songanddancegirl

my yiddishe mumma

what is lost?   an entire era  those old days  of

wars  jazzzz  King George  10 cent corned beef

5 cent cokes  open antisemitism  dirtyjuif   back

alley abortions  and signs: No Dogs Negroes or Jews

oh and there was Paris too!  dancing with sailors

marrying armyboys you barely knew  the shetls of

Europe  pogroms  chicken pluckers  packed ships

hiding the child bubba under her bed  when the truant

officers came  she scratched an  X  for Sarah  for the

rest of her days

__

Fall 2022 ..for Frances Marlieb Atkins  April 4/24-November 14/22

My Yiddishe momme
I miss her more than ever now
My Yiddishe mom-momme
I long to kiss her wrinkled brow

sold my soul to the devil for 15 free years👿

birth looks way harder  than death

last breath  utter peace  first breath

primal screammmmmm

intimations of being forced to worship

immortality  ephemeral beauty  mammon

+a life of numbing out to the pain/pleasure   rollercoaster

with the 10,000 things

sports

footlong hotdogs

filthylucre

Paris

et al.

let’s face it  corpulence sucks  why not resurrect

your dead?  repatriate them to their former glory

smiling  pristine  smoothskinned  +fabulous

don’t hold onto the decay  the scenes of decompose

+stink   RISE UP!  you who are still (barely) alive  and

RUN for the fucking hills

__

That the self advances
And confirms ten thousand things
Is called delusion.. (Dogen 1200-1253)

Fall 2022  ..if u say so Bob..

The enchantment of being here at all, alive and aware,

is a gift too often considered a problem.

(Robert Saltzman The Ten Thousand Things)

hello dolly!

1st dream  she was part doll  but she was always that

beautifulbarbie   marilyn   liz  ava  lauren  old hollywood

glamourpuss   born to diva   born to be fodder for

handsome charlie come lately

sydney with his 5 children

the stony schwartz’s

long after the beautything  all is quiet in the upper chambers

of heaven  where a handsome God  genuflects +offers 3 wishes

she asks for

more

more

more

i rest my case

__

Fall 2022   ..and shrimp the size of your arm..

i’ll know her hands anywhere

Hamlet will always have to say the lines written

for Hamlet (James Hollis From Misery to Meaning)

do you know the author of your lines?

or have u realized that your lines are written by

suffering a life  by ecstasy  by moving toward death

with aplomb

my mother did   everyday  make-up on  orange lips

pearl hair-clip   bejewelled hands like buttah   i miss

her hands

the one bent finger  where my own begins to slant

we held hands every Tuesday  +sang Stevie Wonder

until Tuesdays ran out

her hands by her sides began to rigor  misshapen

curling into deathgrip  skin still so soft  +birdclaw

things of great beauty

did you know that you can change the script? at any time

you can jump ship  go to a dengue ridden rainforest in

in Grenada!

cavort with thick fingered cartel members in Mexico  GO!

or you can swing your chains above your head   just be

careful  someone doesn’t lose an eye

___

Fall 2022  ..sit complacent by that fork in the road ..or just stick a fork in it poet..

dead can dance

a smallish man with a penchant for

cart+pony show jokes  picked up our

mother’s dead body  last Monday

his name was  Mordecai

after beating him about the head+neck

for insensitivity +near idiocy  i allowed

him to proceed

with one caveat  hurt my mother + i hurt you

at 5 foot 2  he’d intended to lift her model’s

frame  corpulent+decompose    ALONE!

our largish death doula administered karate

kicks  as my old bro + i  each grabbed a side

+began to heave-ho

mother believed  casting pearls before the swine

the 8th deadly sin  she began to spin  +dance the

meringue

old flames appeared too  Tony Curtis (aka Bernie Schwartz)

and Joe Dimaggio   father did not dance  ever   he grooved

like a beat poet  deeply invested in Coolsville

__

..Think Pig! Think!.. (Pozzo  Waiting for Godot  Samuel Beckett)

