songanddancegirl

BLUES

WEDDING  DRESS    BLUES

I have had 3 wedding dresses to date   The 1st an

ecru silk confection by Tiel Traina   The 2nd on the

cover of Italian Vogue  Model the wife of a Rolling Stone

Eventually  the dress  morphed into an aubergine suit   (by

Price & Roman)   I even have the shoes from marriage number 1

Gorgeous Thierry Muglers  spider webbed and silver   And whenever

I get a case of the wedding dress blues   I moan on the shoulder of

old number 2

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Double Portrait With Wineglass

Marc Chagall 1918

Fall 2013

SWEDENBORGIAN

HIS  FATHER WAS  A  SWEDENBORGIAN

Need I say more?  William James coined the term

multiverse  Likely he needed a parallel reality to

the James house   A mad sister  Father heard voices

William too   Perhaps bi-polar?  or touched by the

Godhead  this revered pioneer of the psyche

Later  much later  physicists hijacked the multiverse

+made it their own    They posit a vast number of

parallel universes  where we live out different versions

of our lives    Every time you reach a crossroads   two

daughter universes arise: 1 in which you turn right  +1

in which you turn left

In each there is a copy of you living the outcome  Thinking

incorrectly that it’s  the only you   It is also true that sometimes

these parallel lives are not out of reach  Sometimes they slam

right into each other   Take the days when deja vu is so strong

you cannot possibly belong  to your own story

When you forget there is a husband #3    & husband #2 looks surprised

all the time  It’s like he never really knew you existed   One day you grow

a strange smell   +laugh like a stranger    When you speak   your language

becomes oblique  Paris France is heard as Aspen Colorado!  Parallel worlds?

Or late middle-age  when you no longer disrobe   in the shower

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Our universe is one of potentially numerous slabs floating in a higher

dimensional space, much like a slice of bread within a grander cosmic

loaf.    Brian Greene   Physicist     The Hidden Reality  2011 

Deep Winter  2015

PERSEPHONE

PERSEPHONE IMPRISONED FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL  SPRING CANCELLED

It’s so nice to escape news of Jihad  You drive out of your city on 2 lane hi-ways

Snow covered trees  creep over limestone escarpments   toward Stone City

Confluence of St. Lawrence  +Rideau Canal  Say good-bye to Lake O  frozen now

with huts (not fever huts of dying Irish)  fishing+skating  pink twilight  on horizon

night+day

ISIS now a world away? Except for giant screen tv in soul-less hotel (with best 

restaurant in Stone City!)   tv flickers green   Too late  jihad enters refreshed psyche

Kenji Goto’s mother shredded   His brother may never fully recover from seeing the

decapitation  Orange jumpsuit in desert execution    a jarring re-entry  to reality

Flip off tv  turn to pg. 2 local rag   Whitney’s daughter Bobbi K.  21  unconscious in

a tub  Still uncertain if she will make it   Lost her mother in tub  at 45   On the way

home  the hills+fields+trees  don’t look as free  not as pristine   as you drag Bobbi

Kristina  +Kenji Goto back to the city    It’s February 1st   & tomorrow is the Wiccan

Imbolc  a hope filled ray in this dirge     When all the seeds begin to stir

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Persephone Under 20 centimeters     Spring Rising  2015

EYELASHES

SHOES   EYELASHES    PROSTHETIC LIMBS

Suitcases  gold teeth  dolls  in piles on  platforms

Work Will Make You Free      Arbeit  Macht  Frei

No It Won’t   We will starve +torture you  especially if

you are a twin   We will incinerate you   because we can

Throw your babies into the air   +catch them on bayonets

You ain’t seen nothing yet  Juden

But wait!  A ray of light  William Glied  14  had already lost

his family  Now emaciated   with typhoid   he hears the cries

of newborns  & wonders if he is dead   Do angels cry in Nazi

death camps?  No    7babies born that Spring  7pregnant inmates

spared by rough beasts   As delirium of degradation slouches toward

it’s End  

70 yrs. ago yesterday Auschwitz liberated   Russian Jewish soldier

down on his knees  cradles 10 yr old twinless-twin   Sister tortured

beyond human recognition  Dr. Mengele  Chief Sadist  crouches on

slow thighs   Escapes to Brazil   Will he wear the yellow star on the

Styx crossing?

