songanddancegirl

ode to 68

some parts of 68 feel like the shit abyss

other parts  ecstatic confessions  paralytic knee

levitational psyche  old sage  parsley sage rosemary  +time

would i trade for my 28 yr old splendiferousness?

i thought no pre-April 20th  International Weed Day

Hitler’s b.day  too

now i do think  i do not have a soul  (Al Purdy)  poor

Al  donned a homemade mask to leave these parts when

cancerbidden  his last breath quite strangled

no  i still wouldn’t trade these (un)endless numbered days

poor Al  believed his soul had fled  and maybe his did  i

mean he had a child with his wife’s bestfriend  guilty +desecrate

then married her again   poor Eurithe Purdy

no  my fragrant soul  smells like teenspirit  +old mezcal casks   dig it?

we are entwined in deeeeeep participation mystique  dancing with

freshly dead  Max Romeo   poet in Babylon     soon

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Spring 2025  ..yeah we wept when we remembered Zion..

the preparatio

certain doors of perception open  +close  at every stage of life

36  double chai   2nd HALF OF LIFE   still robust  immortal

mostly    but waning   +interruptus

knowing glowing showing telling  ad nauseam  Gods of idealism

joie de vivre  limpskimp  regret   a bell tolls  +BANG💥   the  FINAL 3rd’s  

arrived   the mystical doors swing wide   enter little human +buckthefuckup

suffering intensely the losses  the illnesses  the death marches  the deepest

dive into the mysteries  the  PREPARATIO  has begun   birthed to Frances

to Lee  Easter Sunday  1957   i always thought i would die in the 2040’s

in 2047   90  no fuckingway!   hey  i miss my parents desperately  they

the glue  the holybedrock  the homefire  the birds 🐦🐦  make your own

way now   crone of bones  ash  stardust  ether

it is NOT my own death that troubles me  i expect to die  +the Reap will not

cheat me of that experience  it is the deaths of my peeps  this is unbearable

(being human can suck)

maybe i just want to die first  does this make me a coward?  i don’t think so

it’s the living through the gestation periods of their deaths  father planning parties

he who HATED parties  we talked about the deathfeast endlessly   for weeks

old mother  the last woman standing  almost missed the bus to visit her lost sisters

I just want to go home   football bro regaling invisible minions   in hospice hell

but oh that final breath   ars moriendi   a whiff of God’s dog   +GONE

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..flesh is a mess of blood  pieces of bone  a woven tangle of nerves

veins  arteries  human lives are yesterday a blob of semen  tomorrow 

embalming fluid  ash..   Marcus Aurelius  6.13 2.2 4.48

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Spring 2025  ..L’ CHAIM..we get it Marcus..we get it!

MR. MARTY IS IN THE HOUSE

the axe in the chest was pulled out around the end of year 2

the gash now  dried blood  salt  impish memories of impish grin

he does the bugaloo in my bedroom daily  his fave dance circa 1968

BAPTISMS OF FIRE

did u know that the rusty blackbird has already

lost about 90 % of its numbers  +there are a billion

fewer blackpoll warblers than there were in the seventies??

there has also been a sharp decline in the brother population

a world without songbirds is a world without brothers  and i

know too that all of u are growing weary of this poet’s madness

grief the stuff of tragedy  all greek to me  a baptism of silence if

i ever heard one  hey does anyone out there have a voicemail of

his voice?  please send it to me asap  the silence is deafening

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Fall 2018  ..5 weeks today..a protracted grief they say..

SAW YOU STRETCHED OUT

in this room marty atkins bravely battled

the behemoth   cancerinterruptus   people

came and went  but he stayed  couldn’t walk

or talk  or pray   so i did for you  and now regularly

howl my grief at the moon

some say:  just don’t focus on these memories

yet certain ones remain etched into the grey matter

brain now reeling with footage of those days  but in the

moments before fully awake  we laugh  and plan my trip

to buttfuck

your little one horse town in Mexico  where you found peace

and bought a donkey   i’ll come in february on an ice floe  +

follow the path of the monarchs over Lake Ontario

so wait for me  and make me the salmon risotto bro

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..energy can neither be created nor destroyed ..

it can only change forms..

(2nd law of Thermodynamics)

some people say he’s with you  just in a different form

but i don’t care much for this pleasantry  i don’t want a

monarch for a brother  i want a football player

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Fall 2018  ..RIP BIG BRO..

reprieve repo reap leap

he/we   granted a reprieve   the black hood  lifted off   the target🎯

with bits   of resected chordoma inside   now incinerated +unfussy

for a moment the firing squad puts down their  AK-45s

we run  ragged  jugulars pulsing  old bro + i  sit in MRI holding tank

the man on the cover of  TIME  circa 1968  with his head being blownoff

is here too   moaning +grisly   in a wheelchair   he is bound+gagged

later we hear his screams as the MRI machine  eats him  cho mmmm p

these giant magnets  see into our soulholes  our cellular debris  offal

+beauty    misery    detenté with  the Reap

Kissinger begs for my husband’s life   HENRY!  HENRY!   there is still

no peace in the Mid-East  that Kushner kid  shit the bed   now it’s all

hostage  rubble  +limbs     soon a casino

what will poet do with said reprieve?  she will hunker down on moist

haunches  +take off eh!   a sprungcoil   all sinew  tendons +jagged   she leaps

like a Bosch dybbuk   stay away from me     i am yet     free

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Spring 2025   ..hey repo man   let my people go..

well she really worked me over good

you sprinkle the session  with buddha tidbits  as if

you are Siddhartha  with barren mythologies  as if

you pulled them fresh from the world psyche  (and not your ass)

why you’re Persephonied!  you pronounce  Queen of Hades!

