songanddancegirl

36

36 DAYS  UNTIL   CHRISTMAS

The seats are too close together  the music

is  World   on steroids   So repetitive is the groove

if you’re not *OCD  you will be:  na na nay ba ba 

ba  ina ina ina ska   Need I say more?   Writing at

Starbucks across from the asylum where a frigid wind

whips under the door  Longstoryshort the country is okay

but the long months of freezeyourassoff turn us animal+sour

Sorry we squandered the sunsets +spiders the size of hanging

meat   Pointed car  back to city  where gritty reality obliterated the

last of Huron retreat    Now nicely tenderized  we cower at Old Man

Winter’s feet   A patient from the asylum sidles up to me +bellows:  Bro!  

na na ney ba ba ba   He is the man who said : I’m gonna slit your throat  

to my old mother  one sultry summer’s day

Full circle have we come   Now awaiting the scented dusks of  May

Sweet May     Na Na Ney    Hey  turn that goddamned music OFF 

before I go grinch-psycho  +vomit on your Advent Calendar   a steal

@ 39.94  

__

*Obsessive Compulsive Disorder 

Late Fall  2014

for J.M.A. who in 1969 passed a whole maraschino cherry thru

his nose while laughing(+vomiting) at our father’s back spasm throes

BULLISH

NOT  BULLISH  ABOUT   WINTER

Yesterday you felt like you couldn’t face it

The long white tunnel that will spit you out

in April    Today a cacophony of flakes coming

down   +one drifting back up   An orgy of beauty

You get a 2nd wind

Promise us a wonderland   & deliver ice packed

narrow roads   Where burly men in plaid leave you

stranded in the snow   No chivalry it seems  at minus 33

In Calgary they have a Polar Vortex  & my old bully who

moved out there after a division of property  is freezing

his bulldog-balls off    Hey Old Man Winter   can you throw

a girl a bone?

__

Late Fall  2014

GRATEFUL

THE GRATEFUL (?)   UN-DEAD

Today I sit at the edge of our city  in a

military cemetery  a stone’s throw from

Lake Ontario    A Grade 1 class has come

to lay a wreath at the feet of a statue  marking

a soldier’s grave    A teacher shrieks: Everyone

has to look at the statue NOW!  There must be

a gentler way to take their innocence  no?

Today is the day we honour the fallen soldiers of

THE GREAT WAR  where in places called Somme

Verdun  Dieppe   Canadian ghosts are out in droves

It’s Remembrance Day   & the old cemetery is covered

with grass     The smell of rotting leaves wafts up  as

designer dogs dig holes

With a poppy   blood red +woundlike   fastened to

my chest  I mingle with the ghosts   & wonder how the

5 yr. old son of Cpl. Cirillo is faring   His father cut down

just weeks ago by a young homegrown jihadi

It seems there are old wars  +new wars    Wars from bunkers

+wars from caves   The children’s wreath is blowing along King St.

now   & a canine ghost sits at attention beside the soldier’s grave

__

..in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds, when you’ve been lost

a long time, when you have no other place.  

Anne Michaels  1991

Late Fall 2014    RIP  9 million soldiers + 7 million civilians   

CESSATION

GUARDIANS  OF  THE  CESSATION

Right now in Toronto there are a few theatre

groups doing death+dying   An auspicious time

is early November  when the scrim is thin around

the edges   & the dead walk among us

The un-dead are busy as usual  inventing ways not

to waste time   So precious  so rapidly diminishing

(just toss your watch! burn your Calendar!)

Take the cubicle rats of Silicon Valley   tech-savvy

millennials tired of chewing their food

They are touting Soylent: a healthy alternative to

normal food   It allows users to transcend a basic

biological need  Soylent’s slogan: FREE YOUR BODY

which used to be known in simpler times as: being dead

It seems that everywhere they are trying to put us to sleep

Note the recent discovery that memory is exquisitely sensitive

to anesthetic drugs   How many times have you had surgery?