The extermination doesn’t seem that long ago  Atrocities unfathomable

until a new breed of Nazi beheads prisoners  orange suited   with small

carving knives   Well scripted executions  Jihad coming to malls +villages

everywhere?  A recent archeological find in the Levant region places Homo

Sapiens at the dawn of Civilization

But this must be oxymoronic  no?  Might it have been the interbreeding

with Neanderthals?  Or is it bred in the bone?  This uncivilized ape we

continue  to call Homo   Did you know that modern Sapiens lose short term

memory capacity yearly?   All that remains in the end are long held events

Like the train rides in cattle cars as children

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About 1.3 million were deported to Auschwitz from 1940-45

About 1.1 million Jews  The remainder: non-Jewish Poles  Roma

& Sinti (Gypsies)  Soviet prisoners  & others   Of these 1.1 million

people were exterminated there (Globe & Mail January 27, 2015)

Winter  2015

2043

WHERE  WILL  I  BE  IN  2043

when the BIG meteorite passes within inches of

the Earth?  Should it veer a few miles off course

I’ll be in the same place as you?  Starts with an O

ends with an N   (not oblivion)  You must work

much harder to insinuate yourself into this poem

..a long novel just like your life; you were going through

it without thinking and then one morning it ended: there

were bloodstains.   (James Salter  Last Night)

That home    An uncle shrieked: Turn some Goddamned 

lights off   it looks like a 3 ring circus over there   We did not

Same uncle to sleep over  Parents escaped  London 7 days 1978

Barred the door at 10 pm  Heard him banging+cursing for 16

minutes  freezing March night in Great White North   He never

came back for more

There is a longing for the past   so innately human  For your own

personal Eden   Even if much of it is  fantasy  playing in repertory

for the duration   For a time when you felt more  expected more  

knew less   Cervical spine not yet compressed by gravity  rear-enders 

bad feldenkrais teacher  from Arizona

Lifted+thrusted  lifted+thrusted   Called you at 11:30 one night to ask

about your perfume!  By then 36 revolutions of the earth ’round the sun

Knew enough to run from scum-bag guru  with moves   When the meteorite

comes you will wear your after-life face proudly  But who will recognize you?

No one who knew you when you were coltish   Whatever holds people together

will be gone

___

It is easier for a needle to pass through a camel  than for a poor man to

enter a woman of means   Just go to the graveyard  and ask around 

(Mark Strand  1998 Pulitzer Prize)

Winter  2015

                                         octogenarion

BIG

BIG  CIG

Just about every person  young  old  male

female  sane + insane   was sucking on a big

cig today   It even looked like they were

protecting said cigarettes   not from the

whipping wind   but from those of us who

wolflike crouched  on streetcorners  waiting

Even indoors where smoking is prohibited I

saw a mother with a croaking baby  light up

aggressively   The intake  a seeming last breath

Croak went the baby   croak    Coffee clatchers

looked confused   I dashed out and passed a sign

that said: Try to be one of the people on whom

nothing is lost  (Henry James)

Though likely better if I did miss some of the minutiae

The sordid ceremonies of  urban life in Winter   Ditto the

alleyways full of limping dogs  +yesterday’s spittle

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DREAM

THIS DREAM OF FLESH

Pay Attention To Your Dreams!   (C.G. Jung)

Or DON’T!   Probably the bratwurst from IKEA  turning on you

in the wee wee hours when your flesh cannot quite hold you

Why look for more?  Collaborate with less  & you will be free

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Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

Peggy Lee/Dan Daniels

Winter  2015

DAWN

AND THE DARKEST HOUR IS JUST BEFORE DAWN

I can see the sky   cartoon blue  +the light chiaroscuro

After 10 days of flat gunmetal greys   Sea of BLAH is

January   Yesterday at least 2 people told me they were

going crazy    I think this is a Mid-life crisis said one   well

past the apogee

Don’t worry you will be set free in approximately 85 days

But until then remember you are not an alien  though an

alien nation has commandeered your soul    bringing all

manner of  Winter bugs   heart rot   + brain fag

Google Spring  like I did on Sunday (after tick bites/Mayo Clinic)

