songanddancegirl

MAGIC

DO   YOU  BELIEVE     IN  MAGIC?

Chocolate mess on ruby ring   hand sticky

Scent of rotting sweetness   Girl of 13 looks

like 36   Was she fresh faced at 7?   Now top

knot displays 6 inch roots  Face pinched with

transcendence gone wrong

She looks more like a beat up doll  than a human

girl    Wait!    those are stitches under her mouth

not  stainsofdisdain  And look  one foot is raggedy

full of holes   Even my beatnik doll  circa ’63  had

more joie de vivre

But she has her dog   flat & woollen at her feet

Is he made of socks?  His tail moves ever so slightly

in would-be merriment   It’s as though he knows

that glaring is   the new compassion

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SPRING  2014

DUST

ANOTHER  ONE  BITES  THE    DUST

I have voles in my backyard   I find them drowning

in the bucket   with bulging eyes and wistful smiles

Backstroking their way to Paradise   They will be the

first to enter the gates  when the trumpets blow and

the meek in droves  arrive home     Swing low

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EARLY  SPRING  2014 

ETERNAL

ETERNAL   RETURN

We live in a world where 100 teenaged girls were

kidnapped from their school  in a copycat crime

Lagos Nigeria  late last night   And here at home in

Calgary  a gentle would-be law student rampaged at

a party with a knife    Also a copycat crime

In these first days of Spring we’re focusing on

renewal  but some darkness has moved in from

the edges   The gentle boy tweeted: the world needs

a hero    He also spoke of  dread & the fugitive mind

quoting the metal band  Megadeath

It’s likely that Yeats was right   The rough beast on slow

thighs has arrived  and arrived     and arrived

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EARLY SPRING  2014

FOOL

APRILL        YOU  FOOL

Wicked wind snaking up my back

Ides of March long gone   What can

be wrong  in the Heavens?  Or is April

the cruellest of months?  Hitler born on  20th

Passover plagues:  frogs locusts blood of 1st born sons

A comprehensive study funded by Bill & Melinda Gates

found: In April people brought up with fortunes of $25 million

or more  are dissatisfied with life   prone to depression   deep

anxieties about family  love   & work   (a.k.a. affluenza)

If you have ever wished you were an eagle  or a prairie vole

you will wish it more in April   Most have just crawled out

of snotty influenza   And don’t forget  you must discover

light again   and disappointment

But today you ride high citydweller  for the giant flies who

attacked you yesterday (18C)  are lying dead in gutters   And your

pink Springfling lipstick tastes of strawberries     & resurrection

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FALSE SPRING   2014

ATHENA

ATHENA     IN DYSTOPIA

Crusty bookseller Edwina places my

slim volume  next to Bukowski  nearing

ee cummings!

On the way to  BOOKMOBILE   he

would share his dreams    A cowboy

ideology   the farm  horses  grasslands

Ever planning the Great Escape from

suburban netherworld

Flat cement parking lot  beat up trailer

near  Overbrook  (street names decidedly  Utopian)

Cigarette smoke curling out of window

Green Impala   Cowgirl dismounts

thumbs crooked in pockets   Enters temple

of the  BOOK 

Neat rows coloured spines  slight smell of

mould   Looking for a crack in the universe

to crawl through   Now down the stairs   Impala

growls   Cowboy watches me carefully   flicks butt

Black poodle stirs      Giddy-up

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SPRING 2014    for the Horseman  Lee Atkins  1921 – 1989

RELIVE IT

YOU  WILL  HAVE  TO    RELIVE  IT

Has psychiatry medicalized  human suffering?

In his  Book Of Woe  Gary Greenberg has stirred

up a ruckus  He says: The new *DSM V  is a charade

of non-existent mental disorders   Akin to the 1st DSM

of 1952: Homosexuality is a sociopathic personality

disorder   Causing untold suffering & persecution

So much for the Hippocratic Oath

Will there be a DSM in the afterlife?  Even King Tut

(who was run over by a chariot & charred beyond

recognition when his embalming went wrong)  was

rehabilitated   Incest with his sister became: Dynastic

Inter-breeding   How many times must we crucify

Christ  before  Resurrection  finds itself in the next DSM?

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*Diagnostic & Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders

SPRING  2014

ITALIAN MEN

BEWARE  OF  ITALIAN  MEN   AT   THE  RCM

When you write at the Royal Conservatory of Music

you rub shoulders with  future flautists   Men with rich

baritones   Today an opera singer so beautiful  my inner

Aida wept

Statuesque  Italian  Loads of black hair  White aviators

Almond skin   Oh there he goes!   With a sneer so severe

my fantasy explodes   all over the bloke beside me

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SPRING  2014

SERVICE

OUT  OF   SERVICE

Elevator dreams   Modern Jacob’s Ladder?

Elevator operator God-like  Cables exposed

Swings wildly   does not stop on your floor

May not stop at all   May crash through glass

ceiling   or plummet into underworld

Last night we recognized each other  he smiled

a little too seductively   But I checked the cables

through the gap  & climbed aboard    He cannot

frighten me anymore   This mortal coil not his to

snap    Flamboyant and greasy haired   like husband #4

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SUMMER  2013

MAN

MAN  O’  THE  LAND

His 1st degree is in trees   His 2nd in people

treehuggingbooklovingpeopleperson

There is more to him than meets the eye

Yesterday he carved a perfect square out of

his hair  just before a meeting   He looked as

forlorn as our bully  before his urethra surgery

Now a bald square on paw  post I.V.

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LATE  FALL  2013

F**K

F**K   THE   F**KING   F**KERS    F**K

                                                               Northrop Frye

It’s the kind of selfish when you’re sitting there

and you don’t know what to do   says the co-ed

She has been spewing 4 letter words brilliantly

as the very life-blood is sucked from my opus

Even Northrop Frye would be impressed with

the number of times she has used f**k in a     sentence

Her raven hair parted a fraction from the middle

she eyes me with disdain   She just walked to the

garbage bin and spat   whereupon a hive of late Fall

wasps   put an end to her ecstatic confessions

Beside me a young man reads Confucius

but his look screams Trotsky   He says:   It all  turns  on IF

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LATE FALL  2013