songanddancegirl

what’s it all about alfie?

save me from being trapped in a quasi-paradise  where

every dinner costs 200 bucks  +the eyes of locals glint

with  gringolust

last month i sold my restaurant list to rubes  who prayed

at altars of bbq brisket  +blue curaçao martinis   this year

i am going nowhere  fast

so i sit in my frigid city  dreaming of emerging from the egg

botticellicurls now shorn  +faded to a puddle grey   i’m ready

for my close-up    ready to be reborn  into my final 8

why 8?  some bastard at Harvard put the  checkout early bug

in my ear  he opined that by 75  one has done it all give or take

now it’s time to call   Dignitis

that not so secret-society  who tell you where the hemlock is hidden

i guess the ultimate carrot is the promise of immortality  no?  first

they get us to believe in Santa  ie., the Reaper in redvelvet

a jovial Jesus makeover   but you only get gifts if you are good

ditto the Reaper re: heaven  the place where your flushed tadpoles

now swim     (you flushed your pets down the toilet dear??)  

crossing the Styx is for dybbuks  +probably a lot more fun   i mean

do you want to spend eternity with do-gooders?  in any case  those

left behind  are clearly more stricken  than the new corpse

exquisite rictus   serenity to spare

today i strolled Philosopher’s Walk  in 25 below  the emergency call

site had a sign that said: OUT OF ORDER   i guess in the end  you

have to save yourself   from all of the jovial  run of the mill-misery

and i didn’t sell the  real  restaurant list!

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..i sent them to ones where they spit in your soup..

Winter 2024  ..my aim was to set the tadpoles free..hands up if u believe me..

sister’s in the back seat with her head hung low

daddy drove around in a black rusted-out  used car

our elegant standard poodle named for a salami  held

his head high    so happy  to go for a ride

he worshipped father  who once carried him out of the

ravine on a chalkboard stretcher  +saved his life yet again

when a chicken bone lodged in his  blacksonavitch throat

his middle name  after a tzarist priest   the other Rasputin

i shrieked  and ran in circles  as daddy ejected said bone  he

also shouted at me: if you fall apart how can you save a life?  

i never fell apart again  currently held together with dirty twine

+wrigleys   but i did have precedent for  PANIC    5 yr. old witness

to my grandmother’s demise  a massive stroke  beside blue budgie

mother pulled at her hair +wailed  all medusa-harridan  my parents were

beautiful misfits  in our immigrant neighbourhood   where social climbing

was  a religion   a merciless stigmata

i wore the sign of suspected poverty on my forehead   Ash Wednesday

everyday  BUT  i was pretty +pretty smart (!)  so when the moleybitches

teased   i flirted with stardom

even Dorothy didn’t know that her old home was safe  inside her  like a

stillborn child   mine recently dropped from the sky  the black Consul in

the drive    C’mon father  let’s go for a ride!  

i’d give anything to sit

in that used car again

or would i?

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..in life you work at dignity

in chain gangs of beauty+cruelty

O take me back to Parchman Purdon Farm..

Winter 2024 .. 1st poem..🌞🌻

i think the bitch dropped a house on me!

in the same night  my childhood house was dropped into

the alleyway  adjacent to my now house   a tall festering

townhouse  mold-encroaching  stucco paleyellow stainedblack

this gives new meaning to living in the past  or does it?   who

among you   on a bad day   wouldn’t want access to one’s   old

bedroom   dog   parents  seedy brothers ?

hey mum  i’m hommmmme!   instantly a baked potato appears

loaded with  margerine+sour cream   how was university?   she

beautiful  in her faded silk robe deshabille  didn’t go to McGill  (jew quota)

and for other  no less nefarious reasons  her mother signed her name

with an X   money was not plentiful back in the day   the baked spud

is warm   dripping motherplasma    now i can just go next door!

mother’s exact lament 3 days before she died: i just want to go home  

my hair-trigger guilt got in the way  thought she was dissing me  for

her imprisonment  with the near dead    now i understand

the 2nd visitation that night  was my BIG BRO  at 20 yrs. old   looking

svelte  handsome  happy  about to regale me with stories (oy)  the famous

Atkins-rizz   blaring

last time i saw him  his room adjacent to a dying girl’s  her bro loved my

shoes   her young parents  friends +dog  griefshrieking  in hospice hell

on his final morning  i heard distinct growl-whispers  so i followed them

to a small room  stuffed with  (are you ready?)   angels    one archangel

the size of Kevin Durant  clearly come to carry my bro+his 16 yr. old friend

HOME      so listen up     you  CAN  never  go home

don’t believe the naysayers   many will tell you  no one dies with dignity   but

they are  deadwrong +spiritual-squalor  it is much more difficult to have dignity

in life   whipped+scorned as we are    (see Hamlet’s ghost) 👻

death is all dignity

in the supine posture

of the crooked smile

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..and strip me of everything  including my pride..
but spirit is something that no one destroys.. (Traffic 1971)