but therapist  that isn’t good  Hades was a rapist  a tyrant

OH NO   you’ve been initiated into the mysteries

yes  the mysteries of counter-transference resistance   (i wrote a paper on it!)

where grieving and gutted by your own suffering   you approach

me   with a scythe   all for a fee    poor poor pitiful me

  ..listen up thera-bitch..

an empty hospital bed sits in the consulting room  giving   the couch 

a whole new meaning  the dangerous method indeed   you unholy fool

the rape of Persephone was not pretty  hey healer  heal thyself   for chrissakes

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Spring 2025  ..Persephone Rises..

these ants are nihilists donny

our ants are in remission  each Spring we are lulled into

complacency  as husband #3 drops food liberally  banana

detritus  peanut gallery  coffee grinds from hell

countertop mayhem  ants plotting their comeback tour

soon in our bed  encouraging  swatting  slapping  among

other acts  of tainted love  +S/M debauchery

red trails into darkmoist pubes  (do old people have pubes?)

they hover  listen intently to human misery  the odd bit of

elation   smearing sheets with sacred substances

they are red  with beady bedroom eyes  à la Antman Edwards  but

not as cute   laying embryos in ears   +inner thighs   soon our tall

yellowhouse  will be crawling with resurrection + fragrant anty-feces

Welcome to Spring in Canada  eh! 🐜🐜🐜

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Spring 2025

leitmotif blues

this is so hard  harder than leaving childhood  epiphanic  but

life ahead from here  backside of the mountain  to where?  25yrs

in the tall yellowhouse  mouldering   35  in smouldering marriage

today many handymen ransack +amok  trying to match paint and

patch scars  one pipes in  just hide the cracks  bringing to mind the

Japanese art of  Kintsugi

the beautiful breaks  humpty-gold in the cracks  dumpster at the ready

for my treasures +me   but  HARK!  the faint leitmotif breaks on thru

i’ve heard it before

my soundtrack

my argument

my question

my fate

if one more faux stoic says: amor fati   i will shiv em   your fate is not a

burden if you embrace where you came from  despise your origin story  you

rot  my old mother did (not rot) often saying: we were poor but always had food

she said that to all the fancyladies at the rez   they who pranced in their diamonds

+deshabille  shouting  WE LIVED IN WESTMOUNT!   well you ain’t living in

Westmount anymore       bitches

why can you never step into the same river twice grasshopper?  by the end you

cannot find the same river  or any river   your leitmotif   your thesis  is now your

final breath  when for the first+last time  you truly live in the fucking moment

+ btw  fuck Ram Dass

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..we do not rush toward death  we flee the catastrophe of birth  

survivors struggling to forget it  fear of death is merely the projection

into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life..

(Emil Cioran  1911-1995)

Spring 2025     let my people go Dathan!

apes of wrath

it’s a place where everyone says  i hope you never return

i hope you never see me again    instead of namaste

there is no peace  in these rooms

i heard screams+crying in the night  a demented childwoman

shuffled  in terrycloth robes  ratty  fragrant with fecal  we heard

her cry again  when we visited the replacement surgeon

ours having fled to Greece  where the bones of Seneca  moulder

You will not die because you are sick   but because you are alive

i lost my thrill in those rooms  dating back to 17

at mother’s vivisection  byebye joie de vivre  did i ever have a shred?

hmmmm  brief moments in Cali  when i still believed in the BIG SUR

of  Miller Kerouac Liz Smart    by Nepenthe i sat down and wept

..she was like a beautiful dinner left out overnight..she was sumptuous

but the guests were gone..    James Salter  Light Years   1975

fools live their lives backwards  and of a Sunday morning  google

an old whore  who bilked your dazzling father  who raged like a bull

of his youth   +his last semblance of saintly

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Winter 2025  ..why u so smart Seneca the Younger?…🏛🏛

a way above my head i see the strangest sight

hole in heart  pierced through  to the quick  underneath all

is the gut  fucking  punch  of brain cancer  this cancer odyssey

rips you apart  +pieces you back together  as if  you are still yourself

but you are  NOT  +never will be  ever   yet underneath the blood

yoke staples radiation burns  a new poet emerges  part forestsprite

part crone  stoic ju bu   (thinking caps on.. you can decipher this!)

you rise  un-humpty   2000+yrs ago Aurelius said: i am an old man now  

it’s time to stop being a slave  to no longer be pulled along like a puppet

on strings  to stop being dissatisfied with today  and afraid of tomorrow 

oh she is tired  a watery sun warms her old poetparts   a bitter wind licks

her  in the slits  where her coat doesn’t give cover  she listens to the leafless wind

no birds   a quiet freeze   you cannot extinguish me     motherfuckers

girl woman crone cadaver skeleton bones twigs nests bugs frogs stray cats in the

family garage  saddles  a brother’s real  birth certificate  a rusted out used car

how did her old parents ever clean out that house?  both spent+breathless  +free

recent missive from the heavens where parents float..

where a Chagall fiddler fiddles  ..over old wine+old bones 

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Winter 2025 ..free llirpa snikta..🕊

one more once

🖤 Lee Atkins  1921-1989  RIP 🖤

daddybird put me on a horse at 3   grab the mane!

said he   there was no saddle   he walked close by

in cowboy boots   Jewish John Wayne

The Rifleman  my favourite tv show back then  Mark

the Rifleman’s son  my 1st love interest  cowboy father

knew   +took me to see him  at the rodeo

never been so excited  since   father’s big manbody beside me

fragrant+paco rabbane   Mark on his horse  the bull’s butts smeared

with feces    DAD WHAT IS THAT??     (almost the best part)

hey daddybird come back!  +walk with me through the

shit abyss of my   late 60’s   morass   childhood a cakewalk

compared to this        or was it?

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Winter 2025  ..poet soon Lee’s age..when he died..dig it?