songanddancegirl

HOBO

HOMEWARD BOUND  IN   LAVENDER LIGHT

Her name is Sailor  Her sister was Piper    Sierra

her cousin  a dark crumble under the shade of pines

Sailor walked out of the woods   Sub-zero  one sock

Broken wrist   blood-smeared chin    Father was 48

Mother 46   watching her from River Styx    Kindly man

in woodland house said: I brought her in and washed her face

Courtney Love whose scalpel-face is unrecognizable tells us:

Forget persona  Your mojo is your mojo     Sailor Gutzler

knows a thing or 2 about mojo   Born with a huge dose  propelled

tiny body from upside-down plane into snow covered forest

The newest Boko Haram-boys will need some of her true grit

40 kidnapped on the day the Gutzler plane fell out of a lavender

sky   Why would they covet boys?  With 219 girls still missing  the

question begs an answer    The answer questions our collective grip

on what remains of humanity’s sanity

tiny suicide bombers?

young sex slaves+soldiers?

spectral heroes guiding children out of crashed planes?

Sailor Gutzler was taken by ambulance to Holy Sister’s   They set her wrist

& a family member collected her  as the world woke up to a nascent year on

January 5, 2015

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PRINCE

“I  WAS RAISED TO BE CHARMING NOT SINCERE”

(Prince Charming)

In December 1647  Puritans put an end to: drunk excess

papist superstitions  +carnal delights   They banned Xmas

Riots broke out in Canterbury  This year at Christ-tide on the

outskirts of Tijuana  young girls sought sanctuary    At least

20,000 people are trafficked through Mexico yearly   The vast

majority  women+girls

Hilda was 9 when she arrived at The Garden House for victims

of child sex trafficking   Sold by her family   she is now 18  & has

not spoken a single word since arriving   On the night before Xmas

she emerged from a cocoon of silence:  I’m happy  +kind of sad  but

it’s okay now  she said

Mary Ellen Bartleby  California District Attorney  noted:  

With a pound of cocaine, if you sell it, the cupboard is bare.

But with a woman, you can sell her several times a night;  

seven days a week.

If the cave painters were to scratch a portrait of Xmas 2014 onto

the rockface  it would look like:  a genetic mutation  of innocence

a microbial form of hatred seeping into human DNA  for millennnia

And we call them  primitive   

Might it not be time to Rise Up in some small way  against the hypocrisies

of everyday?  You know  like: peace  goodwill  +progress   the ships that

sailed without us    This year China banned Xmas calling it: Ancient Kitsch  

which really is a much more apt description  of China

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Pope Francis in his first mass of 2015 said that everyone has a God-given

right to be free  This at a time when 36,000,000 people live as slaves, are 

trafficked into brothels,  forced into manual labour, or are born into bondage.

(Walk Free Foundation  Australia  Global Slavery Index)

Winter 2015

SPNAR

SPLICING BASED ANALYSIS OF  VARIANTS

Pronounced spanner   Combs the human genome to

seek+sort mutations   Will soon be used to identify

traits that make people  healthier  smarter  happier

But what about  holier than thou   hipper  hotter

The mutation that is 2014’s breakout demographic:

the urban(e) hair covered hipster

Yesterday I overheard one faux bushwhacker waxing

poetic on life after 95: It’s like winter-camping   cold+

dark  +nothing else to do  so you just go to bed   he said

How’s that for plumbing the ungraspable depths of our

mortal dissipation?

