songanddancegirl

his name is Verst and he is funky

my childhood bestie  a standard poodle named Blackie

father at his most creative  other times he would feign

getting dressed  as he was coming home  (u figure that one out!)

Blackie was regal  and quite Russian  with his tall poodle

hat   i named him  Verst  not  Verscht  though he loved a

good salami

verst is an obsolete Russian unit of length  so much of life

now obsolete  the bodies of our father mother brother  the

bones of  Verst  the poodle

when Verst died  father baked him into muffins  and fed

the holy wafers to us at the side door  the milkman’s door

the one through which mother  gave a slovenly bulldog away

the one through which the milkman crept   into the house

in the wee hours    and left his smile  on a brother’s face

__

Summer 2024  ..all hail Verst Blacksonovitch..

taking care of men with cancer

men with cancer will grudgingly let you hold their penises

as they pee into the filthy hospital toilet  but then they will

stumble into you   and rue  you   because you can

enter my brother  who pushes me hard  as i steady him

i mean  are you going to let the BIG fucker  smash his

beautiful face on the cold tiles?   later bloodpours     almost inexplicably

men  i suppose women too  all people  well most  except my

mother  eke agency  i used to call it  will  until my husband’s

chordoma taught me to  go public with my impotence  my privacy  decimate

agency ignite  💥   💥   am i tough enough  rough enough  hard enough?

and i hate this  i hate the treacle   the well meant  did he

have to relearn anything?   no   he’s exactly the same

to a  tee       FORRRRRRRE!

but i won’t forget  soon  the voiceless growl he greeted me with

on the first stretcher   and the tall Russian man  who carted us

to the imaging rooms  where i said   close your eyes   don’t look   

it was 3am  23 hrs after

i woke up

on the first day

of the

rest of my life

__

Summer Solstice 2024  ..saviour complexes suck..

do avert eyes from sad hallway skeletons on gurneys   alone

nigrum nigrius nigro

dreams a mess   dark   apocalyptic  messianic       with screaming😱

and the darkest hour   is just before dawn?

7 wks ago      the light went missing

along with   the shredded remnants of a life  lived

in the shadow  of this?   yea tho i walk thru the valley

of the shadow of death   i will fear no evil   nor scalpels

nor cameras endoscopic

there is no such thing as  bad luck  wakethefuckup!

there is just   human life  that fragile matrix    barely

holding us   in matter    the skeleton a cage

now the  RADIATION REDEMPTION MACHINE  

(a.k.a. Old Smokey)  has been given your name

masks of ego   fade  without a trace   trumpets herald

your return   to beginner’s mind   to the pure open child

ready to meet   dwarves+mystics   Jesus Buddah ET

the Gods  inside the machine   they gonna set you    FREE

__

Summer 2024  ..the light at the end of the tunnel..🌄 ..for Cam🤠

sleeping with the fishes☠️

do you know the difference between a dead body

and  an alive body?   i mean from personal experience

for starters  the warmth evaporates   ebb reek ebb reek

now redolent of  compost?  earth?  sacred bodily substances?

so hard to know  schmo   a neighbour called my bro  a schmo

he was from Caracas via the holocaust  he knew  redolent+reek

but seriously   once the warm fades  and this happens quickly

a stiffness+chill  pervades   creeping   sheets grow damp   with

human stain     fingers curl in Martian postures

it’s kind of ET-esq   WAX ON   biggest breath   known to mankind

chest heaves  savouring +life   HEAVE HO   (schmo)   c’mon  a little

gallows humour won’t kill you!

then the penultimate   followed by the most sacred ultimate  last

human breath  EVER   where you are going   breathing is overrated

bodies irrelevant

so cherish warm un-ET fingers   watch your peeps breathe   and try to

live each of your own  human breaths  cause soon enough   lungs will be

irrelevant    and you’ve gotta make that okay

__

Spring 2024  ..befriend the harbingers..🦅🦅

Now We Kill The DNA 💥

OH   can you kill the DNA  in the cells  of my

memorybank Oppy?    de-bulk    resection

the hospital stay    all putrifacto+lobotomy

or is it now part of what makes me  old gnarly as fuck ape?

fuckthat   this one was mild  compared to the  others

can i get a witness      hey  what about me?

( ..i used to be pretty.. )

the screaming in the night was a laughcry   was that 

a child?   we asked horrified  NO  it’s an adult  they said

cryptic-grimace    Nurse Rached-esque

we heard it again weeks later  in the ante-room  of Aristotoles   a

small angelic brainsurgeon  in green Converse  Apreeeeeel  he said

i have never damaged a carotid artery

he knocked on wood  convulsively   lucky not to be  the first   not

this time   when cancer says  i like you   you say  why me?   and the

maddog universe says

why not you!

