songanddancegirl

this poem is a huck

i re-crucified Christ this morning  with my new

holepuncher  bought for a dollar  at the dollar

store  where almost nothing costs a dollar  anymore

what a score!  i labelled it a tool of transformation

along with a tool for crucifixion  a slender #11 blade

exacto knife  now sitting next to my mother’s huckmesser

a weapon of mass destruction if there ever was one

used on  chickens  cows  and such  to separate spirit

from bone   i once used it on a brother’s foot

he resembles a chicken in many ways  but that is a story

for another day 🦹‍♂️   exposed sinew + blood  did not make

me popular  around our house

these tools sit on my art project  pictured above  it’s about

the nature of memory  are we passive witnesses? is memory

a mirror?  an altered state?  did u find a Red Queen there?

my archive showcases the 1st pandemic year  the beginning

of the end for my  Queen-Mother   OFF WITH YOUR HEADS !

her favourite refrain

the very same hawks  who carried off a cancered brother  now

returned to carry off our mother  5 bomb dived me in full PPE

on the balcony   as she lay covidridden on the couch

their screeching woke the near dead  scattered throughout  her

retirement rez  a stopping place on the banks  of the river Styx

certainly all the children who  placed  their parents there

will

reconnect

in hell

___

Summer 2023  ..OFF WITH WITH YOUR HEADS ! ..

does the MQ9 Reaper Drone have my name on it?

of course it does  without a target on my head

it will find my fontanelle-depression  that’s where

the tectonic brainplates  gap out

a girl in grade 3  Rita G.  had an inexplicably softhead

section  upon awakening one morning  we all touched

the spot  furtively  some boys hands  dropped down

i wish i could forget much of what i remember  (Rita! really?)

forgetting must be just as important for survival  as remembering

my 98 yr old  just dead mum  forgot a lot

brisket

my father

lost children

but she  never  forgot  every nuance of my  age-ravaged face

ape  why don’t you dye your hair blonde like the girls on CNN?

you’re too young to be grey  (!)

as i walked her to her grave  we held hands  both our heads

the exact same shade of silver   (Pantone colour of 2023)

i want to remember those final years together

our best + our worst   when i became her jailer   and she

remained  my freespirited sprite-child   barely made  for

these saltmines

__

Summer 2023  ..i liked having parents better..

i’m 66 yrs old + i look just like my mother

the dybbuk that is grief  has had his way with me

toes just emerging  from his  ma  maw   jaws of life

will be required to extricate the rest of me

who knows when that will be

my quarters are  wet-verdigris  a hellhound barks

incessantly  anchoress of mother-ripping  a flowery

moss  growing on my extremities

it is dark like the grave in here  rank too  with the

faint scent  of  rotting bakedgoods   when i emerge

i will require  a mani-pedi   a will  +an undertaker

preferably one who does not charge 12 grand for a

hearsemobile + a candle made from pig tallow   it is

in this chamber  that i have become a beacon

for lone travellers   newly rent of a mother’s hand

__

Summer 2023 ..don’t leave me with these people..

give me your hungry your tired your poor – i’ll piss on em*

give me your lost:  heart  breast  bladder  womb

+ i will stitch you back together?  resurrect you?

eat what is left of you

my new guru  Rick Rubinski  ( it must have been

that  back in the shtetl  no?)  has the exact same

silver lid as me   plus a long goaty beard

which i am working on   now a few stragglehairs

bearded lady poet  soon  my old mother sat quietly

as i plucked hers   even when i grabbed skin

no  i jest  she bit me hard  +cursed like a saviour  which

she was   the saviour complex  runs deep  in my family

straydogs  men  sexworkers  gamblers   et al.

Rick implores the emerging artist to  gather   gather the

seeds  +notice everything   perhaps i will add this   to

remembering    everysinglefuckingthing  i know

yet  this wisdom goes contrary  to that of my meditation

guru  Jeff  who drones on endlessly about  emptying  oh the

bi-polarities of  self actualization machination

i don’t recommend it   stick with single malts  +psilocybin

love your quiet desperation   +run like you are young  from

fatuousbeards    like me🐐

__

Summer 2023  *Lou Reed  Dirty Boulevard  1989 ..not produced by Rick Rubin (ski) ..

man plans god laughs

fuck the spacetimecontinuum + fuck death?

i read this on a mug  in a hipster shop   but i

was afraid to buy it  lest the Reaper take umbrage

i wanted to give it to my mother  whose lifelong

fear of death  was wasted on the most perfect +

peaceful leavetaking  i have witnessed  to date

no  choking begging  or random egyptian gods

Ram Dass is rolling in his grave   he implored us

to   be here  now   to which my mother replied:

I’ll tell him when he gets here

for her  time was  relentless +hungry  i was just 16 !   (motherfuckers)

think how fast your 40’s went   your 50’s a quickblink

of a watery eye   but i goddamn guarantee you  time will

slowdown   at 90

for the: waiting watching wondrous extravaganza  that is

death  replete with  the most beautiful breath  u will  ever

take    lifebroken   beggard   bewitched   +free 🦅

__

Summer 2023  ..would it kill you to be extravagantly alive? ..

