songanddancegirl

SPIRITS

WE ARE SPIRITS IN A MATERIAL WORLD

Sitting at the confluence of an ancient riverbed +

hipster heaven   The gold howlin wolf  glinting

Children dressed in Lulu dispirited in the

splashing pool   I’m bored   I want  more  

Every day at 2  the young staff don rubber boots

+Hazmat suits   They scour stylish kid gunk  as

purebred dogs hump long legged girls  with wild

abandon

The weed store on the corner beckons with free

samples  +gummies for the kids!  The tree above me

has a neon green cross sprayed on decaying trunk

The weed freebie makes me bold  +foolhardy

I sit beneath a branch after measuring the trajectory

of a sudden drop  Like the one that killed Pierre  just over

there  last week   Memorial flowers rotting in Delta-like heat

What does the neon cross mean?

A word would be helpful Parks & Rec. people: safe   run   widow maker  

fool     Instead today’s national newspaper tells me that: there is no non

physical soul  or ego   These scientists +philosophers must be really

depressed   Or perhaps not believe that sex is like pizza  even bad sex

is still pretty good?

Michael Graziano  neuroscientist at Princeton says: Consciousness is a con

game   The brain playing with itself   Mystical masturbation?   Graz has never

heard  Summertime  + likely suffers from a gluten allergy

While Giullio Tononi  a major force in the science of consciousness  predicts that

devices as simple as thermostats +dildos  have glimmers of soul   Ditto that a dvd

player can be many times more conscious than the human brain

So  are we just depressed computers?   And soul the ghost in the machine?

Will Pierre’s unborn son   present at his father’s crushing   not sit by the very

same tree  somewhere around 2023 + know his father intimately?

Believe

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..witnesses say that Pierre pushed his pregnant wife to safety

just as the giant branch popped..

Summertime  2016

*Falling tree limbs have injured or killed at least 20 people in 

the past 7 yrs. in Toronto, which is falling short of a goal set to

prune trees every 7 yrs.  Now pruning every 15 yrs., and 

paying more than 2 million in liability claims so far this past 7 yrs.

GENIUS

RACKED WITH SYPHILIS  A LEGEND  A GENIUS

June 7 1848  Gaugin born  Paris   died Tahiti 1903

He embraced la vie d’artiste bohème  Called himself

a savage  Deserted 5 children in full rebellion against

bourgeois respectability   So enamoured was he with

pert brown breasts  Exploitation or exaltation? You tell

me

Reportedly wed increasingly younger girls  prepubescent

queens  Elevated debauchery to fauve glory  Initiation rituals

now considered child rape  But then we are a species who as

recently as 1980 routinely subjected babies to open heart surgery

without anesthesia  because: infant brains were not developed

enough to feel pain  ditto  the 9 yr. old hymen of 1893

So when the sun finally sets on human civilization  will it still be

believed that the size of the wise ape’s brain is related to: sophistication

of social behaviour?  What would the yellow-haired ape have to do prior

to the coming U.S. election for the nobility of his party to outright reject

him   +send him gibbering back to a padded room at Mar-a-Lago?

What might this act be?  Jolt land of the free out of complacency   Make

Brexit regret look like child’s play   Wait until he begins  the rounding up

the barbing of wire  a la 1933   Too extreme?  Or has the last remnant of the

American dream finally been scraped off of the glass ceiling?  So that you

might almost see the human spark when it first began to glow!

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Flowers rotting, flies web caught; riots, roars of caged lions, clowns in

love with dollar bills, nations moving people like pawns. But they’ve

left us a bit of music, a jigger of scotch, a small volume by Rimbaud,

and a horse running as if the devil were twisting his tail.

(Charles Bukowski  Mockingbird Wish Me Luck Poems  1972)

Late Summer 2016     Have you no decency Sir?

