songanddancegirl

BLUE PERIOD

PROLONGED   BLUE PERIOD

People emerging from the theatre giving each other

bear hugs   rubbing of backs ad nauseam   One guy

being pecked on the cheek repeatedly   Who the hell

is he?   (diminutive androgyne)

Last night he showed up in a dream  The door had to be

locked + chained  only to open again + again   An unusually

small  womanlike painter  with a gravely voice said:

We must free ourselves from the titillating stew of schadenfreude

Write like no one is reading you   Easy-breezy advice from someone

who wields the brush   to she who slaves with the pen   It seems that

people everywhere are unloading  words of wisdom

Today a U of T scientist accosted me as I dredged words from the

nether-regions  He had the quintessential wild hair & skinny head

He gesticulated & spat    The gist of his message:

Try to have relations with Tibetan monks   A friend of a friend told him

that every time she made love with a monk  the hillside would burst into

flowers   He spoke too of time travel & 21^st century political tyranny   and

suggested that I not linearalize   too much  

And since it is near impossible to make shit like this up  you will simply

have to trust that it is not the blues or the psilocybin hijacking the Muse

Just a lot of people out there who should be saying something    saying nothing

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(The poet Allen Ginsberg and other Beats  used Psilocybin to their advantage

writing numerous poems which would shape the direction of 21st century

literature, under the influence.  While this post-beat poet gets her prose seeds

from careful observation of normal everyday speech at U of T.  To date it is 

unknown whether psychotropics are widely used by this captive audience.  

One may only assume.)

POST SCRIPT:  Allen Ginsberg  (snippets of  The Lion For Real   Paris 1958)

I came home and found a Lion in my living room

Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!

Called my Reichian analyst   I’m afraid any discussion

would have no value  He hung up   I ended up masturbating

in his Jeep  parked in the street  moaning Lion!

Summer 2014

ADAPTATION

COUNTERACTING  ADAPTATION  INCREASES  HAPPINESS

According to scholars  including Sonia Lyubomirsky (U of Cal. Riverside)

Humans adapt quickly to our circumstances  but that also means we are

easily bored and unhappy

Beware of Adaptation!  Cockroaches adapt  Bottom feeders & sharks

are good adaptors too   Among the most effective methods for increasing

happiness  is talking to friends about your coming travels (Leaf Van Boven

U of Colorado  Boulder)    This is the best they could come up with?

I implore you gentle reader: Always remember  nothing is that  funny  and

happiness is a drug developed by BIG PHARMA to make you think:   you are

can be   want to be   need to be   happy     Whereas real happiness is fleeting

illusive  ephemeral   FICTIONAL    much like life itself

Happiness is a mirage  Go ahead knock yourself out   run towards it     see what

happens   I know a woman who is getting married next Tuesday   as of  last Monday

she was sucking the fingers of a long time acquaintance   Adaptation is the last great

Mythos     Ditto happiness

Several years ago  a man in a tall fur hat  made eye contact with me through the glass

at a Starbucks  Next thing I knew  he was beside me:   You have the face of a writer  

With this he disappeared from my life   forever?   Perhaps it was a meet-your-maker-

moment   All I can say is that I have finally figured out how to be faithless   making

happiness redundant   Like the song says:   Ain’t nothing like the rill thing    baby

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*Wish you were on vacation right now? Don’t.  Taking a vacation won’t make you

happier.  And it may make you suffer even more.  

(Journal of Applied Research In Quality of Life  2010)

Summer   2014

JUNG

THANK GOD I’M JUNG    AND NOT A JUNGIAN

This week the light went ON at the end of the tunnel

Whereas in my last book it went OUT   * (pg.82)  

On Saturday I told a young doctor that I was at 1 on

the  Pessimism for Humanity Scale  until about 7 yrs.

ago  when miraculously I jumped to a 6    My husband

swooped in with a  scaling question   He said: So what

would it take to get you to 8?

Peace on Earth   the arrival of the Messiah (2nd coming for some)

& throttling the diner at the adjacent table (too funny  wise  +interesting)

Truthfully  the light began to flicker then  & as I flung the cold carpaccio

in his face  I shouted:

You have a shittylittlemind + a goddamned honking laugh

+ the scent about you is  Bottom the Ass   Fie Fie boring hipster

at Terroni

With this the young doctor & his ethicist lover  wondered about my paradigm

Well I’m: an angst-ridden Jew from the Pale  a Jungian  + a witch    and if

carpaccio-face doesn’t  shut his trap  I will  no longer be a pacifist   Not to put

too fine a point on it

__

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind  

the lawyer all the wickedness

the theologian all the stupidity      

Arthur Schopenhauer

Summer  2014

HBO

THE  LEFTOVERS

We all do disappear eventually   except not

en masse   unless in mass exterminations

Generally we are orphaned one-by-one    Some

look up & see stars   others flashlights    While

others still   see hunger   Everywhere   Soon tiny

mouths in the black sky will begin to  eat us

The other night at the Music Hall: greying crowd

emerging into the dark night (after spending much

of the concert peeing) looking around with starving

eyes at other 50 somethings stumbling into the light 

*(read between the eyes  their pasts are seeping through

the cracks)  While the dead leave us hungry  with mouths

full of questions

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Summer  2014

FREE?

