songanddancegirl

BAGGAGE

i packed up my mother  my brother  +bits of father

glasses  lipstick (morange)  pinecones  brother now

a tree  (don’t ask)    strands of beautiful white hair

the gown she died in   blueflannel  still damp  shoulda

kept the leopardskin one  but her leopardprint chic lives

on   we all donned a piece for the deathvigil

me  the boys +Lovey  proudly  15 hrs of breathing cacophony

nurses  +staff  likely thought us daft  fuck em   they didn’t

even  know   she was in her deaththroes !

oh it’s just some medicine for her dear  medicine my asssss

step away from my mother crassss Ratchet  dignity  was key

also for  Lee+Marty

she slept sweetly to jazz tunes  blue lilacs  +more   her  (their)

possessions possess me  sewn invisibly into the  fabric of me

scrimshaw knife   star of David  Joseph   bejewelled bluebird

can they all come back now  please?  a still alive brother said: ape if

they come back  you’ll only have to lose em all over again  fuckdeath

i saw that on a souvenir mug  in a hipster store  (where else?!)

almost bought it for mother  it would have terrified her  you don’t 

mess around with the Reaper dear      until you do

__

..the one who remains is half ghost..

Rickie Lee Jones  Last Chance Texaco  2021

Spring 2023  ..with her today.. born Easter Sunday 1957 ..resurrection time..

hell is wasted on the dead

can i go back to my vacation now   please?

my woundedknee is turning green

my soulhole rapidly fading to black

i want my money back   fuckers

among my deadmother’s favourite sayings was:

hell hath no fury like a woman scorned   father’s

early death comes to mind  but that is for another  poem

today i rail against the vacation dreamfactory  SHAM

come to our  dushi  land  fall in love with pigshit on the

beach  with rubble  +overeating🐖

with the scrim of pinksunsets   +permabliss snake-oil

then be crammed back onto the plane  masked+strapped

in  (do u flush the toilet paper?!)

arrive in 40 below  tan fading to a hepatitis glow  sit in your

park  +wait  for Godot?  for the fucking resurrection of your

newly dead?

then tread  dogged+sunshrunken  thru rivers of hipster dog

shit  back to your  forever  family  who berate u for not offering

bagels crumpets +such  before you’ve even unpacked

__

Curacao 2023  ..next year 3 months!!..oink oink

then yer dead

paindrain

kneeoooze

uzi to grief

fortunate fall

cura of scurviedsailors  cura of the motherlode

i saw people oooze out of  stigmata-knee   an

uncle crawling   a cousin slackjaw +fishface

why lug the past around??  who knew what

was uncle festering  in my knee?   burdens

released   on Çuracao street

as a  BIG blackgoddess  in 7 inch stilettos  all

shock+awe  pranced by  Rise up cranky poet!

do they have to bash u over the head  girl? 

yer  FREE

__

..but only if u wanna be..

Çuracoa 2023 …over…+freedom tastes like reality…

(+costs 6 grand a week)

paradise lost ?

fell yesterday  ankle roll  à la  Le Bron James

on rubble masquerading as sidewalk   now

swollen  +bloodlust

mosquitos feeding  one sucker  on my left

cheek  looks zitty+gross  every toe in bandaids

sweat friction   swelling of extremities

blisters full  +bloodscum   this is a wondrous place

of grit  +pastel redemption    yet you tap your heels

3x  and say: can i come home now Mr. Vacation Man?   

please!

__

(..and can i have my 12,000 bucks back too fer chrissakes??..)

Curacao 2023  ..they came..they conquered..

waiiiillllllll of a tale

your primal grief  like the wail of a dying  girlimal

dirty

feral

beast

lays in wait  under the chaise  your mother’s

bestie  had one  Laurice  in her smallmansion

purchased with their  fruit+vegstand  millions

she wore Courregés  in orange  matched her

cutlassconvertible  kitten heels  gravelcough

1st casualty  of the  BIG C  among the ladies

mum next  but survived  the terror  sans much of

her chest   the wail is all animal  visceral  +moanad

ecstatic-confession  regression  to womb

primal scream of newbie  doesn’t know shit

about embodiment  consciousness  +woe   yet

still in the momentsublime   orgasmissimo bellissimo!

bye

bye

__

..i was making the sound of primal fear, like the ones

animals make before they die..this noise is only heard

by the thing that kills them..(Rickie Lee Jones 2021)