In an age when anger is the most popular emotion in Canada

linked to all manner of heart related ailment  acute myocardial

infarction  arrhythmia  +stroke  and the experts say: Identify

Your Trigger Points  & Avoid Them!   Air-rage  road-rage 

sidewalk-rage    +wrap-rage: using an ice pick to open a plastic package

The gentle philosophy of the neo-hippie is a thing of beauty   If all else

fails: tune out  turn off   & calmthefuckdown   Float into oblivion  where

you won’t care that the terrorist in the cave is collecting Air Asia planes

+messing with the worldwideweb   with our heads  +has made Seth Rogen

a household name in a way that Oscar never could

Reminding us that the Great Book was not written with us in mind

So in 2015  I implore you to:  listen for the sound of one leaf falling   of

one hand clapping    +of Judas laughing

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Winter 2014

HEAR

ALLAH  AKBAR   HEAR O ISRAEL   MERRY CHRISTMAS

The man behind me spits out words like: barbaric  apocalypse

bloodbath   Then: what ya gonna do?   Words fail   as he flails

in the morass of language   trying to analyze the day’s events in

Pakistan   In the end he fails miserably

Jittery we sit  not narcotized enough yet to the onslaught of massacre

over the past 48 hrs.  We eye one another suspiciously in this grand

hall at the University  a perfect choice for the terror machine to land

On tv yesterday handsome  ex- CIA said: Citizens must become vigilantes

Learn the correct ways to wield machetes  concealed under skirts   inside

strollers  down your pants

In Peshwar more than 145 dead  mostly children   100+ injured    Taliban

loves late  hates: wonder  miracles  education   Yesterday they stormed a

school with 1,500 students  methodically shooting schoolchildren in the

head  Setting teachers on fire   Have we witnessed such hatred since the

Nazis?  Or are such comparisons odious?   Maybe yes  +maybe no

Amir Ameen 15  recovering in hospital was taking an exam when gunmen

entered the classroom   They shot students one by one  mostly in the head

he said     They shot my teacher +her baby daughter  I am the only survivor

from my class  I played dead when they checked me

decimation

armageddon

end of the world

There is no shortage of precise language to describe these last days in  the year of

our Lord   two thousand +fourteen   World War III is a war without borders   It is

also a war of technology    Just look at what they did   to Sony

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Winter Solstice  2014

CHOCOLATE

THE  CHOCOLATE  OF  OUR  AFFLICTION

Western chocoholic fantasmagoria     Lindt

forever dipped  in endarkenment     Small hands

pressed against glass   The temple of chocolate violated

by self-appointed cleric   Terrorizes coffee-clatch   +the

world  in the name of his God

Must there now be security in  Starbucks  pie shops  malls

FAO Schwartz  Broadway plays  Kindergarden?   76% of U.S.

schools have armed guards at the doors   Yesterday mayhem on

the streets of Sydney  in this the Christmas of terror  The Christmas

of  I can’t breathe   Of  hands up    In this the Christmas of evil in a

chocolate shop

Terror stricken girl  eyes quite dead  holds corner of cleric’s flag

Yesterday a flower  now she cowers  as hater-cleric touches her  &

says: On your knees   Later police storm the place  bring stretchers

out onto street   How many times will this scene repeat  Christmas 2014

declared obsolete

Mr. Abbott  the Australian Prime Minister said:  There are people even

in a society such as ours, who wish to do us harm  It seems that the world

has too many windows  +not enough mirrors    When Medusa sees her

reflection  she turns to stone  We could try this with haters  but bullets will

likely suffice

Today as I sit in frigid cafe  a tall burly man approaches  He is taking off his

belt (WTF?)   I shudder  & wonder about random beheadings  on this dreary

December day   ten before the birthday of the fisherman

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Winter  2014

PASSETH

IT  PASSETH  UNDERSTANDING

“that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject

nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with

us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly,  furiously

with us into the earth again.”  

William Faulkner As I Lay Dying  1930

Operating room ferocity  disgruntled courage:  they’ll

cut me from stem to stern  he said   By-passed 4 arteries

Under red flowers now  except for when they made a mistake

and dug him up:  You didn’t pay for a full flowerbed  Pay up!

Or he is outta here   Careful where you bury your handful of

bones    We put a horseshoe for  GOODLUCK   on his stone

Another death-bed trajectory   Once elegant  +full of charm

dressed in Andre Correges  Now skeletal in leopard skin throw

turbaned  & weighing 59lbs   As much as a pile of rabbit bones

Is this an ending  or a beginning?  Depends on which way your

deity swings     The lowest low I will ever see?      Maybe

Some years later  82 yrs.old  +proud   with a brain tumour

Animalistic movements  Beyond speech   Beseeching light burns

in grey-green eyes  Get me out of here!   Granddaughter looks in

mirror  diminishing savoir faire     Yes    Get me out of here

Nurse gives 3 generations   a cold blank stare

And do not forget that earliest visitation   Other grandmother invites

5 yr. old onto her bed  though her mother said: Leave your lizard in the car

Photo snapped of girl  +dying woman  +green lizard with cheshire smile

According to Laurel Bundren in a new study out of LIVELAB:  Deathbed

scenes are all about the way social groups cohere, we find all kinds of

things we never dreamed of going on in these complex interactions

Father’s hand 20 minutes after death  still pliable   + then a mysterious breath!