New Year’s Eve 2023     ..bring it..

papa was a rollin stone

he laid his hat in our home  often   a mere  68 yrs.

at checkout   he spoke a mythopoeic language   of

sports  horses  +jazz     he loved children too

though a pallid cousin  accused him of abandoning

her young daughter  a dark faerie  if there ever was one

in a hot car   on a broiling day

he wouldn’t treat his dog that way  pallid cousin probably

wanted to bone him   he had a kind of animal magnetism

rarely seen outside of the animal kingdom

on days when he went all  Stanley Kowalski  we children hid   once

mother called the cops  he’d given the old heave ho  to her luggage

giant trunks sailing into the ravine below our house  (not Louis Vuitton)

where did she think she was going?!  to Montreal  +the best Chinese food

in Canada  also to her mother’s crowded walk-up  where years earlier a

brother had been infested  with whitefish larvae  as he slept on an iron cot

we were poor   mother proudly said

our father could sit on a turquoise couch  with silver threads  for hours

petting his outsized dogs + midsized sons  (e tu brute) speaking in sports

tongues  while young gladiators on tv  lay motionless +bashed-head

personally i found these Sunday rituals  interminable  i preferred my grail

holier  though now a days i sit tv bound  watching the NBA   where young

zillionaires  unfresh from college   wear zero protection  +Prada sweats

breaking  jaws  bones +noses  against elbows +hardwood floors   at night

they cry for their mamas  +huddle in the foetal position in  $40 million

mansions   one brother assures me   they are too rich to love

our father’s love was a mysterious thing  he never said  i love you  but

he didn’t have to  it was understood  +fierce  he would tear the face off

of anyone who hurt us

so i didn’t tell him about the teacher

who sat me on his hard lap  at 11

daddy would be in prison

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..they were boys in men’s bodies doing what we all want to do..

..they were boys then not mercenaries with agents..when one loses

the boy something dies forever.. (James Hollis  Jungian Analyst 2009)

Winter 2023

QUEEN FRIEDS

she was there  as we breathed ourselves into life

father showed up later  these were 1950’s solo labours

we were there  as she breathed herself into death

meeting her face for the first time  after the wombfloat

meeting her face as it readies for return  to the wombtomb

her deathmask a strange combination of her  +not her

her beautiful bejewelled hands  curled in strange plasticity

hardening into crooked finger goodbye  but  (and i say this

carefully so as not to unhinge the whimpering among you)

there has NOT been a day since November 14th 2022  that

Queen Bee Frieds has not  buzzed bombdived +re-nectared me

fluttering there  wings a-buzz   now motherdust +lilacashes

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Winter Solstice 2023 ..let there be light..🌓

November 14, 2022

deathbed sunrise with blue lilacs🐝

shiva hos

of tombs+death tourism  voyeurs of the macabre  for some

of the ghouls  a meal  +opportunity to check your wrinkles

your deshabille  your wealth  or lack thereof    fuckthat

i will no longer sit  powdered+primed  like some not-yet-corpse

on the worst possible days of my life   +to the ghouls i say:

go on a fucking vacation     i’ll pay  

__

…talk talk talk: the utter stupidity of words…it seemed endless…

as though it might go on forever… William Faulkner  Mosquitoes  1927

__

Winter 2023  ..only an idiot has no grief..

..and only a fool would forget it.. WF+AAC

love is a dog from hell stolen from charles bukowski

Ryan O’Neal has died  stirring up memories of  Love Story

+never having to say you’re sorry  though you constantly

do   ad nauseam   (ok already  im fucking sorry!)

my 14 yr. old bestie and i went to the film  with boyfriends

in tow  hers a pothead named Stu  mine a future heroin addict

named Larry   (+yes pot is a gateway drug)

i tried to cry  i really did   i mean it was kind of sad  but real life

a lot sadder already   Joni bawled  i faked it  (!)  precursor to fake

orgasms     ah ah ahhhhhhhhhh    splat💥

ie., let’s get this over with bub so i can watch paint dry

the french call orgasm  la petite mort  are we not creatures toward death?

so i suppose watching films about gorgeous cancered women  prepares

you for cancer in your gorgeous mother  her 2 besties   etc.  etc.

and  the little death  prepares you for  le grande mort   the one where

it all fades to black   except you don’t come back    oh the dimming

of consciousness     oh the dying of the light

i would rather be anything  but a conscious manimal   subject to the

vicissitudes   to the torture of the opposites   lovehate  lifedeath   and

i certainly wasn’t made for these times  the kitsch abyss  of Taylor Swift

Person of The Fuckingyear  Queen of Woke Jokers  everywhere   not chosen:

peace activists  Vivian Silver  RIP   butchered in her home by Hamas   nor

Narges Mohammadi    winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

now in a prison  in Iran  regularly lashed  +god knows what other indignities

it is a well known fact   in Iran  women are regularly subjected to  *bodycavity

searches  on the street   by the not so secret police

(*see Reading Lolita in Tehran  Azar Nafisi  2003)

this while Tay Tay fakes orgasms  with Trav   her current fake  boytoy   +

the woke haters at *Harvard  bare their fangs at Jewish students  who want

to be free of  genocidal bullying  as they walk to class   imagine that!