__

Spring 2024   ..soon on the otherside..💥💃🏻..and marching onward!

the gulag of ape

i want to hear new albums  from my favourite dead rockers

you heard me   DEAD !    imagine the creations post body

post tethered to   the spacetimeheadfuckcontinuum

a friend’s bro died in his sleep yesterday  wife found him

inert and rictus   another has a rare cancer  another  a not

so rare   alienmutation

at 17  i suggested a book title to father   CANCER COLONY 

Dad !  .. everyone in the world has cancer   even cows.. 🐄 🐄

father nixed it   deep six it girl    +when he groangrowled  

YOU LISTENED

you see  mother had just been  vivisectioned   but a couple of

years later  much to my horror  i learned that Solzhenitsyn had

pilfered my title     fuck you Aleksandr

(The Cancer Ward  sold millions)

so do you think Lou is still writing  about Candy  giving head

on an unmade bed?  oooops that was Leonard !  i highly doubt it

now that they flirt with the Godhead  the little head rotting+shriven

__

..and the coloured girls go  

doo do doo do doo do dooooooooooo..

(Lou Reed  &  AAC ..  Spring 2024)

Spring 2024  ..for Lee Atkins..A MAN..1921-1989..

Mr. Marty Blues

i grew up worshipping the boobgoddesses of 1960’s

Playboy   my big bro’s closet  stacked+mammary

at night he pounded  a neighbour’s wife  named Cookie

while her husband promenaded his mistress  Betty  thru

stale suburban streets   oh the golden years of conspicuous

consumption   in a wasteland   Finch+Bathurst way

another neighbour  plump+kitten heel   stood on the

pavement weeping over a small white dog  newly mangled

by the Canada Post truck   all of which my father prophesied

__

..that dog ain’t gonna see another sunrise..

Spring 2024  ..RIP Mr. Marty💔..May 19, 1946 – October 21, 2018

the sorrows of apesyphus

neighbours discussing my fall  into a crevasse vast

+ganglia  rage seeping angina  from this day forward

i will use the backdoor

where garbage+racoon shit accumulate  where homelost

squat to eat  smooth clean bones  drying in the early spring

heat      not the antlers of Georgia O’ Keefe

probably gnarly city-chicken  or Creutzfeldt-Jakob beef

but they cannot squelch my carefree   newly insouciant

+braintumour    call me apesyphus     or am i?     are u?

__

..the human race is a monotonous affair..most people spend

the greatest part of their time working …and what little freedom 

remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means

to be rid of it.. (The Sorrows of Young Werther.. J.W. Von Goethe 1774) 

Spring 2024  ..lighthearted jaunty debonair +breezy..🌻🌻

not the universes bitch

when they wheeled him out of the OR  he wore

a crown of thorns  +my left palm dripped blood

rubyred+stigmata

the  chordoma   corona of a king   prince of peace

+hockey +the Selkirk settlement  where he inherited

Cree genes   one crazy mo fo   full-blooded Scots-Metis

built to forage  to roam the great Canadian prairie   friend

to moose  made to fight   built to last   a late life malignancy

he’s trained his whole life for   arrived this April

whan that Aprill with her shoures soote

the droghte of March hath pierced to

the roote   Geoffrey Chaucer 1387-1400

his will forged in  forest  lake  shale  +creek   in the days of

Winnipeg winters  40 below  Portage+Main    fuck all on

the  BIG  portage  his favourite phrase

these days life feels entirely random  total chordoma eclipse

Al Eclipsé   his new name   we now need a referral to the

Oracle at Delphi    or can we at least get a witness?

from where i sit in the ICU  this panoply of Spring looks obscene

what are all those little humans doing  genuflecting to cherry trees?

By God!  i think they’re  hoping     HOPE    HOPE      H  O  P  E

but look there  over in the corner

where bloody rags  multiply

a small girl

with ringlets  +tragedy

screams           MUMMMMMMMMMY

__

Spring 2024  ..and April is the cruellest month..

after i said cheese i screamed bloody murder

i knew something was up with this place  a place where

the continuum runs between  terror+hope   i knew the

adults were feigning   a can do   attitude

as the vicissitudes roared out there  and father hung his

head sometimes  in the midst of laughter+glory  +walking

on water     we kids knew   it don’t come easy

messy deshabille  +envy   some families cruised  or so it

seemed   until the mother ran out on the porch +fainted

her son  killed by a tree  in Zermatt

school-trip

blood meridian

a bro liked their daughter  fairhaired  brotherless  princess

went on to live happily ever after  he met her on a beach years

later    all her sons named  David

her dead brother’s

soul

released  3 times

now who is that in the corner?  aiming arcane hand-signals at

my husband’s head   like a crazed deathcatcher   why it’s Jolene!

hey don’t mess with me  bitch   +don’t take him

just because

you can

__

Spring 2024   ..uncharacteristically bitter..