songanddancegirl

GOOD NIGHT

GOOD  NIGHT      MARY  ELLEN

Ralph Waite   Pa on the Waltons  died

on Tuesday   He was 85   My father Lee

died 23 yrs. ago   He was 68    I thought

they would live forever

It is said that Ralph died at mid-day in

Palm Springs    Allan Mills  his manager

was  taken aback   Ralph had been in good

health

Both Ralph & Lee had Paul Newman eyes

Handsome  not entirely gentle men   Silent

types   with rivers of regret around the edges

The actress who played Erin Walton said:

He was like a real father to me   Goodnight

Daddy     I love you   

A gentle family drama  set in the Blue Ridge

Mountains   through the Depression & WW II

Inextricably entwined with mine

Bleak suburban playground   nouveau riche

& holocaust survivors    Life on a lush ravine

Ralph was our spiritual  father  back in the 70’s

He was an ordained minister  with a slow smile

that belied his battle with the bottle

When he said  Good night Mary Ellen  you could

almost taste your perfect future  apron  sensible shoes

family of  5       Those were simpler times

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Winter 2014     Good night Pa   Goodnight John-boy   Good night Blackie

EVIL

SEE     NO  EVIL

Gravity: 2 astronauts left dangling

in the cold ether  Nothing to cling to

but each other   Sounds a lot like this

real winter    & life itself ?

Space is called  the final frontier   but

that seems a more apt description of life   down here

Where for example heroin use has tripled

in Vermont  (Vermont!)   Headline’s scream:

There is a heroin crisis in the U.S.

In Space tears float   on Earth they gather

forming salty tracks    No one thought to ask:

Why are all of these Americans using heroin?

Recently the Holy See  was criticized by the U.N.

for child sexual abuse  & opposition to: contraception

homosexuality   & abortion in child rape + incest cases

This would appear to be another  final frontier

It is also true that 1 in 3 high school students:

are anxious all of the time   can no longer sleep

& often feel like crying inexplicably      

Soon gravity too   will be obsolete

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*(in California alone there are at least

five Re-habs costing $45,000/month)

Winter  2014

CIGARETTE

CIGARETTE  SELLERS  OF   3 CROSSES SQUARE

Warsaw ghetto 1940   Orphaned Jewish

children sleep on streets & in cemeteries

hiding their identities

Easier for Ignac Bloomberg   sandy hair

blue eyes   Not so for darklings  hearded

onto trains

The boys had names like:  Conky  Hoppy 

Toothy  Frenchy    SS Officer fell for Frenchy

First an advantage  Later disappeared into Gestapo

headquarters

What do you think they did with Frenchy?

You cannot conjure anything so depraved

Or maybe you can   They kept him in a cell

where Dr. Mengele visited daily  for tissue samples

Ignac survived through what his son later called:

balancing extreme fear with extreme hubris   In 1947

Canada took 1000 children   Ig was one of 3 cigarette

sellers from Warsaw who  made it out

Can you hear the ghostly trains crisscrossing Europe?

Night skies blood-red   Carrion cars forge ahead

One loaded with the near-exterminated

Your Aunties & cousins   my father said   We tried to

get them out   but it was too late    By then Canada

had decided  none was too many

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Winter  2014    for Frenchy

SELF-PROMOTION

SHAMELESS    SELF-PROMOTION

I am a bit conflicted  about my upcoming

Word Event   You see I peak between 10 &

11 a.m.   It starts at 1 p.m.   long after I am

pumping out juicy marketing ideas:   cookies! hatpins! bookmarks! 

Hi-wattage smile   Unearth family charisma

often illusive & indolent   At least said  Event  

is on a Friday   When at sunset a second-soul

will alight   to help me fight despair   

Today it is well past 3  and I sit in a library  19th C

Windows onto a gorgeous courtyard  entombed in

ice   Fountain wears a shroud of white    Water barely

visible   Icy ejaculation will burst forth  come Spring

I sit beside rows of books in the  Canadian Poetry Room

The Gay Grey Moose

Distinctly Narcissistic

Foreplay

The Pioneer Woman

It is difficult to be pithy with the weight of our

word-history  all around me  From Cohen to Carson

Two poets who I am sure never coaxed readers with

promises of  bon bons  bijoux  and gift cards from

Come As You Are

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Winter  2014

GARBAGE

SEX  &  GARBAGE

Some say that my perfume smells

like cigarettes & garbage   It’s called

Back To Black  Aphrodisiac  It’s french

& the nose is the Hennessy heir

Better than piss & vinegar?