BEHEMOTH

THE BEHEMOTH BARELY BUDGED

I kept my wits with me and I tried to get my

rubbers off but I couldn’t  I said I’ll end my life

right here   Tony Morgan 79  after colliding with

a 40 tonne Humpback in Newfoundland last week

His younger brother Jerry  dead from Lou Gehrig’s

pushed him up out of the water

Not so fortunate a 33 yr. old Somali man  who in

another part of the country  was beaten to death with

clubs by police  They hit until he pass away  until he

dead   His 5 brothers  nor his suicided father could save

him   You can’t help but think if he was another colour

He was not perceived as a troublemaker  but ran from police

who used batons+pepper spray on the mentally ill brother

The most gruesome thing I ever saw  said a witness  This in:

a gentrifying area of downtown Ottawa!

The first Monarch appears beside me on its way to Mexico via

Pelee + Appalachia  heralding the end of this bloody summer –

the hottest in Canadian history

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Save us from shotguns and father’s suicides.

John Berryman  The Dream Songs  1959

Late Summer  2016

MOTHER

THE MOTHER OF CONVENTIONS

bernie so cute  take him home to meet

my mother   michelle  giantess in flats

blue swirly dress   monica wore a blue

dress too  now it’s in smithsonian   she

can’t walk down the street  or hold her

head high   so kneels daily in synagogue

thirsty   +unrepentant

if hillary  the best changemaker  aw shucks

bill knows  is not elected  monica may be

beatified by bernie’s tribe   bill  feeble +

hoarse  holds his head high  but leaves out

lewinsky   juiciest tidbit in mundane speech

about wife’s perfection   if she was so perfect

why bill  why?

double standard  though impeached  off scot-

free   would you buy a used car from this man?

Yet his was hardly the 1st oval office/cum brothel

Jackie kept kids in another house down the road

so that when marilyn visited  her barren womb

would not cry a river for soon slain brothers

their pool parties with starlets  included a future suicide

+another  beheaded in a collision   would bernie do that to

jane?  he spoke with such fervour on monday  you want to

protect him  from  good men who do nothing  +mad donald’s

mob  who will make america hate again

__

Summer 2016

TEARS

BRISKET & TEARS

he grew more pinched each time i appeared

even when books sold i had to be bold   ahem

want to settle up?  oh ya sure   perma-sneer

firmly in place   face pleasantly porcine

today he handed me 2 remaining copies   we need

room  lots of new poetry stuff coming in   sharklike

grin   but you’ve sold 10   have you sold 10 of liz smart?

or gert stein?

prostration stopped short of damnation  or the hundreds

of words in next collection will wander west queen west

dispossessed  alone  moaning periodically   +giving off the

scent of desperation  +gertrude’s final brisket

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It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much

doing nothing, really doing nothing.  Gertrude Stein 

Summer 2016

KIDS

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT?

1/3 of all Ontario high school students are

suffering from moderate to severe depression

+ anxiety   This an alarming leap from 2013

when only 1/4 rated their mental health as fair

to poor

Why would this be the case?   In a world where a

man with yellow hair +a perma-tan is the newest

opoid  of the masses   Forget hillbilly heroin  the

Donald is: cultural heroin  according to the Atlantic

Monthly   Then there’s  Melania  real housewife from

hell   teasing us with bromides cribbed from  Michelle!

Let’s face it  the kids are spending 5 hrs a day plugged

in   wondering when the next lone wolf is coming to a

theatre near you   And worrying about a virus found recently

in  Culex quinquefaciatus  a mosquito 20 times more common

than the one behind Dengue

We have yet to find an exotic alien civilization  +are faced with

the cold realization  that humanity may be truly alone   Except

for the man with yellow hair: Americans call them hillbillies,

rednecks, white trash, but I call them friends +family

Kids  your life is ahead of you  the world your oyster!  Bromides+

platitudes   Grab hold of the chair in your parent’s kitchen  + don’t

let them pry your fingers off  or tempt you with slogans like:

