songanddancegirl

BLITZEN

COME  DONDER    COME  BLITZEN

So who is the fatcat jazzman of them all?

King Louis!   of the gravely voice  black eyes

and a grin that would lift up  even the most soul-

less  of sinners   Most certainly slipped the answer

back in the Vieux Carré   when the cornet was his

ticket out of the Home for Coloured Waifs

There was never a face so full of grace + transcendence

O fickle is fame  pushed old Louis aside  when those badass

beboppers  were on the ascendance    Dash Away

Dash Away      King Louis A

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*if Louis’:  T’was The Night Before Christmas does not bring a tear

to your eye & smile to your lip   you never did have a soul worth saving

Summertime   2014     for Satch  a dog the colour of Louis’ lips

WORDS

WORDS    FLAIL    FAIL

propelling words down my arm into

hand & fingers   tricking brain   no i

will not write today   pick up pen  mid

swig   transcribe  copy   invent?

doesn’t pay the rent  last bookevent sold   24copies

6372+ words    dollars have not yet flowed in this

direction from the BIG BOXY BOOK STORE

that’s what you get for making your pact

mercenary poet  too addicted to filthy lucre

to stay with the indies on an orange crate?   while

the literati congregate at awards ceremonies

& 2 poets named anne vie for the $75,000 prize

i draw your attention to the slowness of writing

to those excruciating coagulations  of words

especially when there are no words to describe

your subject matter     only growls

today in my city  the lower 1/2 of an infant was

found in a park  the morning paper announced:

it is not a homicide at this point     would that i

were a painter  or sculptor  & my job would be done

with an economy of strokes   + the blow of a chisel

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Summer   2014

COUNTRY ROADS

TAKE  ME  HOME    COUNTRY  ROADS

Go away rare butterfly   The construction Gods

have conspired to destroy our holiday   & I have

just been bitten by a deerfly   Left ankle bleeding

Chair now soaked after freak-rain   Turquoise tankini

damp + churlish against city-white skin   Rash setting in

Would that it were Tequila dripping from my chin instead of

homemade jam left on our bedside table at     The Little Inn  

Now we lumber down mainstreet lurching on cobblestones

& face a 45 minute wait for beer-battered goat    A pox on Mr.

Innkeeper  whose ratty little dog will soon begin to bark    You

can take your country jams   & shove them into a dark crevasse

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Summer   2011

PEEVISH

PEEVISH POET   BLUES

Fine is the girl with a dapper cut & cobalt blue hair

sitting cross-legged over there   She looks like a saint

eyes cast heavenward breasts dangling perilously   She

is smoking & speaking in tongues   I wonder if she will

allow me to linger & stare?   Or stomp over & drag me

into the black fountain  at The Monk School of Global Affairs

Come baptize the peevish-poet if you dare   She doesn’t need to

be in a forest to get lost in one   Now the microscopic redspiders

close in   & the white skeleton bugs begin to bite ankles   on a hot

+ hellish day  in the city

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*trees produce substances which boost the human immune system

& multiply dopamine levels 10fold   The absence of trees in one’s life

may lead  to severe anomie   & to skies filled with dead stars

Summer Solstice  Stonehenge   2014

DO

THOSE  WHO  CAN    DO

I want to go home but there is $2.25 left

on my meter  I should be writing my opus

making something of myself   No doubt I will

soon be shat-upon by a pigeon   As the world

marches by I listen to the beat of my own drummer:

loser   bannnnnnaa  poseur  baaaammmmmm!

Sometimes writing feels like the shit-abyss*

Drum roll please   my meter has finally expired

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Late  Summer  2011    *Jim Lahey   Trailer Park Boys

MAN

MAN  FACING  EAST  AT  THE  MUNK  SCHOOL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS

Do I attract the mentally unstable  or do they attract me?  A fairly normal

looking man has just stepped into the water sculpture in the courtyard where

I write   His pants are rolled to the knee  his hands in prayer pose  At least he has

not begun to pee  Which wouldn’t surprise me  in the least   Now he is creeping ever

closer  to me   As long as his penis remains unseen  I will take a position of:  Don’t ask

Don’t tell    Otherwise I will scream bloody murder   Perhaps this is a message of sorts