Who says garbage isn’t sexy?  rotting roses

blue cheese bits  blood  cinnamon  & chocolate

A vampire’s paradise

I will continue to hold my head up

high   And though you may slink away

I am brand new & garbage redolent

Ready to face the day

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Winter  2014

KNEES

ON  YOUR  KNEES       MUSE

The new it-girl of British Poetry  studied

at Leeds  & Goldsmiths College   She’s an

up & comer   I have found many references

to her boyfriend’s  ball-sac  in her new book

Yet does this encourage me to: Go for broke     No  Not really

My hero of poetry  namely:  Charles Bukowski

used words like: piss  vomit  whore    & a whole

lot more     He didn’t rhyme much either

Charles was beaten to a Pulp  (name of his 26th book)

daily   by his demented German father   His adult face

pitted   His body scarred for life    A raging alcoholic   & a

Post Man  (name of his 33rd book)   Charles delivered the

mail until half insane   for 12 yrs. in L.A.

He finally found a benefactor  & moved out of vomitous

basements  to a nice house in the burbs   Charles could be

drunk on stage   kick his wife   but he was Dark Knight for life

A defiled God of letters

So it is hard to imagine that  ball-sac  is all that stands between

me   & it-girl infamy     Yesterday a florid man said to me: 

If  you want to make brave music you gotta serve somebody

Give me 45% of your profit  & I will give you a table from which

to shill your poetry  

At this point  ball-sac  is looking like it may have legs

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Winter  2014

KASSAD

KASSAD     KADDAB*

A poet is a liar   Twisting tales to

fit the storyline  (not to mention what

we do with statistics)  Pulling words from

his song   to finish mine    Dressing up the

sunshine: light splashed  light flowed  light kissed

Making this dun-colured day  riotous gunmetal grey

Promising bliss  where there is none to follow   The

tortoise beetle wears a fecal shield   to protect it from

its enemies    No protection for the minstrel who steals

your best ideas

The poet goads you into believing that it might not be

such a bad thing after all     waiting     for the world to end

Unwind the delicate shroud   dig that hole deeper!  Fear not

You have only borrowed the dust  it was never yours for keeping

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Winter  2014  *Three Small Parables For My Poet Friends  Stanley Kunitz  1985

TROLL

THAT  ODIOUS  TROLL    TECHNOLOGY

Surely I have said this before:

Everything is broken

My telephone is answered by the FAX

but only when certain people call   Giving new

meaning to:  Ghost in the machine

My techno-devices are sentient beings   And as

much as I try  I can’t help but take their slights    personally

Recently Pope Francis bestowed his blessing on

the Internet:  This is something truly good   A gift

from God    Later he tempered his approval

This week in a Twitter Q&A  Olympic gymnast

Beth Tweedle was asked: On a scale of 1-10 how

pig ugly would you class yourself?   The poser

of this question  enjoyed his infamy  He tweeted:

I was trending for 2 days!!   

Social media may just be the Millennial curse

along with  reality tv  infamy posing as fame

& naming babies North   

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Dead of Winter  2014

ANYTHING

ANYTHING  WORTH    HAVING

The door barely shuts   there is no working   lock

Both front & back entrances   This is not a SAFE

house       & if this were not a recurring dream

locksmiths would have been called  years ago

For $378.85 they would provide  a money back

guarantee:  This family can sleep peacefully  in 

lockdown   in the safe sepulchre of  suburban nights

Tomorrow is another day   to combat grief    & peddle

guilt  which now sells for $26.17/100grams   Nothing

comes cheap   Why the price of desire has tripled since

December 2013    And no night is longer than the night on   repeat

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Dead of  Winter  2014

JOE

I  AM  JOE’S    HEART

On August 16, 1989  at 3:16  Lee reversed

his deal  with  Time   His heart stopped

after years of threatening    In grade 6 he

wrote my speech for the Public Speaking

Contest   I won & went to the finals  where   I lost

Hi  I am Joe’s heart   Joe’s heart is healthy

& deep red   It has chambers   & ventricles  

It is a fine specimen   A pump for all time

Lee’s heart didn’t work nearly as well   Corroded

by anger  angina    His father’s was in worse shape

Without warning it stopped at 62    Who really knows

what mine is doing in there    Sometimes it flutters like   a bird in the throes

Other times   when kicked   it has been known to stop

for a millisecond or 2     This happened during the recital of    I Am Joe’s Heart  

People thought I was terrified of public-speaking

No one suspected an NDE*

Hi   I am Joe’s heart  I have a left ventricle & a right  

I am your pump    Be kind to me

Girl falls to her knees      Fade to black

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Winter  2014     *Near Death Experience