FREE WILL   vs    DETERMINISM

We have free will   each of us   in the cage

constructed especially for us  by the   Puppet Master

The Puppet Master  a.k.a. :    *genes   *family history

*temperament/constitution  *age/culture/religion born into

*personal unconscious/collective unconscious   *un-lived life

of mother/father   * sins of the fathers/mothers  *certain types of death

*romantic love  *marriage

**(space below to add your own Puppet Master baggage)

*

*

*

Within these walls   wearing these chains  you have a few meagre choices

So  DO NOT SQUANDER THEM on tequila & sin    Better yet   DO

in order to drown the sound of the Puppet Master’s  belly laughs

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“Marrying means to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find an eel

amongst an assembly of snakes.” 

(Arthur Schopenhauer)

Summer  2014

CHILD

I CAME UPON A CHILD OF GOD

The heathen-children are back in our parks

first days free  now back in captivity   Sent by

adults who believe every waking minute should

be:  programed  supervised  teachable

RUN! I cry as the bearded man-counsellor tells

them it is raining   (boys+girls it’s raining)

RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!  mad wet poet

commands   Heathen-children scatter hiding behind

rocks + trees

Tonight they will erect this city’s  1^st stone circle  and

the powers-that-be can charge a dollar & a half just to

see it    Wait! bearded man-counsellor calling police

Mad damp poet giving out cupcakes   Wonders if it was

all the Joni Mitchell that turned her into a subversive

bitch    Naw more likely the Mingus

At 13 I drowned in the River Mingus flowing from our

living room stereo   The Mingus+moonlight embalming us all

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* (later Joni  would say that on the day Mingus died at 56

56 whales beached  and died   on the Mexican coast)

Summer 2014

HEY

HEAVEN HOLDS A PLACE FOR THOSE WHO PRAY HEY HEY HEY

The Hereros of Nambia wear the uniform of the enemies

they conquer  as a powerful symbol of their survival   Does

fear have a uniform?  divorce? cancer? grief? entropy? decay?

mortality?  Are they enemies ? Are they conquerable?  Or do

they have a stone cold hold    leaving us with no uniform  naked

wretched   free?  By the 1960’s the true rebels were either dead

or insane   So Rise Up  fight the good fight  the uniforms of  death

+insanity are a dime a dozen these days

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Jean-luc Verna    MOCCA  2014

Summer  2014

DISGRUNTLED

FREE TO BE   HOT & DISGRUNTLED

Voting today  nerves frayed  card with my name

+ where to vote  printed in minuscule letters   Mis-read

the missive   walked  in feelslike45celsius  to the wrong

place   There and then decided  forgetaboutit   not voting

Make the letters bigger for chrissake    Passed my bro

on the road  he said: Do you know what they would give to

vote in the Levant?   Now in front of 2nd voting station  little

old lady probably 90  passes by  same mistake as I   They can

kiss my ass  she cries       My sentiments exactly

__

Summer  2014

ANTI-HERO

O TO BE AN ANTI-HERO WHO STRIVES & FAILS

distort contort tear-apart re-assemble

This  the work of aging it seems    and Dr. Frankenstein

“once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my

outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which

I was capable of unfolding.”  (Mary Shelley’s  creature)

Only in dreams can you visit  your cavorting youth   Now Kevorkian

has designs on you   How is your re-assembly going?   A 90 yr. old

friend said:  It’s like waiting for a streetcar     Her re-assembly

progressing nicely  So far so good   Still walking  still thinking  (too much)

With dreams more vivid than life  which seems has increasing fog patches

Mist around the edges   We don’t know if our contortions are better than

the alternative  (millionaire snake-oil doctor overused this term) 

woman:  doctor  menopause is killing me

doctor:  it’s better than the alternative!

All of this at $75/15 minutes  but then he was a militant atheist+nihilist

who saw little purpose in human existence   (filthy bastard)   Wall to wall

women in his waiting room   waiting for the magic bullet  (rub it on your majora)

I dare you   On the way out he handed you his opus   full of quotes from great men

with his name on the cover   The alternative grew more appealing with each visit

Perhaps the re-assembly machine is moving me toward daffodils+sunshine   and

moving Dr. Snake-oil toward a purgatory where he has to write his own material

and wake up in: the alternative    as a menopausal woman

__

Summer  2014

BONES

STONES  BONES    & GENOMES

What makes human’s unique?   Preying

upon their own species?  Their pleasure

in getting inside each other’s brains  via:

bullets MRI’s romantic love   (what makes you tic Mr. Terrorist?)

Together this double specialty is said to be a

killer combo  equipping us to take over the Planet

Should you think world domination by one rogue species

a good thing I direct you to a deep reading of Mein Kampf

It is no secret that natural selection has sculpted

human genes  turning us into survival-machines

Except when the evolutionary toolkit produces PTSD

Oh the horror  the horror    croaked Colonel Kurtz

Why I have known 5 yr. olds who live in a trancelike

state   Torture  particularly in the early years  so difficult

to eradicate (ditto gestation in the womb of a tortured mother)

Sectioning the brains of 4 stillborn human fetuses has

proven this

Humans seem to drag around the remnants of

their incubating cocoon   Pre-natal environments

may adversely affect the rest of one’s life   Yet scientists

say that behaviour doesn’t leave fossils

We must hotly dispute this notion  see: bullet ridden bones

infant skeletons with multiple fractures  charred remains in mass

graves   Even a Neanderthal cousin turned up with an axe-split skull

And never forget that 42% of modern european DNA  is Neanderthal

Which brings us to the conclusion that  we must look at the characteristics

of each tree  before we may understand    the emerging forest

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Summer  2014