Based on the newest mouse study  memory deficits persist long

after surgery   Face it  general anesthesia is NOT the same as sleep

It is instead the Big Pharma Coma   They will put you under  but

in most places  they will not let you die  with dignity

Beware of Resuscitation   Dying in Canada is currently a techno-

laden odyssey   Few are brave enough to broach the subject of

dying   with the dying   Euphemisms abound: Get Your House In Order!

At a recent death-bed scene I overheard these words: Let the doctor tell

her   that’s why he gets paid the BIG BUCKS      

3 things the dead won’t miss about the living:  their cowardice  their avarice

their mendacity    1 thing they will:  their immortality

__

It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon.

Willam Faulkner  As I Lay Dying  1930

Late Fall  2014

SLEEP

IT’S BECAUSE OF LIFE THAT I CANNOT SLEEP

There are 14 leaves left on my tree  +a mad white

squirrel gesticulating at me (did he just flip me the

bird?)   Rogers no-showed after 3 hrs. on the phone

with: John  Infar  +Brett   This left me shouting

obscenities at Lexi  in Kuala Lumpur  who was sorry

I felt this way  But no more appointments today   I see

it was your husband’s birthday this week   Awesome!

But there are more important things afoot this November 5th

2014   Poor Barak will be a lameduck until 2016   & in Ottawa

a 15 yr. old girl was sentenced to 6 1/2  yrs.   for running a well

oiled human trafficking machine

On this day in 1954 Godzilla was born  Back then he was known

as Gojira  1/2 gorilla  1/2 whale    A hybrid beast born of our

destructive capacities  meant to be  Nature’s revenge for  The Bomb

Later spotted atop the Empire State building messing with Hedy Lamarr

It’s always been true that few things make one’s heart race like a good

revenge fantasy: Gorija comes upon the Rogers truck    He lifts it over 

his head +begins to eat it for lunch   Then he makes his way to L.A.

where he has recently earned a star  on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame

O Gorija  take me with you!  In about 2 days time  there will stand my barren

tree   + the albino squirrel will shit all over me  Divine retribution for invincible

optimism  & a precious wildness that simmers in the jaded botch  that is me

__

There’s no shortage of tormented things. Far from mirrors I feed

dreams of fame+travel, extraordinary men offering me necklaces,

words that can be eaten they’re so sweet, so warm, so corporeal.

Adelia Prado  1981

Late Fall  2014

SUPERSTAR

J.C.  SUPERSTAR

The fatbirds are in the trees  last count 660

Their sqwaklaugh spreads through West Queen

West  making even the holiest hipster feel foolish

Like on Saturday when Falstaff shouted at the well

shod Opera crowd: YOU ARE ALL FOOLS!

Then laughed a bellylaugh causing chaos to his fatsuit

Is Toronto becoming a reliquary of fallen media darlings?

There’s Rob Ford  +now Jian Gomeshi   He has not been

charged with a crime  +the allegations have not been tested

in court  Yet it seems a sport to pillory  and dig up the latest

viddy   This time: bondage +beating  during sexual activity

Of course if Jian Gomeshi is found guilty  he should suffer the

most extreme penalty  Sexual violence is not pretty  Ditto sucker

punching one’s dates  +shielding teddy from the harshest of realities

What strikes me  is that few ever talk compassionately about the

glaring need for therapy  or ministry  until it’s too late

It always felt like Rob might harm himself   Until cancer came along

+claimed him as it’s patient  he was routinely humiliated   Jian now

eviscerated  is M.I.A.   So I ask you gentle reader: What would Jesus say?

