your body some direction
That’s my aim

Justin Timberlake  Take Back The Night 

Winter  2015  (tweets reported in the Globe+Mail 3/3/2015)

STAIN

HUMAN  STAIN  HOTEL

There is a dripping yellow-y substance

seeping from the ceiling  reminiscent of

seedy hotels out on the lakeshore strip

drip  drip  drip    It’s 4 a.m.

Insinuates itself into dreamscape  watery

flashes of yellow seepage  captures slippage

of dissolving moon   On a canoe  drip drip drip

6 a.m. yellow stain moving toward the bed  will

envelop disgruntled city dwellers by noon

Now creeping toward husband’s head buried under

pillows to stanch sound of GIANT pummelling truck

Water is pouring out of pipes onto street  Worlds collide

Somewhere Noah weeps  as our house floats over sewage-y

waves  We are Huck+Becky  on a townhouse raft  lighting out

for the land of Spring     drip  drip    drip  

(so where’s the fucking rainbow already?)

___

Winter  2015    20 days until Spring..

RODEO

NOT MY FIRST   RODEO

If the mammo-technician keels over

or ISIS attacks  I will be stranded

here in the clutches of this giant

robot breast eater   Women lined

up for hours to give offerings  Silent

pacts with ugly machines  Please don’t

find anything that will kill me  Then spat

out onto -33 streets  hair blowing in the

frigid breeze  But free   And freedom tastes

like warm milk

__

Mammo-garage

Mammo-machine

Winter 2015

ROMANTICS

THE  NEW  ROMANTICS

Today is the anniversary of John Keats’

death  in Rome at 25  Shelley alive until 29

died at Sardinia  drowned in a stormy sea

His elegy for Keats  Adonias  remains the

great lyric treatise of the Romantics

Lord Byron too died on a far shore  Greece

at 36  from a cold +violent fever  The last of

the great Romantics   She walks in beauty

like the night of cloudless climes +starry skies

A far cry from the: New Romantics  A group of

brits  ex-patriots  who walk  in darkness   The latest

recruits of ISIS   3 teenage girls 15-17  heading for

Istanbul  Soon to be the wives of jihadis   My little

sister is an A student   To convince such young girls

who are vulnerable  is really evil

Romantic notions of becoming jihadi-brides   shattered

along old spice-routes  leading to lives of servitude  rape

+martyrdom   Look at the girls in sneakers & colourful

clothes smiling as each walks alone  through security at

Gatwick

On their way to Turkey now  where youth grows pale  and

spectre thin  and dies  where beauty cannot keep    These

light winged dryads  of East London

__

Come home. We miss you. We can’t stop crying.

Abase Hussen 47   father of  Amira  missing since Tuesday

Winter  2015

BLACKSONAVITCH

MONSIEUR  BLACKSONAVITCH

He is black  a 4th brother  If he were a

Beatle he’d be the 5th   Afro in pom poms

27 inches at the withers  Smart as a whip (don’t ask)

Came from Buffalo on a crisp Spring day  & stayed

for more than a decade

A good listener  cool calm +collected friend   mean

tobogganer  same hiding spot for 13 years!  Blackie Was

Here  graffiti  all over the hood

Here lies Blackie Blacksonavitch  covered in brother’s

barfy blanket   Making his way to canine heaven  trailing

dog-shaped clouds   Later baked him into holy wafers  a

sacrament given at the side-door   Father placed one under

each child’s tongue  early one morning before Milkman’s run

__

Winter  2015    RIP   Blacksonavitch & Lee

RAT

RAT  ON !

A giant mouse has invaded my house

His eyelashes are pale+his breath reeks of

craft ale   His favourite disc is War On Drugs

It’s trippy chords make him long for more  & reflect

upon days in the fire-tower in Quetico

You see he travelled near+far to find my door ajar  &

crept in  ragged bandana  +all    I don’t know whether

to ice him or marry him  or send him out for taxidermy

But I do know that come Spring he will pack his gear  &

hightail it outta here for greener pastures +a plump Minnie

She who will listen to his mousey-lore especially re: the goals

he’s scored  (five hole baby!)   so much better than  me

__

(how ’bout that top shelf wrister!)

Winter  2015  ..hanging on by a thread..