songanddancegirl

different strokes

there’s an old heavy breasted woman sitting across

from me  she looks saintly  her stigmata  drips green

probably leftover kale smoothie

blissed out people bleed veggies here  white robed

+hottentot aproned  we are after all at a Nordic retreat

in the wilds of PEI

later on  a girl  all orgasmic whimpering   under the

frigid showerhead   i wonder if this is secret lingus-code

her white skin jiggles  as salt is rubbed on moist thighs

juicy pink mole on buttcheek whimpers too  it sounds

like my name !   i edge closer   headlock ensues  by George

i don’t think i’m in Kansas   anymore

__

Summer 2025 ..what i did on my summer vacation..

Freda☠️Sarah☠️Ape

in a feverdream  3 women on a deathbed  whispering

entwined-eternity  grandmothermotherdaughter   spooning

poet  their witness   their seed   a sacred duty

wouldn’t have missed it   for anything        (who will be with me?)  

poet-daughter still kicking

everything

first deathbed  at 5 yrs  my lizard in hand   72 yr old bubba-Sarah

stroking  eyes flailing   more recently at 65 yrs   presided over

mother’s   Freda 98   an old bro in tow   call me sister morphine

decimate   horror

the breathing-vigil

curling fingers   the dampness

the Reaper-ed peace

Freda enwombed in Sarah   Ape enwombed in Freda

some birds   a lost civilization   +a trumpet   entombed

in Ape    a clarion call to arms   let my people go

Ape: what would your mother think of me?  

Freda: she’d get down on her knees  and worship you

i’m still here girls

the last surviving

Russiandollface

__

…she was herself…i have never seen anyone

who reminded me of her…how she stood…

what she said…but where has she gone?

now and again at night…or in the street…there she is

beautiful…emphatic…lighting our random lives…👑

(Virginia Woolf   Moments of Being  1908)

Summer 2025 …some Russiandolls…

one more cup of coffee fore i go

father looked broken   but he was not   even at the end

especially then   a blue-eyed jesus  rising up from the

balcony chair  (not his first resurrection)   LET’S GO!

back to the parental deathbed   who lies there now?

listening to the murmurings of Frances+Lee   April in Paris

One more once    old wine in old bottles   dig it?

you cannot measure a life by it’s despairs  you must look at

the moments of decimation  as pure+radiant transformation

thru the dark woods   when the caughtbird transcends

smokes another cig   shoots a rough tequila  marches

through used car lots  to a kind of nirvana   only to be

found   in desire

fellas  the end is nigh

i strongly suggest

a wild +cautionless

trajectory

__

July 2025  ..now go forth +multiply..   dig it?

do u belive in magic?

what are the central images of your life?  how do these define you?

your unique character  person  being  calling  identity?

fields rolling by   farms   cows   trees  endless green   horses

they shoot ’em dont they?  turquoise fabric on couch  shot thru

with threads of silver  dog fur  your parent’s bodies  your father’s

watch in the dark   glowing green  your mother’s long hair being

brushed out  100 strokes lashes  for marrying  for security

what’s love got to do with it?

i didn’t love him until much much later  much   mother’s dresses

accessories  jewellery  prosthetic limb  dressed to kill suburban

dumbdumbs  rounders  grifters  a swimming pool’s turquoise water

your 1st ocean   u still dream of having one   all your own

not watching neighbour children swim  through barbed-wire fence  keep

the riffraff out   get off my property   a girl named Nelly  sneered   so you

pushed her  into the sandbox  where dead frogs squishstank  now mother

of 3   richest family in Canada    croakcroak

but i also saw magic fer chrissakes!  the moon  stars  ghosts

a mobster  with a poodle named Mike    midnight snow

a toothless bank robber  at breakfast   rainbows  glittersparkle

transformed ugly sub urban human tract   into PurdonOz

maudlin i know   how ’bout the entrails of a dead gofer?

all shinyjelly +moist

these images precursors to  screaming cancer patients  at 17   emaciated bestie

of mother’s  in a leopardskin robe deathbed scene   stitches   catheter bags

okay i’ll stop   i likely have your attention

today sparks flew from a construction site 💥 incinerated husband #3 💥 whose

ashes floated West    possibly saving him from another brainsaladsurgery

__

..life is your project; there is nothing to tell you what it’s all about.. it’s all

up to you, each individual alone..there is neither God nor Godot to wait for..

build the project of your life with your own heroic hands..

