songanddancegirl

SUN RA

WHEN CHARLIE MINGUS SLIPPED SUN RA  THE ANSWER

Vatican releases molestation figures 3,400

credible cases since 2004   To sleep perchance

to control your dreams   zap brain with gamma

waves during REM sleep  (Goethe U Frankfurt)

Only 250 Blue whales left on the planet

A final frontier of debauchery   cheri?

Can we now return to the Mothership please?

Only if your heart weighs more than a feather

& your soul more than a flea   By learning how

to control your dreams   you may reduce the

emotional impact of life as we know it  & there

is hope that you may recover   though the Oracle

will be in a perma-state of PTSD

No more premonitions  No more déjà vu   Remember

when it was impossible not to be alive?  Now gradually you

will fall prey to: Scapadoobopbopaphobia   (*fear of freestyle Jazz)

A lamentable state  for which there is no known cure

__

Le Sony’r Ra   1914-1993

SPRING 2014

SCAR JO

HER

She searches the urban streets

& country roads around Glasgow

She is the man-eater  An alienated

alien  landed in the  *(spoiler alert)

nude body of:   Scarlett Johansson

Much has been made of her eyes

(aren’t they always a touch dead?)

Less about her ears tongue fingers

nose breasts   Though much of the

western world longs to catch a glimpse

White Swedish orbs  pneumatic like

Lenina’s in the Brave New World

Scarlett now impregnated  always

impenetrable  I will never reveal the

father’s identity  or the precise location

of my G Spot

__

Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month

we flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete

physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects

of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello,

without any of the inconvenience.

Brave New World   Aldous Huxley

SPRING  2014

ANSWER

THE  ANSWER  IS     BLOWING

You couldn’t find a normal girl if you fell

over one   I said     Later in the conversation

he repeated this sentence verbatim   We were

on the same page   He wasn’t hurt   more bemused

Knowing too  that as his oldest friend my words have

traction   gravitas    fidelity

I am sitting by a fountain watching a couple of ducks

one with an emerald neck & orange feet   the other quite

ordinary   They kind of flop into the fountain   It’s not a

dive   & it’s not a jump   It’s almost unintentional    One

moment looking at the water   the next  in the water

So are we puppets of some other force that is driving us?

Or do we drive ourselves?   My friend would say: You make

plans  & the Puppet Master  laughs    He  who always ends up

with fire-eating  Go Go dancers   slim androgynes     This makes

him pretty interesting   But to this he responds: If I am so interesting    

what am I doing here?

This is understandable    His Bedouin parents circumnavigated

the Gobi until he was 9   then made a bee-line  for civilization

He knows better than most  that normal festers   & that the

Puppet Master is in fact one : Robert Zimmerman

A freak gust just tossed my statistics on pedophile priests into

the fountain where they will float amidst the detritus of winter

for all eternity

__

Oh hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man 
called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
His words of truthful vengeance
They could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more

(David Bowie    Song For Bob Dylan)

SPRING   2014  
 

MOTHERS

MOTHER’S DAY CANCELLED    CHIBOK   NIGERIA

1^st day warm enough to brave my bench

Phantom children scream under trees

Camp resumes in 7 weeks   Soon they will

be gnashing their little teeth in every crevice

at U of T   1 boy threatened to slit my throat

late last Summer   as I cobbled words on this

very bench

At this moment my main concern is that the

world pitch in to free the girls kidnapped en

masse in Nigeria   The same way they did for

the missing plane   Couldn’t the ships & choppers

be loaned?   How about a day or 2 for the missing

girls?   12-18

Head terrorist laughed giddily: I will sell them as

slaves   Infidel women must be sold as slaves or

married off  even if 9    Is there a connection between

the small boy wielding a knife   & the growing violence

seeping into the cracks?    Our Canada was home to

a mass stabbing   Graduation party   Calgary   2014

In Nigeria President Goodluck’s wife  Patience  had a

woman arrested for impersonating a mother of the missing

girls   The Mum’s were busy so they sent an envoy    Patience

was slighted   In the mean-time plaintive sounds of girlsong

can be heard  as the mother’s approach   in restless dreams

__

SPRING 2014

QUOTIDIAN

THE  RE-INVENTION  OF    LIFE

harrowing  beautiful  vital  intense  daring

rare   6 of 117 adjectives used to describe

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s  books   In Norway

he is such a sensation  there are days when

discussing him is forbidden

After reading him   Ian Brown wrote:  (April 26 2014 Globe&Mail)

Childhood is the last time we live entirely

and happily within our inner selves   It seems

that Karl depressed the shit out of Ian   Or was

Ian already depressed?  Was Karl?

I have read short tracts   I will not read the thousands

of pages   Apparently 573 chronicle the banality of

marital domesticity   & a bowel movement or 2

What I will do:

* sit in front of a tree planted in ’63  & remember when it was a twig

* conjure the cornstalks that grew & grew  10ft. tall  a pall over suburbia

* remember that the Magnolias will be bare in 2 weeks time

* ditto the Chinese Cherry trees (Trinity Bellwoods Park  &Robards Library)

For chrissakes  choose any ditch   & count the objécts found in it

Is the problem really that we replaced an all knowing God with

information?  That there is no mystery?

None of this is true modern citydweller   Do not buy into the propaganda

of depressed intellectuals   Go plant some corn  ride a horse  pee in a field

Don’t let the purveyors of glum ruin your un-lived life   Mostly don’t feel

like a failure when you cannot conjure the lightening of  the  first-time

That’s what first times were invented for   Ian & Karl

I implore you gentle reader:

lick a pole in January

work on your night moves

suck on a chili-dog

marry a Bedouin

__

* Dazed quail. 