(*8 U.S. presidents have graduated from Harvard  bastion of wealth+power)

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Winter 2023       ..SHAME..

heaven’s babe-alas

was it a good place to grow up?  some of it was good

some of it was tragic   it made me who i am  +who i

am not

yesterday i sat in the kitchen  9yrs. old  +watched the

original glam manor babes  at cards   mum smoking

Players   Mary Quant blue eyeliner   auburn haired

a sleekbabe  42  4 kids  husband  knight errant  these were

difficult 1950’s marriages   said Mrs. Swartz    the newest

resident in heaven   RIP

husbands husky   smoking unfiltered cigs   some mary jane

for pops   they were gruff   rough+tuff   working class men

arteries hard    souls in foxholes

a few started to make some coin  slugging watermelons

repo’d appliances   now race horses  wives in diamonds

convertibles   Courrèges leather jackets

the divas  casting pearls before swine  11 kids between them

2  cancer-wasted early on  mother survived her bout  +nearly

lived forever

there sat the OG’s   laughing  gossip  +kibbitz   i thought they were

queens   queens of the stone-age  now under daisies   or in mother’s

case   scorched grass   (don’t ask)

but there at the ghostly table  they are gorgeous  wicked  lustybitches

exactly what i wanted to be   i felt a cool kiss blown at my cheek  mum?

mum?   i saw the glory   the rough husbands   the broken dreams

the babes wave away my pity   you’re too young to understand   we

love/hate our husbands   wash their boxers   adore their children   +

accept our fate    the root word of passion   is suffering

you who meditate  3x a day  + need an american millionaire  to teach

you  how to be free!   where else you gonna be?  but   HERE  NOW  

you darling dummkopf daughter

__

..i feel sorry for you.. you have too much education..

it makes you crazy..  (mother at 98)

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Winter 2023  ..Be Here Now! ..Ram Dass.. American Spiritual Guru.. you’re fired!

(..and the root word of angina is..anger..)

on being a linda blair doppelgänger

have you ever had an aura?  maybe in the middle of a migraine?

your left eye becomes the eye of a large cat  your peripheral vision

wraps around  the side of your head

it’s like someone has slit open  your eye   you fall into a fugue state

you are home alone  and 60  you dont know where your parents are

father on his heavenly horse  mother wasting away in a retirement rez

surrounded by  prickfaces   today i waited 2 hrs to speak to a nasty

neuroscientist  dressed in boiled wool  she often looks me up+down

and she is pinched   like the nerves in my cervical spine

today she doesn’t even ungrace me with her presence   she sends a

resident  who keeps asking: are you sure you don’t want to talk to the

doctor?   she clearly wants to go home  feed her fish   unplug her toilet

of course i don’t want to speak to the fucking boiled wool doctor!

migraines began the day i moved mother in with said  prickpeople  

who were:  nasty  unhappy  dying  +drool   intense pain ripping through

nose  cheek  +wildeyebrow

a  4 day migraine  began with mother’s last breath  after a 15 hr. knell

they disappeared   miraculous +suspicious   after her submerge   so

were they a possession?   a regression?   a depression?

or an alien mothership trip?   ie., take me to your wombtomb

the resident’s  hello hello  are you still there?   jolts me back   NO   i don’t

need a doctor   i need an exorcism   time to cut the linda blair crap    no more

peeing on the floor  fuckingjesus  backflips down the stairs  it’s time to buck up  bitch

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Winter 2023    ..grant me a wild wicked old woman’s frenzy.. W.B. Yeats/AAC

please use your tunnel voices or we will shoot your dog

the children are emerging  speaking in whispered tongues

a psychiatrist says: they look like shadows of children  many

now elective mutes

this is what happens when children are trophies  and there

is a trophy jewbaby  down there still  he seems to have gone

missing  in the midst of   the missing

perhaps they will release him  for 2000 young terrorists in training

many carrying  knives  rocks   the suicided young martyrs   now

bombing heaven     raised on hate   body parts cling  to the Wailing Wall

while back in Canada  6 yr old Dontay Lewis  dies of severe blunt force

head trauma +months of horrific abuse  at hands of mother +step-father

4 months after his return from foster care

NOT  in captivity  Not  in a terrorist tunnel  but in plain sight  in his home

in B.C.  who among you believes  the urge to abuse +murder children in

adult humans of all persuasions  clergy included   needs more investigation?

at base  are we mad?

going mad?

always been mad?

is it a power thing?

a might is right thing?

or is it just the plain depravity  of the hate gene?

TBD

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Winter 20203