songanddancegirl

EPHEMERALITY

EPHEMERALITY BLUES

do the birds get  squawkier every Spring?

This year a choir   begins at 5 a.m.  led by a

robin taskmaster   it is 9 p.m.  +he is  still

shouting   as a new batch of moths attack me

+my woollens   i don’t even bother to brush them

away   they flitter in front of my face reminding me

that i am alive

that my wardrobe is alive with larvae  +that at

almost 60 there is a wild beauty  exhuberant+

perfect about the slow leaking    & receding  of

my story   a very wise woman said to me today:

you can buy a cream for $10,000 +it won’t do a

damn thing for the skin on your legs    i nodded &

mumbled something about  the body no longer making

moisture

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keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be

we forget all too soon the things we thought we could

never forget      Joan Didion

Spring 2015

DOVES

WHEN DOVES CRY

there was a man who looked so

dangerous we waited until he’d left

before exiting Grand Electric   a burbon

+taco joint down the road   1/2 squeegie kid

1/2 Charlie Manson  skin pink  now pacing in

front of the lcbo  desperate for a drink   or

someone to dismember

girl in store next door   says her boyfriend was

beaten to a pulp  last week   squeegieman wants

more hipster blood    i say to my brother: don’t

look them in the eyes  +when they ask for money  

say sorry    not   sorry my friend     on this week’s

episode of favourite show  our folk hero  shot in face

he called his mugger  son    as in: son this is a mistake

today a guy wears a: what is love? sign   a large man naked

to the waist  delivers an open handed slap  to love-junkie’s

face    does he turn the other cheek?   hell no   he slashes at

the cherry trees  only 10   +2 yrs. old     fully pink for a week

or so   new grass covered in shredded massacre   hipsters weep

+sound like doves

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Spring 2015  soon none of this will matter snow will annul all talk of love

666

666 LIBERATED

all is quiet in the sambisa forest   the stoning

the explosions  +the crushing by tanks  stopped

the silence is full of un-screamed screams   the

freed women+children  some in shock  others

bewildered  line up for tea   +a stew of baobab

leaves

many of the new babies in rags   suffering from

malnutrition   warlords  of forced marriages  didn’t

provide board  just rooms  malaria+rape commonplace

Lami Musa 27  forced to marry the man who slaughtered

her husband  the whereabouts of their 3 children  unknown

now she is walking home with a week old baby  born in captivity

the military will turn survivors over to the National  Emergency

Management Agency   new home a dust blown refugee camp set

among baobab trees

Rachel Yehuda psychiatrist NYC  has found that children of mothers

with PTSD are 3x as likely to have it   +6x more likely to be depressed

+anxious    sunset in sambisa forest  piles of stones  crushed bones  +

land mines     pink skies+resurrection

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6000 yr. old witness to Boko Haram

savagery the sacred African Baobab tree

symbol of immortality

Spring 2015

SMELLS

SMELLS LIKE    SOUR GRAPES

tiny cherry trees in full blooded bloom

petals corrupting city girls who lay splayed

on blankets in park today   smell wafts up

parts: coconut oil   macaroons   +money

this is West Queen West   honey!

paper says Ondaatje  +Joyce Carol Oates will

boycott PEN dinner for  Charlie Hebdo    you

can bet they were  Charlie way back in January

seems that spring has turned them surly  +utterly

shameless

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april is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the

dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots

with spring rain.      t.s. elliot  the wasteland  1922

 
Spring 2015

DEUS

DEUS EX MACHINA

there is a robin redbreast shrieking in the

tree across the street from my Juliet balcony

the cacophony begins at 5 a.m.   the lone

trumpeter of Spring  i have named him louis

no! not that louis   that would be corny  which

i never do   it’s the louis from france  this shrill

robin  my sun king   he rescues me each morning

from ghosts +clutching sailors  who lately fill my

dreams   O i am ready for the coming Spring!

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But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? 
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. 

Spring 2015

GET BEHIND ME SATAN

DOES YOUR FAVOURITE POET HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR SATAN?

