songanddancegirl

ecstatic confessions

I’M DONE WITH CANCER:

just when u all were threatening to stop  reading me

i agree   it’s been a time of    metastatic-confession

and  it’s over                   for now

you may miss it  +beg me to return with my radioactive

wordplay  my surgeons have both run away    one to

Greece+the Peloponnese    the other to the Mayo

where they took my great grandmother Molly   at 33

5 kids  +dead before the youngest turned 3   Uncle Louie

the sweetest bookie in the family

so i’m done with cancer  you just wait and see   come back

dear readers  + i will regale u with endless stories of sunshine

daffodils  +pigs      be careful what u ask for

pure Carlton card hell  +u thought cancer was maudlin!  but

you’ll stick around   ’cause everyone wants their hope on a

platter   with the fucking thanksgiving roast-pig

this may come as a shock  but hope thrives   i mean THRIVES

in the bowels of my local cancer hospital  where the emaciated

feast on  Miss Vickies  smile at bald children  +hope they’re still

here  in a year?

hey  how ’bout in 3?

PLEASE GIMME  5     my big bro’s   BIG ASK

He was given 2

and ran with them

all the way to Mexico   where he bought pinátas

for the children of strangers

__

(I have always depended on the kindness of strangers..

Miss Blanche Dubois .. Streetcar Named Desire)

FALL 2024  ..Happy 5784 ..The Year of the Doorkeeper..+signs showing the way..✡️

old iron lungs

they’re looking for nefarious items in my lungs

blacklungdisease?  my dignity?  of late it has gone

missing   cancer a too public  thing   (oh it’s a thing)

strangers tell you to  STEP AWAY  from the stretcher

your husband is festering on   perhaps they could use

some people skills?

everyone wants a kind of  effervescent positivity  from you

which has really never been  your operendi   you’re trying it on

though  +it smells like teenspirit   long fermented hypocrisy

but  NEVERMIND   Kurt blew his brains out when Frances

Bean was not yet 2  one of my then child clients said: we can’t

know that therapist    yet i insisted on   the truth

the child’s grandfather had died in a river  grandmother  in a

burning bed    denial anathema    only grieving heals grief

ie., like cures like      (whether u like it or not!)

but waiting for a cancer diagnosis is a fucking altered state

sweat-on-palms  heart-sakluptnischt   (yiddish for heightened

arrhythmic pounding in the chest)

but i don’t feel any of that  i simply want these robotic oncology

workers  to step out of their  robot-suits  and surprise me with

some shred of  simple humanity

you know  the kind where we call  pandemics pandemics  on day 1

and  wars wars  especially when  walkie-talkies  become weapons

of  mass destruction

in that case you would have to value  TRUTH  over  SPIN   7 million

plus  have already died of the spikey-virus  post WHO’s denial    who?

(exactly!)

__

…the truth knocks on the door.. and you say.. GO AWAY  i’m looking for the truth..

so it does!.. (Zen+The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance..Robert M. Pirsig 1974)

Fall 2024  ..new beginnings..💣🌻💣🌻

..and truthfully.. some oncology workers..are loverly🌻

(Ari.. Anne.. Jill.. Steve.. Grace..)

tales o’ the crypt

i’ve heard tell the crypt is a private+stonecoldsilent place

earthy-embrace  with mouldering   but I’ve never imagined

my peeps alone   ever

they are buried side by each  with trinkets placed in coffins

one wears a brother’s scarf  it was cold on the  feld  that day

a wicked storm kicked up  emblem of our old mother’s rage     (i’m what?!)

Freida  who loved life  more than life itself   regularly ate 6 ice cream

bars  in the wee wee hours   of sleepless nights  whilst serenaded by

unknown men   a maven  a heroine   though a useless shrink said:

they will interfere with your lithium  (mother was NEVER on LITHIUM!)

said psychiatrist  also spat on my need to  pre-grieve mother   dead

within weeks  at 98   dont kill her off yet   said she   i marvel at such

colossal stupidity!

you don’t take a good picture  mother told her

i’m not paid for my looks   clearly!    and not for

much else    either

our crypt is a busy place   unfetid  unwormed   you see  our parents+a bro

are  NOT  there   just some dancing bones  +ash  along with the hearts of

our child-selves   who mourn most pitifully    with wailing

post-bardo now   cutting the rug  at our starry ole homestead   where

the  rest of us will  oneday   land   father has  Muddy Waters  at the ready

Ella+the Duke too  +dog Satchmo  whose GIANT tail  thumps out  West End Blues

every great i have ever read  has pointed me in the direction of   NO DEATH

merely transmutation  why it’s bloody uroboric!

no mud  no lotus

no death  no rebirth

your spark inextinguishable    *(see the 1st law of thermodynamics)

__

FALL 2024 ..there’s no place like home..

