songanddancegirl

WILD

WILD WOMAN OF THE TREES   CRUEL APRIL U OF T

Could there ever be a man more lovely than Jamie Fraser?

Scottish hunk  on night-time tv   Turns every cliché into poetry

Claire stays with him despite rape by an English captain    &

suffering the scourge at the hands of witch-burners

So  is it healthy to attach oneself to such fantasy?  Blue light of tv

+caramel glow of anejo  addles the brain   As Jamie’s brogue plays

hard +fast with a girl’s will to live  in a place where: on her birthday

in late April it sleeted+snowed    +the wind licked her most ferociously

She came to rest in the trees on Philosopher’s Walk U of T    You’ll find

her there still  when the cherry trees bloom  in blossoms as pale as her

brand new white shoes  wings

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Emily Carr  D’sonoqua

Wild Woman Of The Trees

Spring  2015

UN-

UN-HAPPEN

un-happen the bypass surgery  the

longest scar you’ve ever seen  maybe

in history   upper chest to ankel   cut

me from stem to stern    said he

un-happen the debris in arteries  his

father’s death at 63   massive coronary

leave  the charm  the laugh   the solitary

comfortable in his skinness  leave the bravery

to face the Medusa without a mirror   leave

the horse  +his favourite movie star   +an

open road    un-happen the marlboros

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Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic

future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded

us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run

faster, stretch our arms out farther…  And one fine

morning –

So we beat on boats against the current, borne back

ceaselessly into the past.  

(F. Scott Fitzgerald  The Great Gatsby  1925)

Spring 2015   for Harry Lee Atkins   who would be 94

TEARS

NINETY FOUR   TEARS

1^st month of Spring   Peregrine in cobalt sky

Transports you to a time when hawks fly high

above suburban yard   Dive-bombed small

brother too   Father never believed it   Grew up

on a farm +inner-city  where hawks chased Jew

boys down back alleys

Driving along   green Impala  menthol hanging

from Paul Newman lips   in seconds fists flying

toward mouthy-man in muscle shirt  rat-bastard

nearly killed us   Mother shrieking LEE!    While

Henry  who later took an Anglo name  sat cowardly

swatting flies  +pretending to tickle brother’s thighs

It was 1965   grown man could play such pranks back

then    Today carted away by Children’s Aid    Maybe he

should have been   Colourful family   horse traders  book

makers  football players  uncle drove the get-a-way car at

17  pardoned in 43    Dream a little dream

Backsplit house on Toronto ravine   A wild & peculiar scene

Daddy tapping foot to Bobbie Gentry  cowboy hat askew

Say sister: What were you +Billie Joe Macallister doing up

on Choctaw Ridge?   Daddy gone for 26   +now Mama doesn’t

seem to wanna do much of anything

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A year has come and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billy Joe


And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo


There was a virus going ’round; papa caught it, and he died last spring



(Ode To Billie Joe   Bobbie Gentry   1967)

Bobbie Gentry  Nice Jewish girl from the Delta

Spring 2015  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn6L9gd8ch8)

WOMAN

WHEN  A  MAN  LOVES  A  WOMAN

She is 5 ft. 11  blonde  lush  pneumatic  skirt ends

at cheeks   no stockings   just read 60 pages on

secularism   Kisses boyfriend bye  red beard  Munk

School Global Affairs   Not a hipster  couldn’t be   looks

more trust-fund pedigree  future Prime Mistress

It’s 15 Celsius  1st day in 6 months  sprawl on grass  without

blasts of frigid wind creeping into every orifice   Also the day

half the globe away when: Bring Back Our Girls Now  And

Alive  became:  Never to be Forgotten

First anniversary of the seizing: 276 girls  54 escaped  some

clinging to branches of trees from back of an open truck   3

dead   snake bite  malaria  dysentery  Now sex slaves +fighters

Never see their families

President Buhari former military ruler of Nigeria said: We must be

honest   Euphemism for: We aren’t looking anymore   Malala Yousafrazi

Nobel Peace Prize  shot in face by Taliban  promised scholarships for the

girls     219 living in loveless forced marriages to terrorists

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When a man loves a woman   he can’t keep his mind on nothing else   

He’ll trade the world for the good thing he’s found  

Spring  2015    RIP Percy Sledge  

CHILDREN

HE TIGHTENED HIS GRIP ON THE CHILDREN

Virgil Gus Grissom  1st casualty of the 1st seven astronauts

of U.S. manned space flight   Gus died in 67  perished in a

fire aboard Apollo 1   All were: superb physical specimens

with genius IQ’s  none taller than 5 ft. 11   the dimensions of

the Mercury capsule

Gus looks older than the rest   He looks like a friend who died

John Glenn is the only one of the 7  still alive  Godspeed Gus Grissom  

Posed in spacesuits  silver with many zippers + round white helmets

Smiling faces  robot-men  except for Gus Grissom  serious  +intense

Hand of Mcfate on his left shoulder     It is 1959

14 yrs. had passed since the great liberation   NASA hopeful after rape

+pillage of planet    70 yrs. now come & gone  Buchenwald survivors lay

flowers  They wear their striped pyjamas  +one man his striped cap   His

home held 250,000   More than 56,000 died there  from  torture   +medical

experiments    +starvation

Next to these images today  our National newspaper displays  3 girls

hanging out of a window  one clutching a small stuffed cat  all looking down

at fellow students  U of Nairobi  who jumped to deaths in mistaken terrorist

attack    Felix Muriuki a 3rd year student said: I could see students jumping  

one of them landed on his head

Now move your eyes down the page  right smack in the middle of all this  in

red+blue  is Hillary Clinton: The deck is still stacked in favour of those at the

top  she said   Her strategy in the next race for President will be to avoid a sense

of celebrity  

Despite wealth+fame Hillary cares about ordinary people:  I want to be their

champion!   Her blue hawk-eyes may belie a just folks sincerity   but more likely

they scream: Don’t fuck with me  and especially  no questions about Benghazi

I leave you with the fresh faced men of Mercury 7  explorers of the heavens   And

the news that: today’s largest manned space flight will be one way  86,000 Canadians

have signed up so far    They unlike Hillary   are proud to be celebrities

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She is plump. Her beak is open.  She breathes hot hawk breath on my face.