Real war heroes don’t get captured

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Summer 2016

MADONNA

LADY MADONNA

men are gesticulating menacingly   i see them

in the rearview regularly   my driving is not all

that it might be   no doubt struggling with ptsd

the last lone-wolf attack in Nice  has left me

scanning the streets for white cube trucks  with

refrigeration

why did he rent a mini morgue?   had he intended

to store the crushed bodies for experiments?   no

that was Mengele   wrong war   Today i did see a white

truck  +imagine it running amok in trinity bellwoods

park   eviscerating the curated calm

when a woman runs smack into my car   she hits with a

thud  +falls to the ground   then up on her feet  she sprints

down queen street   i make eye contact with the driver next

to me  his eyes suggest a shrug  of complicity?

i step out into traffic+honking   +run my hand over the

madonna shaped dent   i wonder if this speaks of a turning

point  as marian apparitions often do

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In the spring and summer of 1916, nine-year-old Lucia Santos and her cousins 

were herding sheep near their home village of Fátima, Portugal. They claimed to

have experienced the visitation of an angel on three occasions. The angel identified

herself as “The Angel of Peace”.  This visitation was deemed belief worthy in 1946.

Mid Summer  2016

REVOLUTION

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION

The next revolution is of the Pokemon variety

Just download the app  Pokemon Go  +your

smartphone GPS will lead you to monsters

embedded in historical sites  like:  Auschwitz

the Holocaust Museum D.C.  +the National War

Memorial

Just be careful if you play the game in a state where

open/carry  is all the rage  or  stand your ground  is firmly

in place   You may bump into a gunslinger at McDonald’s

where 3.6 million Pikachus have been hidden   And if it is

after a U.S. massacre where an AR-15 was used  it is likely

your gunslinger will use one on you +blow your Pokemon

ass from here to the Pecos

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*in the wake of all U.S. gun massacres the shooter’s gun of 

choice sells out in seconds

** west of the Pecos River  a 19th century place of wild west mayhem

like much of the continental U.S. today where in 2013 there were 

30,636 deaths by gun violence

Summer 2016

SHAKE

SHAKE YOUR MONEY MAKER

Does man want to prove that there is life

on other planets  or  that he exists?   Theories

abound re: human consciousness   A mote in

the eye of the Lord gone rogue  stuck on ON

Meaningless static

Today my significant other said the next revolution

will be  the revolution of meaning  When the bloom

falls from the rose of materialism  +those who have

never sought meaning  (mostly because it’s free)  will

sharpen their forks  +fight you for yours

Culled in the desperate hours when you pined away for

2.5 vacations annually  +a cottage on a packed peninsula

where you would sit  sweaty+corpulent  Blissfully unaware

that in Jeb’s boathouse over there  unspeakable things are

being done to the fatted calf

__

Summer  2016

KILLER

THE KILLER IN ME IS THE KILLER IN YOU

He was a sturdy spider   A jumper  with thick

juicy legs    I chased him for 20 minutes

pulling a muscle  +smashing a $5,900 Meisen

clock   The cherubs wept bitterly  resisting my

efforts to placate with minuscule gummy Mary Jane

+copious amounts of crazy glue   Louboutin shoe now

securely glued to fashionable jacuzzi tub

Spider juice runs an obscene blue+kelly green   Every

night I hear hopeless cherubs moan  as spider guy’s ghost

bites me through 400 count Egyptian cotton sheets   Luxuries

not distraction enough from headlines  or creeping paranoia

Mary Jane gummies finally getting the best of me

Osama’s son Hamza: #WEAREALLOSAMA  (are we all Gautama  +the

crucified fisherman too?)  now in his mid 20’s  threatens a  9/11 re-do

Lives in a bunker to this day   Father’s blood paints walls inky red  obscene

brain splats  a Rorschach for the ages

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In another twist  Aspire Assist  has been developed by U.S. doctors   A weight

loss tool  both effective +profitable  A device is surgically placed in the stomach

with a port just above the belly-button  to jettison a portion of one’s meal   How to

deal with juxtapositions?   The sublime+ the ridiculous   The sacred+ the mundane

What would Jesus say?

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Brad Pitt + Hermann Rorschach

a juxtaposition for the ages

Summer  2016