The Scarlett C

it’s not shame really  it’s more like having your

number called   and all of a sudden  it’s public

Cancer  has entered the building

all stigmata + Ash Wednesday  mark of Zorro on my

forehead  slipped thru a crevace  into the shitabyss

but it’s not all fecal     and i think to myself

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

in new ways   in ways i never did

when i was too busy  worrying about

EVERYSINGLEFUCKINGPLAGUE

known + unknown   when i was a warrior

of    WHAT IF?   and   WHY ME?             (why not me?!)

    oh the sadness of victimhood

fuck all that  the gurus are right

what you   RESIST   PERSISTS

and finally  i fully accept the universal

shitshow   of being a humanwoman  hooked

into the fucking  space/time/continuum     for now

__

FALL 2024  ..for Cam..🦄 🦄 🦄

(as soon as i stopped fighting it all…i won back my steelydignity)

summer of blurrrrrr

whirlwind of tubes  beepingmachines  25 staples in a leg

and a crazy balloonlike contraption  taped to their heads

incase we have to  go back in

sounds like war  what is it good for?  adrenaline cortisol

grief  shock+awe  plentiful   now spat out into civilian life

six months lost     am i dead  or alive?

according to Unamuno: life+death are wretched terms to

which we are limited ..in this prison of time+space.. he hated

civilization    i hate everything   (Charity Royall +AAC)

clearly more dead

but today i am spat   into a low German cafe  the girls beside

me  are likely dead too  but they resist  the mortis  + in the lull

between bites of greasy-sourkraut  pinkish grizzel  on a white tee

highly curated affectation  +thrift   it’s difficult to feel alive

beside  the most shallow jive  known to mankind   you catch

my drift?

but i won’t let these Gen Z grifters  eating 34$ salads   with shift

jobs from 7-11 am  2 days a week  spoil my return to the life i wrested

from oncologists   +brothy turkey dinners    (barfacious to the max)

__

FALL 2024  ..we rise..

read my lips

people often stop and say: your lipstik matches your

glasses today    a sub-standard banalité  my reply  in

a sub-growl: yes it does shlub !

i mean  would you say that to someone?  hopefully you

are a person of  imagination sublime   and you would

likely say:

your lips are a trip

that shade of penispink

is a mix of  science  beauty 

and  mystery   may i run

my thumb  over them?

YES  you can   i’m sure by this juncture  my fans

have noticed  this is my first post-apocalyptic  ie.,

radiation subjugation in a dank summer basement poem

YES  radiation is done  burnsfading  lifeforce forcing  its way

back   running free at Golf Town  while i sit in my local park

looking at newborn twins   quite hungrily

thinking of a Trini friend  who died yesterday  at 60  on his 2nd

honeymoon  his laugh a reggae-lilt   we often sparred dramatically

but patched things up   over mother’s deathbed

where i wrestled a shortguy named Mordecai  to the ground

as he tried to hoist mother   befriend me at your own risk

but please do!

radiation burned thru my bitterness   now a pristine-dream

of a  motherless child   waiting by the Rivers of Babylon

mum?  mum?   muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum?   is that you?

__

Summer 2024  ..OVER.. not a burnt offering anymo..

And God said to Abe: take your only son Isaac whom you love

+offer him as a burnt offering on a mountaintop..

Here a pyre    there a Varian machine

GO CAM!

what i did on my summer vacation

my family entered the bowels of the earth  everyday

there we sat with the  evicerate+radiated  like  Santo Sebastian

via  Frida Kahlo   run thru   +thru        +thru

this did not kill them  it beatified them   but as soft as you make your

eyes   you still see  the youths wasting  on stretchers  clutching cellphones

when what they need is    Excalibur  to  fight the fight

the bald children  the damp bandages  at the throat  the inhabitants

of this gated community  look at us with hungered eyes   all are starving

for burgers +fries   +lifeforce    a rare delicacy in these parts

but they cannot tell which one of us  is  the  anointed  one  soon to lay

on the zapping tablet   when they think it is me  i see pity  when they think

it is him  i see pity for me   ie., the hand i am holding   severed

i am thoroughly pitified   +that pity sinks into my  pores  so banish notions

of  luck   it doesn’t exist   yer just grist fer the mill   but NOT anymore!  when

you stop believing in luck   it all becomes   a wonderful life

my summer holiday was riddled with awe  cancer

it was a fucking bloody  revolution  revelation

__

Summer 2024  ..oh so memorable..i will never forget it..🖤

(un)happy *little boy day

there’s a folder beside my bed filled with

RADIATION IS NOT FOR DUMMIES

pamphlets:

