songanddancegirl

NICE

NICE  GUYS  ARE    FINISHED

She left her mother on the floor  hoping

she would snap out of the stroke   Her eyes

glazed with   Fear-of-God     Would there be

retribution?  Or just slow seeping of self-respect

Wolf at door of bad daughter’s  psychic fortress

Fighting  her absolutionist’s diatribe   she cried:

No I Did Not Do The Best I Could

Human’s have the ability to self-anesthetize in

situations of extreme trauma   One may leave the body

and hover near by    My child clients often exclaimed:

I didn’t feel a thing  Therapist

Humans who are missing this chip   eventually go mad

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I met my mother walkin’ down the Jericho road
Tears in her eyes and her head hung low
And she was walkin’ down the Jericho road

Steve Earle  Jericho Road   2007

Winter  2014

BLUE

PACIFIC  OCEAN    BLUE

Last night I walked all the way to

a Pacific beach  saw the water lapping

on the shore  lap suck  lap suck

Walked through the hinterlands with

a posse of girls behind me   birth-gunked

and new     A pilgrimage of sorts

An eccentric manalyst said: Bring this picture to life!

Does this foreshadow the Great Escape?

Or do I stay   old & cold on the shores of

a polluted Lake?

__

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing,

be nothing.  Elbert Hubbard 1856-1915

Late Winter  2014

SCHADENFREUDE

SCHADENFREUDE  IS  NOT  FOR   SISSIES

Harm-joy  is the pleasure derived from other’s

misfortune   kissing cousin of envy    A Dioscuri

of evil   Like when Brad left  sad-Jen  for Angie

& Tiger crashed his SUV

Studies show that even monkeys & dogs measure

themselves against their peers    As do poets:

The book of my enemy has been remaindered.  

(Clive James   poet)  

Take vegetarians   their very existence from a meat

eater’s point of view   is a moral irritant  (Richard N. Smith The Joy of Pain)

Or note the Conti St. Hobo’s glee:  Gnarly laugh  then  

I shoulda known better    a red-headed woman & a 

bald-headed man   When we passed his cup without

filling it up

Fat-Cats now back in the Great White North   jazz-thirsty

Wind & ice storms reign supreme  Hobo still laughing on Conti St.

__

Late Winter 2014

GODS & ATOMS

IT’S  LIKE  BELIEVING  IN  GODS  &  ATOMS

A new sense   a 7^th sense   (6^th for

extraterrestrials  and the unborn)

is brewing inside   Molting  crawling

wet & birthnew   around the tables

where I sit & cobble   It feels like a

reeling    a  realing   if you must know

Sit still don’t breathe   A phrase drops

shiny & dangerous   Who knew you had

it in you?  Who says you do?

__

What the author withholds the reader supplies.

Tom Grimes   Mentor  2010

Late Winter  2014

GAMBLIN MAN

MY FATHER WAS A GAMBLIN MAN DOWN IN NEW ORLEANS

I am still in the Vieux Carre´  marching by day among

the carnival crowd of old white Floridians   My Russian

cabbie tells me that New Orleans is SAFE   as long as I:

Do Not Walk Past The Traffic Light Over   There

I am grit-ridden   & in beauty overload     feet hurt  hip may

need replacing   But it is here that I stayed    & swayed by

the scent of sewage & bourbon   I did not get on my plane

So when you see me  sylph-like on the icy streets of Toronto

pass your hand through me    Go on    make my day

__

Late Winter  2014

BLUES

OGDEN   GALLERY   BLUES

I am eating too much   drinking too much

Rough men with red faces are shouting at me

on the streets of the Vieux Carre´   While a giant

black rocking horse covered in Mardi Gras beads

is threatening to carry me home

A man in a white cap   & yellow coat  says:

Oh   you are perfect baby   perfect   I came to see

art    &  now there is you       

While my husband and brother jump  into a cab

without me!   Abandoned there like a motherless

child    on the shores  O’  the great Mississippi –

__

Late Winter  2014

TIPITINA’S

STANDOFF  AT       TIPITINA’S

It was long   & white   & silky    Stretched on forever

Well at least until the V of her dress revealed a hollow

also perfect   silky      It was rhythmically moving    up&down&up&down

Gyrating may be too strong a word       OK      Let’s call it a saw-off

All of this against my husband’s equally long (not so silky)  back

as we watched George Clinton’s bacchanalia  unfold below   at

Tipitina’s   (501 Napoleon Ave. New Orleans LA)    With Soul-Sister DJ

on the floor doin things I shan’t explain  (involving crawling & spreading)