(James Hillman  The Soul’s Code  1996)

Summer Solstice  2025  ..believe..

a mapless life in a mapless universe

i read yesterday  in the new york times (so it must be true)

that the body is both  a tomb

and a portal to transcendence

to nirvana

to the gods

to your waiting  mother  father  brother  poodle

and that to die as fully as you have lived  a conversation must begin

with Mrs. Death   +your ebbing life   reconciling the differences

between  the life you have  +the life you longed for

As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked

Dinosauria We   Charles Bukowski  1992

look no further than your passions as a child:

animals

books

nature

dancing

acting

oceans

wizards

style

saving lives

your unconscious your guide  to a mapless human life  in a mapless universe

but first you must learn  how to read the signs   the images    the dreams

+synchronicities    placed on your path quite intentionally

propelling you forward to become yourself   what daimon was sent to egg

you on?  with a mind of its own  it propelled you to a passion  for catching birds!

perfect pastime    for one so devoted to alone

did the daimon of ape choose her birdparents?   mummybird+daddybird

both summoned by their flocks in the end   hawks bluejays house wrens

birds of happiness   birds of prey   the birds of Purdon Drive

apes flock for 35 years  kids with  brokenwingsbonestrust  fleshflayed

bathed in scalding water   whips+chains   dad kept wire under the bed  

he tied mom up too   the judge lifted an eyebrow

therapist should i send this child  home?

how the hell should i know

__

Spring  2025   ..King Solomon always knew what to do.. 1Kings 3:16 28

old terrors old lusts old despairs begone

i wear the ring Sidney gave her  diamonds  not

a girl’s bestie  3 large  14 small  set in platinum

it was a promissory note  for her soul

then he went back to his pregnant wife  for the

birth of their 5th  badcad was never gonna marry her

he was a joker  a racetrack habitué  an unholyfool

she believed him  like the humans holding up their

little crosses against the devil  wearing garlic against

the vampire    (old terrors old lusts old despairs)     

William Faulkner  As I Lay Dying  1930

she called her mother from the phonebooth on

Overbrook St.  send me train fare i gotta get outta here

now newly married  to Lee  +very pregnant with me

the ring a talisman  protecting me from the truth?  which

so far has  NOT  set me free   ..stupidity is honest   +

straightforward  (Mr. Dostoyevsky)   truth is not  (Ms. AAC)

mother now fully transformed  into Venus  she sits on the

western horizon  the first+last star   i discovered her when

i rose at 5:30 am for 22 days  +raced up wretched Bathurst St.

to make her a nice covidbreakfast   we two in N95s   could

only see the whites of our eyes   i peeled the fetid oranges

(Ape they have no taste epis)    i poured the too hot teas

(my family makes the hottest tea!)

after mother died i took her to Curaçao  where she hung outside

my window  over a starstruck ocean  no star as bright   no star

with such style   and style is character

(her’s haughty/innocent  +oh so diva)

mirror mirror on the wall  

who’s the fairest of them all?

I AM!   hands down

now fuck you all

rollercoaster apocalypse calming down some  but i’ll be damned

i still cannot find the pieces of me  carved out on November 14th  2022

at 3:10 am    but i’m getting closer

the truth is out there

__

Spring 2025    ..it takes 3-5 years to fully face the absence..and then some..

into the wild+outraged bathurst st. earth

..i heard that my mother is dead..it is because in the wild

and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon..

(Dewey Dell Bundren  As I Lay Dying  William Faulkner 1930)

in the beginning  a scar in the earth

ravaged

savaged

enantiodromia

earthclumps around a deepwell   (lookin for the water from a deeper well)

gradually the earth heals  along with your  heartsever   soulrip  +lung collapse

scar tissue over the crevasse

(doctor i cant breathe…well you’re grieving too hard for chrissakes!)

you come to accept the absence  somewhat   3 hawks take the place of your

dead 3   Freda  Martino  Lee  the graves become  a sacred place  where moths

beetles  +angels play   the hawks cruise  as you  organize pagan chachkas

you soak in the peace   the pieces of them always present  then you face

the inevitable return  get back into your rusted out car  +fight your

way back  onto the wild+outraged streets

__

..where a clown without a conscience

plays   he has the wholewideworld in

his hands ..oh bartleby ..oh humanity..

my peeps are missing all the fun..