Curacao 2023

..we bought mum babyblue🦋Courregés

..post-hospital..postchest

when pigs fly

i spent 12k to see pigs  in flagrante delicto

on a paradisal beach  where they actually

do make silk purses   out of sows

genetalia splayed

oh the shrivenpink🐖

muchodineros  went toward car rental  +

cab rescue !  after GPS lady died  (fuck her)

we sat in a dusky stripmall  a largely burnt-out

shell

like much of the

post-apocalyptic-landscape

in the bay of pigs

husband #3 is out  he’s sourcing dentures

for the security guard   down the street

seriously

__

Curacao 2023 ..casting pearls before the swine..

my private paradise

where all the hot young interns from Amsterdam

doppelgänger Kierkegaard   where birds make the

sound of plastic  rubbing  on plastic   in a prolonged

manner

where on a promontory  i met a lithe redhead  calling

my name   apeeeeeeeaaaal  apeeeeeeeeaaaal   this

produced a  riptide of grief  from the nine year old

in me

said redhead awoke  always happy  to begin her slaving

526 lbs of laundry  weekly   chickens  groundmeat  kilos of

dogfood for Dino  our dog the size of a dinosaur  slops for

the sow  +billygoat  who performed indecently  with a brother

i digress

paradise (@ $700/day)

is just another

word for all

you can’t

escape

__

Curacao 2023  ..try looking within..i hear it’s free..🦕

paradise by the dashboard light

where were you when you first heard

the meatman sing it?  anthemic sleaze

yellow camaro    lake ontario

freezing breeze  30 below  1^st kiss   life ripped

downgraded to  Magdalene   permablues

innocence ooooooooze

a goddamn guarantee   of   charlatan fever

no vaccines    young lady!   i have a smallish

chicken in my pocket  won’t you pet mychickiedickie?🐔

one guy from Jersey  with  loser  tattooed above 3^rd eye

spake Nicaragua   with  spanishinflection   sociopathic

+slightly ginger

i spent much time  in the basement closet   as a girl

there I stumbled upon a trove  of Playboys  circa 1970

where Hugh  in dulcet tones   begged me  to bark   +

then proposed

__

Curacao 2023  ..mother cursed dybbuk Hugh to her dying day🍎

pincushion blues

going on a trip  sans psychedelics   though

shrooms©️  are the new ambrosia   will cure:

depression  mindfuck  +crepescularskin

heading to the Caribbean   where my bros

assure me   sealice et al.  abound   so i bought

repellent for:

zika

dengue

malaria  

+american tourists

i have had so many vaxes  my scurvyarms   all

yellow+bruise  hepatitis diphtheria whooping cough

(isn’t that a children’s disease?!)  covid  tetanus   +

syphilis   thrown in for free

none of this is cheering me   hopefully  handsome

dolphins await   but truth is  i may not leave my room

why not get back to me  when you develop vaccines

for:

love

grief

stupidity

the hip

the woke

OK! i’ll stop   Robert Zimmerman is not the only

depressed Jewish poet  with rabbicurls  +a gnarly

personality

__

..give me crack and anal sex  take the only tree

that’s left  and stuff it up the hole inside your culture

(Leonard Cohen..the little Jew..who wrote the Bible..)

Winter 2023

..for Deedle Prickwell .. ’cause he begged for a happy poem..🌷

worlds colliding

the collision of worlds

slamming+lysergic

did that day really happen?    (ie.,Nov 14/22)

those people?  those years?

now spat out on the shore of a

foreign land   strangered  +surreal

how many death/rebirth cycles does

it take to change a lightbulb?

to get to a place where you realize

that none of it really matters  what was  was

said  my now 15 wks dead  mother

all that matters  is the air in your lungs  in this

unsung moment  (am i turning into Ram Dass?!😱)

are you a woman or a mouse?  dead or alive?

you may not even know  like the angels who are

said to not know  whether the humans they walk

among  are dead or alive

telltale signs of life:

my paternal great grandmother  Molly Newman

had 5 children  crossed the Atlantic at 30  with 4

of ’em    dead by 39   uterine cancer

we are likely  overthinking  the questions

__

(her fate..had Mollie Newman not left Poland)

..live the questions now.. perhaps then someday

far in the future.. you will gradually.. without even

noticing it.. live your way into the answers..

(Rainer Maria Rilke   Letters To A Young Poet)

Winter 2023  ..live dammit  live!..