Give up the ghost   Return to your day job    Make the world a better place

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Late Summer  2011

YOUTH

YOUTH  IN    ASIA

Today in the Greeting Card aisle a man

stopped me:  Excuse me miss  do they have 

cards for 59 yr. olds?  With this  I ran stumbling

into:   Seasonal    Stomach     Pain      Longing for

the bone-chilling silence of   -19

Perhaps it is time to give up my  obsessional knots:

Winter   Spring   Hipsters   Death   Suffering   Marriage

The tide may be turning to more quotidian matters  blather:

obnoxious+obtuse citydwellers (a profusion currently)

people with largish heads who sit in front of you at concerts+men

in stinky jackets in the next row   old fishermen with sublime tongues

&stories to tell   ditto the profusion of  girls with pneumatic breasts

in headsets  on Philosophers Walk   U of  T   

So come along gentle reader   the poems of 2015 promise to be quite

empty of meaning   but ultimately freeing  on so many levels  + a promise

to refund your time for reading the ones that are all    about me

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SPRING  2014

PILOTS

PILOTS  OF    MYSTERIOUS  VESSELS

The story of a body is interior   What lurks inside

all of that blood   inside all of that darkness? There

is a microscopic-pin near the tip of your nose   Go

ahead pull it   You can take this body  OFF    But no

one thought to tell you that   Now you know  the secret

So will you?  Don’t you want to meet the alien who resides

inside?  Maybe you already have?  It has the voice that said:

There is no such thing as normal    Go ahead  marry him

Take Scar Jo’s alien in: Under the Skin  brutally raped until

the bodybreaks    Ape-man immolates the she-devil   but maybe

just another crucifixion?

While there on the shore  the aliens oblivious to a dying human baby

search for more  bodies  to harvest   Reminiscent of the human-nazis

who threw babies up in the air   & caught them on bayonets    Who is

piloting this ship?

What separates the alien from  the truly human?  The soul under the skin?

We have about as much evidence of this  as the pin near the tip of your

nose    Further studies will have to be conducted  & measurements taken

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SPRING  2014

RITES

THE  LAST  RITES  OF     SPRING

Scientists have found evidence of a

hypothetical fish:   Metaspriggina

Fossilized 505 million yrs. ago

This fish is the missing piece of the

puzzle   The transformation of plankton 

slurpers  into predators  with jaws

Who foresaw that the humanpuzzle

would include a morph from arrowheads to

assault rifles?  (coined by Adolf Hitler)

Nobody expected to find such an animal

said Simon Conway Morris (U of Cambridge)

speaking of the fish    Evolving a jaw is just one

of the really great breakthroughs in the history   of life  

So has the human conscience grown hypothetical?

Or just turned deeply pathological    How about the

evolution of the M-16    or the virginity tests of the

wretched Arab Spring?   Yesterday in Tahrir Square

a  mob-rape took place & produced a shocking YOUTUBE

Reports of badnews are censored in Egypt: Well they are happy

The people are having fun  (female tv host  State Media)

While here in Canada another Spring pageant is underway

High school graduation  & PROM    Smells like purity    Are they

even aware of their liberties?  Or perhaps lulled into complacency

by:  hypothetical futures   hypothetical Peace  on  hypothetical Earth

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Dinosauria, We

born into this  dying because of this  fooled by this  used by this  pissed on by this

made crazy and sick by this  made violent  made inhuman by this   the heart is

blackened  the fingers reach for the throat  the gun  the knife  the bomb  the fingers

reach toward an unresponsive  god   we are born into this sorrowful deadliness  

castrated  debauched  disinherited

Charles Bukowski  1992

SPRING  2014

WWCBS

WHAT  WOULD   CHARLES BUKOWSKI    SAY?

She is giggling though the sound is grating  even to

his ears   He sits close & strokes a thigh  Holy shit   batman

this is really good!  she squeals   apropos of nothing

He has a closely cropped goatee   looks like a hipster

Mephistopheles  This morning 666  appeared in his latte

But his hopes to get lucky  fade with each  squeeeeeeel

To the lighthouse!  she chants in a Woolf-ian rant

as he moves in for the kill   stroking  stoking  glamouring

I glance away in disgust   What would  Charles Bukowski  say?

Now footsie is played  & wrestling begins   Holy shit I love owls!    

Should I puke now    or just run ’em over with my car?

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I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they aren’t around.  

Charles Bukowski

SPRING   2014