Red headed doctor says: He’s dead   But it’s hardly his decision

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Early Fall  2014

LUDICROSITIES

MAMMALIAN LUDICROSITIES

The people are panicked about the presence of

threatening  +aggressive clowns in France  their

National Police report    Whether brandishing a

rubber chicken  at a child’s birthday  or John Wayne

Gacy dressing up as Pogo  clowns entertain  +terrify

The fear of clowns is called: Coulrophobia     Such a

strange species are we

Jumping from balconies   stockpiling medications   starving

oneself to death     These are the current alternatives for

Canadians suffering unbearably   Currently assisting a suicide

is punishable by 14 yrs. in prison   Such an inhumane species

are we

In 1945 Alex Colville was a war artist & visited Bergen Belsen

He noted: You see one dead person and it is too bad, but seeing 

500 is not 500 times worse  There is a certain point at which you 

begin to feel nothing     Such an anesthetized species are we

Just recently a dinosaur was discovered in Mongolia  with a toothless

mouth  +massive tongue that functioned like a gigantic vacuum cleaner

Last night in a dream Deino- cherius lumbered along  sucking up Nazis

+serial killers with impunity  If you could have him suck away one event

from your life   what would it be?    Or similarly   have Deino undo the

trajectory of world history

Quantum physicists posit: Changing one past event would not result in

changing all past events, but in creating parallel lives for the same person

*imagine old Adolph in the bunker   *imagine fetal Adolf sucked out of his

mother’s womb  *imagine John Lennon on the ground  *imagine John Lennon

at 70     I think you can take it from here

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You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
 

RIP John Winston Lennon

October  2014

KICK

YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE ME TO KICK AROUND

The angry clerk 1/2 sneers 1/2 leers  as my book  7yrs.

in the making  is retrieved from the BACK of the shop

BOTTOM shelf   from BEHIND $300 jeans    Hip store

sells:   Canadiana   Fashion   Curiosities    +3 books

Madonna  Douglas Coupland    +me

So how did I become one of three?  No fame  No critical

acclaim  Chained self to chair in buyers office   works like

a charm   Then there is the so hip it hurts  little bookstore

where staff have perfected the dropdeadlittlenonamepoet

glare   Your glowy red hair makes us writhe with: KILL THE

FASHIONISTA BITCH  envy

The metallic pink brogues may have tricked the wraith-like

owner into buying your pretty tome  but you now must grovel

before  all of  US   Seems that US  have sold several of my books

+have lost the remaining copies  Poor little Song&Dancegirl

collects dust  & mouse matter  under a sink somewhere

But on the shelf where my books should rest   between Bukowski

+ e.e. cummings  I spy a few copies of a famous CanLit poet  shoved

in a corner  neglected+bent  +yellowing  Somehow this gives puny-poet

the courage to keep on going

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Winter  2014

C.I.A.

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE + THE CIA CLOSER

The horror is in the details   Take rectal feeding for

example    The CIA pureed food which they later

rectally infused into detainees    One prisoner was

thrown into a darkened cell  shackled to a wall  standing

& forgotten for 17 days

The CIA is under attack for acts of: mundane brutality +

day to day degradations  in a report released yesterday

One that is largely redacted    a.k.a. censored    Barak + other

American notables say CIA are patriots  though their methods

insult their country’s morality   High ground  slides to new lows

with these atrocities

When the good guys behave like depraved sociopaths  +the bad guys

are depraved psychopaths  it may in fact be time to re-evaluate the

thin veneer of civilization between humanity  & the animal kingdom

Senator John McCain  POW in Vietnam  tortured repeatedly  cannot as

a result raise his arms above waist-level  He said: Torture isn’t necessary

and it isn’t even helpful

Torture does not elicit co-operation  or produce accurate intelligence

Generally speaking the near dead tell their captors  what they want to

hear  or anything at all to  STOP THE TORTURE    The 2 psychologists

hired by the CIA to advise on + help run the torture program  billed the U.S.

government: $81 million

So  is this a tragedy  or a modern scourge?  Perhaps it reeks of cataclysm?

Surely a convulsion of depravity   Or is it simply the new-normal in our

21st Century?   Gird yourselves.

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Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are

almost always bad men.”

Winter 2014

GOOD

WAR   WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR

The mean streets are buzzing today

with a breed of wasp which cannot

be shooed away (reminiscent of

almost husband #2)  And the man

who would be V.P. of the free-est

country in the world believes:

Rape survivors automatically

abort their would be progeny by

some miracle of divine intervention

If this were true   how then can you

account for  the soaring birth rate

after the rape & pillage of war ?  So I

ask you Mr. Prospective V.P.   What are

you good for ?   Absolutely nothing

Say it again

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August  2012