John Milton sold Paradise Lost on April 27  1667  for 20 pounds  5 up

front  +3 more 5 pound pays  Paradise Lost didn’t even rhyme  +blind

Mr. Milton dictated it to scribes as he lay in bed  Not simple times: war

plague  the great fire  all conspired against him    It took 4 yrs. before a

contract was signed

I want a scribe  +a contract too   Some people call me the poet of gloom+

doom  But that is not true  I have just mailed 3 poems to the Humour Issue

of our country’s finest poetry journal   The one entitled Bitched should get

in    Hands up all who slapped their thighs while reading it  (April 1  2015)

Perhaps my scribe might cheer me up   He can begin by: licking salt off of

my limbs after a work out   +gradually move onto pitting Bing cherries   &

placing them on my forked tongue  one dark cherry at a time  He might then

scurry about my boudoir collecting words from shadows+closets    +all

manner of orifice  where Satan usually hides them   Somehow I doubt that you

are still slapping your thighs ladies&gentlemen

Realistically   Satan seems more my purview   what with a bird’s eye view of

Hades from my consulting room   where desperate children fled our modern

plagues  day in+day out for an eternity  Hands up all who vote for sending this 

poem to the Humour Issue

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Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block

to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely those of humanity.”

Matthew 16:23

Paradise Lost  Paradise Regained  John Milton

10 books  10,000 lines of Verse

Spring  2015   Who you calling dark?

BITTER

THIS BITTER  BITTER PILL

1st butterfly   1st magnolia blooming

many hipsters lay  splayed in my park

today    several inch closer  +gaze blankly

2 guffaw +slap their sides oh so raucously

they surely need some valium or some ddt

writing as an exercise in futility    as someone

close has said to me:  writers just pretend they’re

writing  +call that a profession    this has led to

much rumination  & caramel anejo

which hasn’t dulled the realization that: this person

is not my friend  +people who speak with blunt edges

sometimes  speak the truth

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what’s called a normal life

a series of grainy mistakes  +an

irritating fear of words  

(Rosemary Waldrop  love, like pronouns)

Spring  2015

RUBY

RUBY  DON’T TAKE YOUR LOVE TO TOWN

Rescued from a drug den at 8   twin brothers 5

names rhymed   New Mom+Dad changed all 3

to match their fancy   Now children don’t come

when called

Workers checked their hearing  +sent them for

therapy  then new Dad cut off teddy-bear’s head

In therapy he said:  My Dad beat me every day 

+screamed in my face for fun   He eyed the bears

on rocking chairs    Run therapist   RUN

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She’s leaving now cause
I just heard the slamming of the door
The way I know I’ve heard it
Some 100 times before
And if I could move I’d get my gun
And put her in the ground
Oh Ruby
Don’t take your love to town

(Mel Tillis  Kenny Rogers)

Spring  2015

WEEP

A TIME TO LAUGH   A TIME TO WEEP

learning to disappear began with birds  moved on

to horses  +huge dogs   even the odd squirrel or 2

a horse is a 2,000 pound animal he said   show

fear  +you can die    later in rooms full of toys   feral

children close at hand  theories discarded

one boy faced the wall for a year  as i sat zazen   turned

doll’s house upside down  violent bashing  +crashing of

furniture  people  +pets    holy mayhem    as his family

exploded  every week at 2:15     gradually his depression

eased   he smiled once   handsome now   muted mask of 1/2

alive   dropped for seconds flat

later  the invisible therapist  rides again  with 19 yr. old woman

flapping like a caught hawk  up in the windowsill    she leaked

warm urine  everywhere   30 yrs. of invisibility when necessary

children come out of dungeons  +reveal their torturers in psycho-

dramatic reveries

is it a wonder that people looked at you in horror  at their dinner

parties?   you  granted immunity from humanity in day job  by night

your chitchat emptied rooms with regularity    sex me    

invisible therapist     sex me

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BELIEVE

ONCE THEY’RE GONE  WE CAN’T BELIEVE IT

She eyes me suspiciously  It is Spring 2015  Vicious landing

Sleet  +hail   frozen citizenry   All of the women I see:  eyes 

glazed over  dull-skinned  +gnarly   One threatens to bite me

Not so Harriet Quimby  who on another fierce April day  flew

from Dover to Calais  her signature purple silk flight-suit  &

seal-skin stole  luffing in the breeze

1912 an open single prop plane  Ghostly pale +gorgeous  Harriet

died in an air-show crash later that same Spring   Her debris washed

up on Wrangel Island  home of the Wooly Mammoth  contemporaries

of the pyramid builders in Egypt

Love Dalen  researcher at Wrangel (U of Sweden)  posits that

Harriet Quimby may in fact be one of the first documented

extraterrestrials   Like humans  Mammoths have 2 sets of

chromosomes  Harriet had 3   On why Love devoted his life

to the study of  Wolly’s   his analyst remains silent

Today walking on the frigid streets of my city a sign said:

It’s true   even if it hasn’t happened yet  

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No Spring  2015