Fall 2022  ..what was was..

it’s a bird! it’s an angel! it’s mummybird!

drop off the keys lee and set yourself free

there may be 50 ways to leave your lover

but there is only 1 way to leave your body

and it’s through  the soulhole

yesterday my mother met her maker-ess

Mrs. Death   mine lurks in the curtains  winking

+flashing

final third

final third

the renting of my mother’s flesh from me   devastation hi way

my el camino  where i’ll walk the stations until  feet+palms  bleed

she wasn’t just  the body  

as undertaker Mordecai

proclaimed

she was the sacred vessel   the temenos  where i wombed

swimming like a carp   in her milkydeeps   she was the crucible

of the vicissitudes

of the gutwrench

the beautiful

gifting this  ONE LIFE

where  one more once  

the pact of faust

hey Mephistopholes

a penny for your thoughts

my kingdom for your

flightpath

__

Fall 2022   …when u gunnin for me?..

the mother of all vigils

mother’s last pickpocket wore a black hood

he’d lived in the apartment unbeknownst for

eons  all succubus + dybuuk

mercy mercy me

the vigil lasted from August 10th covid riddled

until November 14th at 3 am  mother faltered

+succumbed

he was wily handsome  +Roger Mudd suave  as

we lay in various positions on her bed  mother’s

deaththroes  beautiful  +most treacherous

sores  +virus  encrust our mother’s lust for all things  life

today she joins her Maker  where am i going?  to meet my  

my     what’s his name??

the Maker of life  death  +dat udda place  where mother

will grace the halls  hollywood deathmask  firmly in place

but wait!  a tinkling of bells  a swish of wings  Mum?  Mum?

not a trace

__

November 2022      ..wait for me..

the motherload

but you know everything!  

this from my 98 yr old mother

she  robotically entrapped  +CNN’d

some obscure tidbit re Russian oligarchs

stumps poet  who is dissociate   +autopilot

later she says: i wish you were my doctor

hers  a somnambulant shrink  who thinks

asking:  how’s your sleep?   is a goddamn

cure  for death by waiting

it is  NOT

i am your doctor mummydearest  have been

since about 3  when on sturdy rubberbooted

legs  i walked into your tempests  +plucked you

with one eagleclaw   out of harm’s way    but i

cannot do it everyday  now can i?   poet seriously

dragging old assss  with hawks circling her  joie de vivre

__

..without magic, illness, knives, arrows, wars and death, life

would be just a matter of eating, drinking, sleeping and defecating;

life would be no good without death.. (Kasai of East Africa)

Fall  2022  ..smell that smell..

immortality what is it good for absolutely nothing

the unvarnished truth re: immortality   we invented it

out of fear   no one from the tribe wanted to be like

the inert guy  over there

they poked  +prodded  +bugs lauded

HELL NO  WE WONT GO!

fast forward to the 21st century  warehouse blues for

80 – 102    old dementing  many fomenting  chosen few

fermenting

sprouting shrouds none too soon

how do u like immortality now?

ask those in the waiting house   each+every one will tell u

doctors are ghouls  the script pad + jagged little pills  devil’s seeds

especially  the tinytiny one  they can barely see

openmouthed gaping   did it go down?

which 60 yr old will ever eat again

with  zest   gusto   aplomb?

hey  why not be brave  take away the immortality cocktails  give them

fine cognac fer chrissakes  turn waiting houses into palliative yurts! use

your imagination people   (how ’bout a few ladders!)

build places where

the boneold  can rest

before the final climb

we don’t need  your bingo  your dark sarcasm re: non weight bearing

showers   your other goulish devices   hey people  leave the almost

dead   to the task of  HOME

the eternal return

the anti-dote to your

filthy immortality

O Lord  i wanna be in that number!

__

Fall 2022  ..poet needs vacation..