Spring 2025  ..recently a 4 year old with cancer..was banished from his lands..

ape’s + camus’..aperçus

mother’s day at the cemetery  peaceful carnage  my dead mum

+dad  sleep side by each   the curled fingers of rigor  now clasped

cabbage moth alights on a brother   he  spitting image of father

cheekbone chisel

good muscles

man of few words   (to put it mildly)

a tad wry

can you bend your knees?   he asks me  as though i’m approaching

90   yes i can!  but one knee quite lamebuckle today  +btw  who you

calling old lady     old man !

but enough of this:

ageism

hagism

bagism

poet leaves the cemetery  cruised by a giant red hawk  the shade of

dead ma’s hair   Freda winks  come back soon apes   i’m decorating

a whitecake  there will be party sandwiches  +cokes  with pink-striped

straws  in each

in my books Sisyphus is happy

a veritable hero-ine for chrissakes

mother pushed her rock up the hill   with style    gumption +grace

sammies now wrapped in white shrouds  into fridge  oh the mayonnaise

every year come April  the same ritual   i don’t wish her back in the fray

but i wouldn’t say no to 1 more day   i know exactly what she would say

next time i tell you i’m gonna die  

+send a flash of lightening into

your living room  beside the  Frida Kahlo book    

listen up    dumbkopf!   

(Freda Marlieb Atkins  1924-2022)

__

…her fate belongs to her…her rock is her thing …the rock is still rolling

she is stronger than her rock… there is no such thing as futile suffering

there is no sun without shadow  and it is essential to know the night! 

(Albert Camus 1955  pronoun re-imagined by AAC )

Spring 2025  ..for Deedle..who has a fondness for the cabbage moth..🦋🐛🦋

..and for Lovie who is stronger than her rock..🦬

keepers of private notebooks are a different breed ..lonely rearrangers of things..malcontents..oracles

everything’s a little foreign this Spring  things pop up

on familiar pathways  strange venus flytraps  12! robins

screetchbob  a peckerheaded wood sprite pecking for hours

will someone shut that fucker up?

before he becomes peckersoup

why yesterday a fugue-state so deep  i met my father Lee

walkin on the Jericho Road   his horse Tex following behind

father could whisper Tex into submission  a whistle brought him    flying

Lee’s knees press into horse-paunch   turn  left  right  stop  bend down

take my girl aboard  poet held on tight  no saddle  at 5   learned how to fly

on that old warhorse    please excuse me  while i kiss the sky   🐴 🐴

today i read about resilience  that most humans  are in fact  NOT

broken by trauma  they bend   change direction   grow new skin

over that which has been   flayed

over a missing breast

over a stem to stern artery bypass

bladder vivisection  brainsalad surgery

but for me  the witness  (where can I get a witness fer chrissakes?)

little Florence Nightingale wannabe  resilience  is just another word

for  nothing left to lose

and knowing  really knowing  that  no matter how unmoored   I awaken

in the dark of night always glad to be me: sturdy purty  +gritty  don’t ask

__

..i’m not gonna hit ya  the hell i’m not.. 

Spring 2025  ..warhorse poet a tad maudlin..🌻🐤 ..some of u gloat..

the psychoid cerulean

life is decidedly NOT a beach  though there are times

when you think the beach is within creepingreach     (it is not)

you go to the same one with a variety of gentleman callers

4 to be exact  you marry one   then beaches disappear

into the archetypal abyss  marital bliss  +horror

(oh the horror)

but you have carried that beach now for some time  43 yrs

not to put too fine a point on it  you know every grain of sand

wet+crustacean   now ashes dust  +rust    now in memorium

the light is glinting  slanting-moist   it is the unus mundus

the alchemical eden  where all possibility lives  untarnished

by the clashing opposites

by change  age   dysenteries

impermanence     sucks

it’s all still alive  pristine +coppertone

hey  sprinkle my old bones there!

and forget my contact info

__

Spring 2025  ..fuck the weeds of yesteryear..   ..festering..