__

Late Fall  2014

CRACKED

MATERIALITY IS NOT WHAT IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE

I came upon a city of white ghostly porcelain people

2000strong at the corner of Avenue Rd. & Bloor today

An alchemical in-between a bit like Pompeii  All are frozen

mid-bite  mid-dance  mid-romance   Were they ever more

alive than now?   Were you?   Was I?   The scent of their

regrets hangs above the room   all ethereal  gloom+doom

The Artist-Maker (it’s cool to call artists makers now +not

return their calls when they beseech you)  sits at a work table

like a demented Goddess churning out people to fill cities  beaches

+graves    Today back in the real world they discovered a mass grave

in Iraq  with all the men of the village buried in it  (from 12 -56)

What of the women +girls?    More wives for the emir  of course

It seems relatively easy these days to build armies of women slaves

We hope against hope there are not copycat splinter groups   While

on boats+planes bound for the West   the radicalized look homeward

with misty eyes  & wolflike grins

__

Inspired by:

GHOST

A  GHOST  OF  A  DIFFERENT   COLOUR

Getting ready to celebrate  Dia de Muertos  here in

the West   Loads of fake bones & skeletal clones  +white

ghosts  (can we be a little more inclusive with our

horror paraphenalia please?)  

Do white people think that all ghosts are white? Casper was

white  +a generation of cartoon loving children became white

ghost lovers   Somewhat along these lines  Oprah opined to

the cast of FRIENDS:  I think y’all need to get a black friend

And though I am a member of an invisible minority (my nose may

give me away in certain circles)  I suspect that my ghostly avatar is

is Jew   through+through

__

GOD

WELL  I  CAME  UPON  A  CHILD  OF  GOD

curated samitches

curated kids

curated beau

Faux pond beside which I write this poem

In my gentrified hood  I have to look hard for signs

of putrifacto  (this a.m. a rotting bat   holy batshit!)

The alchemists spun straw into gold  maybe my local

hipsters can transmute boredom into curated passion

They sit in our parks in hoards at mid-day  Are they all

.com millionaires or just millennials without jobs?  In the

40’s they’d have been in foxholes  warplanes  +graveyards

Today there’s nothing grave about my 20 somethings  They

are super-beautiful  Dustypink cheeks meet overgrown beards

They are so hip it hurts   in places where  I used to be hip

In flowerchild places   In Quaalude bacchanalia places

When Zimmerman plugged-in  reverb woke up an old beast

birthing the Judas’  who crucified their King    Were those

simpler times?  Or just as sublime as the 50’s  when folks were

fried for selling atomic secrets  to Russian spies

Ethel Rosenberg’s brother recently died  He confessed that he’d

lied    Sent his sister to the chair to protect his wife    CAN YOU

BLAME ME?   he cried

The great mythos of our century  is that we are LIBERATED

Except that all of the LIBS   have just made us slaves to curated

ideologies  This week two 16 yr. old girls have embraced the term

feminism  They are: Girls Who Code  +they have invented a video

game: Tampon Run   Soon they will be on park benches  their faux

hippie skirts  swinging in curated breezes

__

Their voices thin+high+meaningless+at the same time profoundly

wild+sad   Life was created in the valleys  it blew up onto the hills

on the old terrors  the old lusts  the old despairs    That’s why you

must Wake Up  (William Faulkner As I Lay Dying 1930)

MID FALL   2014

FACE

PLEASE  REPATRIATE  RENEE ZELWEGER’S  FACE

I want to plumb  with dreamy morbid ardour   the

tentative   half finished  half born  thing   that is

middle stone age    fear loss vanity serenity chaos

wisdom defiance freedom self-loathing  +botch

O this longsinewydance through claustrophobic

corridors   of memory

Who is choreographing this show?  Hope the camera

man adds a touch of glow to our peaked pallor  now that

we are 1/2 way there    Where?     Is death life’s final

scorekeeper?  Or is life  death’s funhouse?  What’s the

frequency Kenneth?   What’s the score?

When the glorious Mrs. Reaper appears  will she be your

grandmother’s doppelgänger?  Before she spirits you through

the eye of the needle  she will want to know: Who must you

say good-bye to  before you go?   And your entire life will pass

before you    a la Ebenezer Scrooge

__

A final sense of being right out in the cold, unkissed.

My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.

John Berryman  A Stimulant For An Old Beast  1959

Mid Fall  2014