I did not know whether to take Silky Back Woman outside   or applaud my guy’s

staying power   He leaned on the rail like he owned it    Hockey-hard body groovin

to George C.    I knew in his heart he was transported to Lakehead U.  where he

reigned as  THE BLONDE    So mostly I just kept my clenched fist in my pocket

waving it only occasionally   cowardly    at the silkiest back I have ever seen

__

My heroes had the heart
To live their lives out on a limb
And all I remember
Is thinking, I want to be like them

Crazy  Pat Green/Gnarls Barkley

Late Winter   2013

APRIL 2014

SCENT  OF  APRIL      2014

The woman who sells me perfume is

tinkerbell-tiny   & smells like a wise man

from Marrakesh     When she hugs me

Embrace Of  Said Wise Man    clings for hours

Yesterday my  OUD  went missing     Pre- Xmas

shoppers commiserated    and I was released from

perfume-shrine into LBS of slush   now sweating

profusely     I need to speak to the MYSTIC  I cried

When there on the corner of Wellesley & Bay  a 15 yr.

old girl    dancing like Beyonce´   bewitched sluggish

Torontonians   made you feel like you might survive

made you feel like you were almost alive  

Made you feel like the billionth Canadian winter might spit

you out  ALIVE     on the other side    When the new-you

will glide  along lilac scented streets  lips  Radiant Orchid

Pantone’s colour pic for 2014

_

We are ever dying into one world    and  being born into another

Henry David Thoreau

The transfiguration of Georgia May Jagger

& Aprill Atkins Cameron  Spring 2014

Winter Solstice   2013

LBD

NOTHING  COMES  BETWEEN  ME  &  MY  COMRAGS  LBD

Where this dress has been   & has not been:

Quivering on the floor   I shan’t say more

Crunched behind a pretty hipster on an elevator

carrying a box of rich-girl cupcakes    16 vanilla in

neat little rows   She winked and said:  

Eating one may change a life

You mean like asking Mr. Tolstoy for a re-write?

We are at Indigo headquarters after all    where a

sign says:  Ask And You Shall Receive

PLEASE LIFT ANNA FROM UNDER THAT TRAIN!

Not yet on the  Book Tour  where the Tokyo crowd will

throw rose petals & raw fish   And I will never know if it’s

yesterday or tomorrow   This dress has not been on Letterman

yet     Will it ride up & pull a   Margaret Trudeau?  Or flutter  in

the breeze   a la Marilyn Monroe’s?

All of this is hard to know  stuck here in the throes of so much

ice & snow    So let us re-visit our dress come Spring    This dress

is going places   This dress has dreams!

__

Winter  2013

BUTTERFLIES

BUTTERFLIES  ARE    FREE?

It’s 1960  North Toronto  Jewish ghetto

What does the air smell like?  Thick   with

peonies   mums   & death     Friend’s parents

newly transplanted from the Camps  of Poland

& Germany     What do I see   in front of me?

suburban lawn  road   survivor couple’s home  

huge & on a hill   they are rarely seen   faces lined

& weatherbeaten   no children   they always smile at me

A boy from up the street   Ashley   sits on their hill  most days

at 3   tormenting me    Staring longingly  at my bedroom window

Years later we heard that he   was crushed in a taxi   Cement truck

flipped over        Goodbye Ashley   

His face is round  darkish skin   His sister & her friend hate me

with a passion reserved for girls with gently curly hair  & handsome

brothers     They call out taunts from their balconies   daily

In dreams  I still walk by  and eye   their lumpy bodies & dishevelment

I shiver when cement trucks threaten    & wonder how the story might be

re-written    had I invited Ashley-boy   inside      In Chaos theory lingo:

Had the butterfly not flapped it’s wings would Ashley still be alive?

__

It was a strange world ahead.  A thunderhead of a world

with jagged lightening edges. I went straight into it. It was

wide open.     Bobby Zimmerman  Chronicles  2004

Winter  2013