songanddancegirl

HANDS

HER  HANDS  WERE  IMMORTALIZED    BY  STIEGLITZ

A woman has just stopped   She has walked by

at least twice for the past 6 yrs.  each time I write

by the babbling brook    She yatters somewhat

pleasantly as the best poem I have ever written

is carried into the brook   by the breeze

It is now making its way down to New Mexico where

I would love to follow   But alas I can never re-trace    Georgia’s

steps   too many scorpions & spiders   They even close

a highway for the annual Tarantula crossing   (Google it)

But do not despair  you may participate in the dissemination

of my 2nd greatest poem   It will crawl up your pant leg   get

inside your skin   There will be no antidote or Epi-Pen    And

one day soon   my hands will be photographed for the      Smithsonian

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*(eligible photographers may send samples of their work to:

pleaseimmortalizeme@rogers.ca)

Fall  2013

MAN

MAN  IN  THE  MIRROR (ED)    FRAMES

When I gaze out my bathroom window

I see the CN tower   and  a man

A deadringer for Hemingway   into his

2nd Blue by 9 a.m.    He leans on the fire-escape

in crude deshabille    Most certainly one of

the  great deceivers   I wonder where he was

at 15       Where were you?

I was searching for water beneath the Antarctic

ice shelf   where  unborn rivers   run free

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Now in the middle of the journey of our life

I came into myself in a dark wood

where the straight way was lost      (Dante Alighieri  The Inferno)

Fall 2013

K.WEST

THE  DAY  K.  WEST*     BECAME   QUEST

Let’s call it atavism  This return to Ziggy      40 yrs. later

My brain hurts a lot  (more)   Never thought

I’d lose so many people   Remember Starman?

He died waiting  for all the nobody people to

become  somebody    And my magnifiers aren’t

even strong enough to rip off Bowie at his best     Bear with me

Who could be more trapped than a 14 yr. old

in suburbia  coming upon  ZIGGY    A few girls my

age went off their heads   Later it was encouraging

to hear:  You’re okay as long as a second ego  DOES NOT  appear

(a very smart analyst said  in my 32nd year)

The moments of  the now & then & yet to be

are woven into a  past-present-future  brew

Where the re-curring deja vu  becomes your   curtain call

Something about:  A  ravine where a priest with blazing blues

pulls a still beating heart from my chest    

Now tell me yours   because you have been implicated

from the start    Of course you have the right to remain

silent    Everything you say  may change the trajectory

of your curtain call    It was after all  on April 4th 1994

that  Kurdt Donald Cobain said:  I miss the comfort of being   sad

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Fall  2013     *(K.WEST – the sign over Ziggy’s head  on the album cover 1972)

SPIDERS

SPIDERS  FROM    MARS

Louise Bourgeois the sculptor  (1911-2010)  spent so much

of her adult life in analysis she was said to be famously troubled

Perfect epithet for the modern famewhore   Fame now a birthright

Airtight liberation from the quotidian    The famous reportedly don’t love

(And they never forgive)  

In 2008 Louise B.  finally gave us an  Open Door    Liberation? Or cheeky portal

to another kind of entrapment   Freedom after all  is  Super-myth   the  GIANT carrot

One Buddhist monk has even declared:  You cannot be free until you are free of the

desire to punish    And there is someone I must forgive by 12:01 a.m. tomorrow  

Which will be more difficult?   This   or giving up life as I know it for life on Mars?

Nearly 97,000 Canadians have applied to join  Mars One  which will establish a

permanent human colony by 2023      I would simply rather be famous

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Fame, bully for you, chilly for me
Got to get a rain check on pain (pain)
(fame)      David Bowie

Louise Bourgeois   Open Door

Fall  2013 

CONFESSION

IN  THE  TIME  OF  MY    CONFESSION

If the thing you said you were going to do does not materialize

And should it be found to have been meaningless

And everyone gives up hope

And the Curtain-Raiser leaves the curtain   at half mast

This is  PROGRESS!  

You might leave the stage   forever

And follow the dark haired cigarette smoking man you have

seen in the courtyard  every day for 6 yrs.    Go on   Follow him

To a place where nothing much will happen unless the

Curtain-Raiser finds the will to resurrect Spring

And the imponderables come to a grinding   HALT

You knew all along that he would lead you  OUT

He looks slimmer this Fall  & not as worried about

dandruff or his smell

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There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names,
And he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same,
There’ll be a golden ladder reachin’ down.
When the man comes around.      Johnny Cash  The Man

Fall  2013

ELEVEN

ELEVEN      ELEVEN

When all the ones   are ONE

When Hell freezes over

When September stops feeling

like the start of a new school year

When Moses comes down the

mountain with Viagra & Prozac    Tablets

When a+b does not = c  ever again

(they never should have in the first place)

When tired old Obama is no longer

1/2 the man he used to be

When the war on drugs  has legs

When Rob Ford is wrestled to the ground

When the referents in this poem are

returned to their rightful owners

When the thing that has been foretold

starts happening

Remember you are free to go

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*(today someone said to me: I really need to have this once before I die 

I passed the request onto the Clean-Up Committee)

Fall  2013

YA

OH YA     YA  YA  YA  YA*

I’m writing a book on 18 century

copyright law   He was an expert

at the segue  bringing it back to ME  

An upspeak  wordcreep:   Write Nadia

Lasko she’ll get you on the right faculty

lists  & the list for Monday lunches!  

It’s obviously rather haphazard  but ya precisely         precisely

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* true story

Fall  2013

BALLS

BALLS  TO    YOU

bouncing balls flying balls (+bees)

always find me   my head usually

the sky a perfect audience on most days

& childhood a brief respite on the long haul    to  nowhere

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Fall  2013

HEAVEN’S DOOR

TRYIN  TO  GET  TO  HEAVEN  BEFORE  THEY  CLOSE  THE  DOOR

The number of medically sanctioned euthanasia

deaths in the Netherlands is rising  1,923 in 2006

4,188 in 2012   While in the West we reserve humane

death for our pets   Why have the numbers risen so

dramatically?  Are they euthanizing cagey spouses

& faltering rich relations by the dozens?

Or is society as a whole about to shift paradigmatically

to a place so farflung from 21 century nihilism that:

the final Monarch will land on the head of our last terrorist?

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*honey bees are rapidly disappearing from the Earth (last bee 2024)

Without their constant cross-pollination a massive de-flowering will occur

as well as the loss of every color in the spectrum

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Fall 2013

QUINN

THE  MIGHTY    QUINN

The people all sit calmly under giant chestnut trees

Huge mahogany rocks rain down  Industrious squirrel-rats

gather them up  for the coming deepfreeze  When we will

flee bone-numbed from our Canadian winds   I have changed

seats so that I might preserve my skull intact  for another Winter

season   A cowardly act no doubt    In 2011 Winter went missing

only to return on March 14th  ripping my flowered stockings & knee

A woman saw me fall   and ran      It’s a jungle out there

I tell you  never  trust old Canadian men with    white beards

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Fall  2013