66 bottles of pills on the wall

long gone are the days when you’d toss birth control pills

into a bag  +take off  eh   they were in a dial-like contraption

my 1st boyfriend paid for them    a 16 yr old sex worker??

arriving at the aeropuerto  the 20 something security guy

would pull them out of your purse  while leering at your

youth scented privates    smells like yeastylust

now fast forward to present  some 60 yrs later   many

body parts no longer work  megaruin spreading   flatuland

+crepey

you swallow so many pills a day  it renders Valley Of The Dolls

child’s play  where now Jackie Suzanne?  in repose/decompose

you say?    Jackie the Queen  of ambidextrous autoeroticism

a sister-in-law had merely mentioned: wiping yourself when you pee

fuck me !   once on a whim  birth control firmly in hand  i flew to Ipanema

where i glittered briefly

__

Summer 2023  ..now huddled in my motel room sucking on a ventolin inhaler.. woe

death becomes them?

what many don’t understand is that

when u pull the plug on a loved one   or 3

u pull the plug on yourself

how could it be otherwise?  Your leftfoot

remains at the edge of said precipice for

some 18 months   give or take

you are now fearless re: the big bangless bang

you realize  the futility  the utter absurdity

of staving it off     (as if)

also  you intimately know  how an entire existence

is snuffed out   the grandeur  the devastatio   the name

in one second   gone   never to be another

Harry Lee

Frieda

Martino

Me

you flirt with the shrewish reap   who doles out

the elixir of sleep   you fuck with your parachute

eat tenders  kick the halfnaked crossing-guard in her  lardbelly

go ahead  arrest me!  kill me!  run me over!

the peace of that crooked smile  beguiles

the frozenvisage   dentures in place  (I can’t remove them..she might bite me..)

rigored fingers

bewitch

+beckon

our dead  our heroes  who have gone where we

fear to tread   now become extraordinary  +brave

face it   death   (especially murder)    thrills us

but here you are  left standing  yet again  dickinhand

at the pearly gates   with a  HUGE  craving  for

 sex+candy

__

..the courage to die is the test of the courage to live.. (AAC+Socrates..)

Summer 2023  ..enough already with the death thing..

The Hoopin Reaper

i lay around in leather shorts  a transmuted  Beard

hooping has messed with my head   you see  i came up

in the bubble

you remember?  when we couldn’t leave our homes

pestilencepolice everywhere  drag u in for a nose-rape

+body cavity-search

as we lay hunkered   we each took to separate screens

mine played the NBA   24 hrs a day   the scent of death

wafting

what i’ve mostly learned in these covidtimes: if death becomes

you   you want me on your team!   I am  clutch   the thing is

even if you’re only a little bit dead    i will go  Kavorkian

pull the plug

pick+roll

a little euro

Oh  i have moves

that make the Reaper

weep

__

rage rage against the dying of the light  (Dylan Thomas 1937)

Spring 2023 ..i am not crying now..i am nothing.. (As I Lay Dying.. W. Faulkner 1930)

my fling with Cormac McCarthy cancelled

Cormac dead at 89  yesterday   drifted away

in Santa Fe  my bags were packed  +stalking

him was my main concern

there is much gore  in Cormac’s books:

a slit throated baby  one eyegouged   men

on the range   sodomized+smiling

deathmasked minions  wink

McCarthy captures the nuanced depravity of

the gibbering ape  written in blood  sometimes

dripping off of   a big RED sun

baking that blood into creosote+interstices  into

the earth’s DNA   mamas don’t let your babies be

cowboys    or inhabit the cabins of Appalachia

all serial killered  +incested    Cormac knew that

we are mostly not human   we are the only species

on the planet  who kill for pleasure

who among you has not tortured a frog?

__

..a dark smile erupted on the child’s throat ..it hung there

black blood pumping down its naked belly..the mute one was

drooling  he seized it up and buried his moaning face in its throat..

(Outer Dark  Cormac McCarthy  1970)

Spring 2023  ..my bombs give me catharsis.. the Unabomber RIP?..dead at 81 took great pleasure in flying fingers+ubermutilation..Harvard trained mathematician demented serial killer+terrorist..

Addendum:

• A morgue manager at Harvard Medical School sold body parts from donated cadavers and let buyers choose which parts they wanted ..June 2023..

happiness is for amateurs?

happiness is a warm gun?

happiness is for the happy?

+apparently cannot be bought

don’t believe it!

a fleeting +rumoured carrot

donkeyhordes buy it   myself

included

3 mts ago dropped 11,324 bucks

in Curaçao  root word  cure   also

dropped to the churned-up pavement

left some knee DNA  +a few rotted out

dreams   of what life could be  on

turquoise water   24/7    365

happiness did not follow me along the

jetstream    to my home+native land

now on fire from sea to burning sea

*4.5 million hectares burned since January

the alive think the dead are dying to

return   don’t believe that either   now

free from the coil  from husband #3’s   infidelities

from old  or sick  or bus-hit  slackskin

bodies   where the girl from Ipanema

is now walking

face it:   happiness is for the tanned

the tall   the lovely   Curaçao tan faded

knee darkscar emblazoned   all devil+rorschach

today my national newspaper tells me  that

soon  all restrictions will be lifted   from

dying with dignity laws

now ask yourself:  why would the alive

legalize  suicide  for all?   you still there?

i’m waiting    get back to me when you

return from emptying the shelves  of happiness

better than hoarding toilet paper    no?

__

*during our recent pandemic Canadians hoarded

24,140,000 rolls of  t.p.  ..10,000 times the number

of burned trees

Spring 2023  ..RIP Astrud Gilberto..when she flies she’s like a samba..🧚‍♀️