Radiation+Anti-Oxidants

Caring for Burns

Eating Tips for Sore Mouth

sadly no pamphlet addresses  The Return:

How to Return to Life After The Cancer Shit-Show

How Not to Feel Like an Alien Amidst the Un-Cancered

How Not to Pretend This Didn’t Happen

too bad they didn’t drop helpful pamphlets from the sky

on Nagasaki+Hiroshima   for the burningthirsty masses

in the radiate-apocalypse   79 yrs ago  today

nowadays radiation is used for good  and held over the world’s

head  by chubby boymen +a short Russian madman  with a bear fetish

perhaps soon  these poems will be filled with  the scent of baking bread

daffodils  +sunshine   my meditation gurus tell me (actually beat me

over the head with rarified aphorisms: BE HERE NOW!   uh huh

and please do give me a couple of weeks to return to my  former self

the one who had a brisket+cookie making mother  in Paris gowns

+chignon   i may need some time to locate that self  +restore her

radiatedsoul  put lubiderm on her invisible burns + hollowed out   braincavity

hey  have you ever heard of

sympathetic pregnancy?

ie., Couvade Syndrome  i hereby coin the term

APE’S SYNDROME:  faux effects of deep brain tumours

+ high dose radiatio  on loved ones 💥💥💥

can i get an exorcism?

__

*..August 6th 1945  U.S. drops a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima+Nagasaki..70,000 die

instantly..70,000 more within days..along with melted eyes +baked potatoes  a hard

black rain falls for days..

__

..wish u were here..🖤🖤  Summer 2024..be gone..

up up and away🚀

arriving at the Princess Margaret Cancer Hospital  is like

arriving at the airport  cabs buses luggage  cops directing traffic

a sea of suffering

but  HOPE  floats   it puts a spring in their step  some getting

ready for  LIFT OFF   the great  BEAM UP   the Maker waiting

with:  burncream+gravol   +new bladders

others are on the great conveyor belt  out of the mouths of the

True Beam Varian God Machines  into  the LIFE  they pray beg

+crawl  towards

Day 1: You have a rare brain tumour Sir

Day 115: We have never seen a chordoma recur

with 39 visits to the  Varian Monster   You are free to go Sir!  

Go?  Go!  Go where?  what will we do every day at 3:30?  will we miss

our radiation community?  Jill Grace Steve  and the crusted over nurse?

but then   after the  GONG of the drum   reverberate done

the 10,000 things await   the reasons why the crowds assemble here in the

first place  for  one more once  for  trees  jazz  smashburgers  pie   but  WHY?

the little old lady stumbles to her Varian  bent  broken?  she still wants MORE

of living in the midst of  mutating cells  wells of grief  extravagant births  bloody

LOUD    i’m here motherfuckers  now get those filthy forceps off of me

yesterday  i heard a small child crying in his Varian  it sounded like  strangehope

__

..my mother (actually) believed in God..

Summer 2024  ..14 more..🚀🚀..go Scotty go💖💖

The Rising

1st monarch heading to Mexico  early no?  sun setting

earlier too   nadir?  dénouement?   Mr. Mason  a strapping

vice principal  with shoepolish in his hair  taught  nadir

in the nadir of his career  he chalked a mountain on the board

+pointed to the downward slope  as shoepolish dripped   father

bitch slapped him a couple of years later

shoepolish+mansweat on his hand  his own nadir  nearing

CG Jung famously said  that the climb down is equally as manifique

as the strident up  what’s true too  is that sometimes you dont know

which side is up   you’ve been down so long   up is mired

just remember on the path to enlightenment  the dung beetle foments

your own nadir now here  in the temple beautiful  where a purification rite

is underway  and a radiologist named Jill  fingers the ankh

and prepares your husband for the afterlife  the life after this descent

into the pit of hell   where people sit in damp blue gowns   sans body parts

he lays like Tut   on the tablet    temples on fire

gold urns glimmer  +your freshly dead mother hovers   preparing the

alchemical mikvah   from whose depths he will emerge   in 16 days

mangered + resurrect

__

Summer 2024     ..C’mon up..    Beam Off..