**shortest sentence in The Alexandria Quartet   L. Durrell 1958   3,200 pages

SPRING   2014

ANTS

ROLL  IN  THE  GRASS    GET  ANTS  IN  YOUR  PANTS

Said Aunt May Gasparini   She took us to the Nutcracker

with her daughter René   & let us choose anything from

the Eaton’s catalogue    I chose a beatnik doll with khol

smudged eyes & black tights   My brother requested Pebbles

He later developed an unnatural affection  for Frank Zappa

May died young   just after she & Remo divorced    Our families

lost touch   But the back-split ranch house  filled with fieldstone

& terrazzo   remains a  psychic-shrine to 60’s cool     Hip parent’s   

laughter   cigarette smoke    Now somewhere back in  the Gatineau    

May of the sly smile   & red hair

__

SPRING    2014

TEXAS TEA

THE  BEVERLY  HILLBILLIES

We lived next door to a family of 4

The Churlies    The mother had dimples

everywhere   in kitten heels by 8 a.m.

The dog was hit by the Canada Post truck

My father predicted this stroke of bad luck

The daughters were look-alikes  & prone to

tears   One day the father  a beefy&arrogant

man  went down on one knee  in front of me

He said:  I wish my daughters would read a book

It seemed too late  the dye was cast   It would be

swimming pools & movie stars for the Churlie girls

In their dreams  mostly   in their dreams

__

Granny: Elly May! Don’t spit from a moving vehicle.

Wait till it’s stopped. 

(Beverly Hillbillies 1962-1971)

SPRING  2014

HANDYMAN

THE  HANDYMAN     CAN

I spent my Tuesday with 2 young

handymen  Tony was thick  with

dimples  & a cherubic smile   Grant

a simple man   was clumsy  yet honest    (I’ll throw in the gasket Miss)

It turns out that Tony loves Mozart

& Grant the Bible   He spoke in parables:

It’s like cheating on your golf swing   You

only cheat yourself

At the end of the day we were $877 in the red

Grant left whistling a tune  & Tony headed off

to bed his wife with matching dimples   *(all true)

At 4 a.m. I was wide awake   It is highly likely

we overpaid    I heard Amadeus cackle  & saw

Ben Hogan shake his head   Suddenly a bright sign

flashed at the foot of our bed   Suckers  Suckers

it seemingly read

__

Hey girls, gather round, listen to what I’m putting down.
Hey babe, I’m your handy man.
I’m not the kind to use a pencil or rule, I’m handy with love and I’m no fool.

James Taylor  1977 

SPRING  2014

GOODLUCK

TODAY  IS  THE  1st  DAY  OF  THE  REST  OF  YOUR  LIFE

PRESIDENT  GOODLUCK  JONATHAN

First they said 100   then 200   then 286 schoolgirls

abducted by terrorists in Nigeria   The military has

remained inexplicably absent    How can President

GOODLUCK  be trusted?

The hostages are being used as: shields in battle  cooks

& sex slaves  some were sold as brides for $13 a piece

On Saturday at a book signing event I met a young woman

who leaves this Spring for Congo   where she will adopt

runaway child soldiers:   We’ll take as many as we can

They careen toward one another   the lost children  & the would-be

mother   Like the chicks of cuckoos she will raise the young soldiers

as her own   They will never know their parents     Many will lose

their children to the terror-machine    in double-orphanings

This circle now   routine

In Rwanda alone  100,000 children were  displaced    in the genocide

(100 days of genocide 1994)     On Tuesday GOODLUCK’S    Minister

of Defence said:  All but 8 girls have been freed by security forces    

He retracted this statement on Thursday

Out in the Sambisa Forest  the girls lie     Why couldn’t Canada or the U.N.

send a cargo plane  along with our lone young would-be mother   to drop

blankets   food   & ladders?    Then GOODLUCK would be a hero  instead

of just a fool

__

Angry parents & all able bodied men from the schoolgirl’s town

are taking to the forest   Some have swarmed the tribal chief’s

home   other’s are en-route to GOODLUCK’S

SPRING  2014

SLEEP

TO  SLEEP    PERCHANCE

At the 3.5 hr. mark the BELL  (310-BELL)

woman assures me that:  from our end 

there is no problem   Except that from

mine   there are many    I could have a

a short labour  in the time this is taking

Martin Scorsese may call to option my

book     & James Franco for coffee next

Tuesday    So I beg of you Anya at BELL:

re-instate my bleeping beep   bitch  

When I think of all the broken hearts I have

ministered to   who knows  maybe Anya herself

is in the throes    But for her I have so little

compassion   The modern machine  has weakened

my moral fibres

Today I asked a handsome young man to join me for

scotch & cigarettes   Did you know that the    10 Commandments

are suggestions   and  Mono-gamy  a social construct?

I learned all of this at U of T  during my undergraduate

degree

Where a bug-eyed Don propositioned me  in 1st yr. Poly-Sci

His Datsun 240Z  a pasty yellow   Years later I saw him on tv

in the little square beside the weather    Middle aged & spent

kicked out of our Government   he opined:  The insomniacs

best defence is  sleep   

With this  my squinty eyes smiled  & my pinched little face

broke into a grin    Gary Gary    you brilliant ex-politician

re-instate my beep    light my  fire!

__

SPRING   2014