Behold God’s acid trip   Go know! Such a plethora of pinks  And on

your way home today  just pray  you don’t see  a dog with 2 legs

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SPRING BREAKERS  2012

Winter  2015

HEAVEN

THE  BOY  WHO  CRIED  HEAVEN

Alex Malarkey’s book was  it  in the growing canon

of  Heaven Tourism Lit   until he recanted his trip

to Heaven   Alex had spent 2 months in a coma after

a car crash  & his best seller detailed encounters with

miracles  angels   +life beyond   Alex was 6

I did not die  I did not go to Heaven  I just wanted attention

Alex has confessed   His book is being taken out of print by his

publisher  who had billed it as:  A True Story

We live in a world where bizarre is the new normal  +it seems

Heaven is much in demand   Ditto  rapture  bliss   buzz   +garden

variety beatitude   We are after all combing Mars for microbial

life  festering in ancient lake-beds since  the wet-period   3.5 billion

years ago

Gail Crator of NASA  thinks the discovery of carbon based life is in the

offing  though it is hard to know why finding Martian relations is a good

thing   Do we really need more humanoids to subjugate?

Yet it does seem that 36 yr. old Marie G.  & her 2 sons  Cole (3)  +Devon

(1 month) are in need of an augury  of Heaven   a home for wraiths

transcendence   There is no way to analgize their story   On Monday a small

jet staggered out of an azure sky   & slammed into their house in Gaithersburg

It is thought that Angels cannot tell the difference between the dead  + the living

So in the end why not just change the name of Alex Malarkey’s book to something

like:  The Boy Who May Or May Not Have Been To Heaven   & sell it anyway?

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It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth

Every Angel is terror

Duino Elegies  Rainer Maria Rilke

Winter  2015

GOATHERD

SON  OF  A  BEDOUIN  GOATHERD

Moammar Gadafi seized power at 27  & was known for

his giant bedouin tents   bevy of female bodyguards

+his ruthlessness    Hanna Rosin  The End of Men  says:

There’s a lot of normalizing pretty bad behavior    And

though she is speaking about fratboys  Moammar pitched

his tent in some pretty  lofty places   think United Nations!

So how is it that would-be dentists at Dalhousie are being

tarred+feathered over fratboy trash-talk  albeit of a vulgar

+violent vein   Shouldn’t they be allowed to graduate late  &

give a percentage of their income to charity  after scrubbing

floors +toilets in their local women’s shelter  Say 1,095 hrs of

community service?  Would this suffice  or do some of them

need to take their lives?

As reported by the University’s President  some of the young

men are in a fragile state induced by shame  which in+of itself

can be a corrective natural consequence   And is it not also price

enough that their names are now MUD?   Perhaps not

Charlie Glickman   Sexuality+Masculinity educator argues:

Much locker-room talk is performance bravado  men playing

at macho  like boys play wrestling  It’s the escalation effect

that’s toxic   guys competing to show who is the most manly

(a.k.a.  whose is bigger)   We live in a world where men take

courses in masculinity from Charlie   where civility +chivalry

went the way of the nuclear family

The good news: It is empirically true that in most locker-rooms

men do not sit around naked  +talk about raping women  

Michael Kimmel   Guyland    The not so good news:  Kimmel

heard the same disturbing phrase on every American college campus

he visited: Bros before Hos

Maybe we haven’t come such a long way   baby?   Even though women

now outnumber men on campus    & are entering previously male

dominated fields   including  Dentistry   Or perhaps these are the last

gasps of a dying breed   like the last seed crop of dying trees

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Dude   Stop The Spread Please 

Poster in NYC subways discouraging   Manspreading:

Guys taking up too much space so as to give their manly

parts plenty of air   a.k.a.  micro-aggression

Globe+Mail  January 2015

Winter  2015