Formidable talons.  Sleek.   (H is for Hawk   Helen Macdonald  2014)

Simpler Times   Mercury 7   1959

RIP  Gus Grissom

Spring 2015   

NUMBERED

OUR ENDLESS NUMBERED DAYS

creep into house after dusk  drop bikes on floor

of garage  cat with kittens  eyes glinting  it’s 50 yrs.

since  +you still remember this   grab a kitten in the

morning on the way to school  take a long scratch to

back of hand   worth it   something alive in your pocket

+in the coat closet

more alive than teacher droning on about the Voyageurs

canoes  traplines  James freakin Bay   stole your mother’s

red silk robe for the play on French Canada!  teacher impressed

you knew how a bishop dressed   not so your mother   glamorous

montrealer   hats+gloves+gowns

later at u of t studying shakespeare   a mid summer night’s dream

mother’s gown dressed the Faerie Queen   professor patricia moodie

stuck her hand inside  tickled your fancy  +read the label in near ecstasy

by GOD she cried   it’s a fucking Schiaparelli !

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Spring 2015

ANIMAL

I AM NOT  AN ANIMAL

Maybe there is a limit to how much of a good thing

is a good thing   There is a car in my neighbourhood

with every kind of plastic flower glued to it   I have

never seen the person who inhabits it   Surely she has

risen above this melancholy   +can hook me up with the

Oracle  just beyond the gate

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Have you forgotten what we were like then   when we were

still first rate  and the day came fat with an apple in it’s mouth

(Frank O’ Hara  Animals  1950   dead at 40  crushed by a Jeep) 

Oracle of Delphi

Spring  2015

REAPING

THE REAPING  &  THE SOWING

time  love  death  religion  life   What if

these are real  +not just illusions?  What if

wild men who caught and sang the sun in

flight  did not go gentle?

Somerset said: dying is a dull+dreary affair  

my advice to you is have nothing whatever to

do with it    History will keep grasping for you

anyway

The poet Clive James (Sentenced to Life)

dying of leukemia+emphysema   He with bandaged

head where carcinoma radiated  said: I was faithless

sly  deceitful  I regret it all

Clarity seems to unite the death memoirists    Clive writes

in a recent poem: when did you ever see so much sweet beauty?

Why wait to smell Mr. Reaper’s acrid breath?  Take the cutting

shears to your life   leave only what is vital    Oliver Sacks  the

psychiatrist with multiple metastases in his liver says: I want to

travel!

So can the living learn to think like the dying?  Self-flagellation only

works while flagellating  Egos are almost immune to death  otherwise

who would get out of bed?  And episodic amnesia is exactly what it is

cracked up to be    Each day brings another shot at immortality

the day they will find the cure

ban the bomb   resurrect ronald reagan

who finally banned the neutron bomb he

considered the perfect death-ray!

What if your favourite places: the last bohemia sinking into the sea

a whaling island packed with Range Rovers until Labour Day  exerted

a magnetic pull  greater than your  grey city with dirty mounds of melting

ice +dog shit everywhere  The one that has an iron grip on your soulless glory

Cry UNCLE   or   gnaw off your left foot   + RUN

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I am taking percoset to sleep, and I have

become an addict, and don’t care!! 

Drugs are wonderful. Looking forward to Spring!

(excerpt from 97 yr. old mother-in-law’s diary)

Spring  2015

WASTELAND

WASTELAND  O  SUBURBIA

down in the ravine  an empty giant’s cabin

he walked across the americas to winter in

miami beach   family ghosts sitting in the trees

family dreams ford the muddy stream   smells

like prehistory

duck+chicks scatter as you run wildchild+mad

to catch feathered friends   our 2 fathers + 1 mother

fertilize flowers+seeds in a grassy field nearby

it’s 2015   ravine with bulldozers   adult children

of eden-dwelling family  inch closer to eternity

once-girl in a wading pool   lightening in the sky

certain she can fly

so  is it a circle  or a straight line?

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Spring  2015

DEATH

DEATH  THE CANNIEST CAREER MOVE

James Dean  Cobain  Joplin  Morrison  Basquiat

There is even a term Basquiatiana   His blackness

didn’t hurt  says the Globe & Mail   Nor did his 

wild-child urban noble savage mystique  a wild pet

for the recently cultivated white  said one art critic

And though he lived on the street for a while  he was in fact

an upper middle class private school child  whose father drove

a Mercedes  He has 2000 sq. ft. at the A.G.O. this Spring   Also

in the building are the photos of   Henryk Ross  Lodz Ghetto:

dead bodies on the ground  children in carts being carted to camps

& the man who saved the Torah!

Notice the yellow stars sewn onto chests & backs   the better to

identify you Jew  especially when running   Let us unite these 2

artist’s works  One a visible minority  the other invisible   Let us

place a yellow star on the forehead of Basquiat’s self-portrait

Black dreads  white slits for eyes   +the star of David

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Spring  2015