songanddancegirl

ELVIS

THUS  SPRACH  ELVIS

On January 14  1973  Elvis Presley in a

bejewelled white pantsuit strutted+sneered

his way through the 1st concert via satellite

in history   He was 38  newly bloated  & deep

into Demerol+Dilaudid    His image  jolts the

mind: a caged tiger  a stuck bull   Fallen secular

God  of America     Simpler times?

Today is also one of historical note  3 million copies

of Charlie Hebdo with the Prophet Mohammed on it’s

cover (He is Charlie too)   The caption reads: All is

forgiven  While in Germany (where Elvis was stationed

in WWII)  thousands march against Muslim immigrants

It seems that we are heading into  familiar territory

Is Joe Muslim the new whipping boy?

Does the weight of the past teach us nothing?

How much do we love this 21st Century?

It’s fortunate that the guillotine is no longer in effect.

(Globe & Mail editorial  January 15, 2015)

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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally

discover everybody’s face but their own.

Jonathan Swift  18th C

Winter  2015

RITES

OF SPRING

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring  sparked

a riot on May 29 1913   100 yrs. ago or so

the score was considered too primal  percussive

herky-jerky   The depiction of a violent pagan past

sent Paris into chaos: hissing  heckling  fist-fights

A notorious preamble to the brutality of the coming

century     Pagan past   we might ask?

In Spring 2014  on May 29th  a group of 20 including

fathers+brothers  stoned a 25 yr. old pregnant woman

to death  It was noon  next to the courthouse in Lahore

Her husband said: We were in love   Her father expressed

no regrets  

Lata  the husband  was found to have killed his first wife   The

case was later dropped when his 5 children forgave him  I strangled

her  he said  In Pakistan 839 women were murdered in honour killings

in 2013

While across the sea in the latest shooting spree  the gunman’s father

had directed  The Hunger Games  where youth are caged  hunted+

killed by one another in a survival-game  The young shooter a self

professed virgin  hated women  +wanted revenge on  everyone

It appears that Spring continues to catalyze acts of violence  as humanity

plays out the age old battle of  Eros vs. Thanatos     And as Barak has

cautioned:  Hammers just seem to gravitate toward nails

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Sandro Botticelli Primavera 1482

Jan Balet  Rites of Spring  1984

SPRING 2014

I AM

I  AM    THE SUICIDE BOMBER GIRL*

Did you know that there is a biological imperative

for love?  The glue that holds the human-tribe together

Without it we are doomed should natural selection choose

social media connections    over old fashioned love for reasons

of say  disease control   Hate might reign supreme  It too is in our

ancient DNA  just another form of self preservation

Not opposites really   more flip sides of the same coin  that make us

the beautiful+cruel conundrum of the higher primates   In Canada’s

aboriginal language there are 736 words for love  & only 1  for hate

It does not require much complexity  just a thick skull+hairy palm

Today we contemplate the aftermath of the bloodbath  in France

Islamist militants have killed  cartoonists  journalists  + 1 psycho-

analyst  at Charlie Hebdo   Also police officers +4 Jewish patrons

of a kosher grocery store

Of course we are all  Charlie  & now thankfully all  Juif   But are we

all the brothers Kouachi? Or just some of us?  Were we all cheering

at the Bastille when heads rolled in 1789  Or just some of us?  Were

we all looking the other way when trains packed with human-cargo

traversed Europe just yesterday?

Are we all thick of skull +hairy of hand?  Under what circumstances

will the few become the many?  In 1642 Galileo was hauled before the

Inquisition   With his pen he endorsed the Earth’s orbit  of the Sun

The Church threatened torture  & locked him away until the day  he died

For many the pen has always been as dangerous as the sword  To quote a

fallen comrade of the pen Stéphane Charbonnier:  I’d rather die standing

up, than live on my knees  And die he did last Wednesday  when the Kouachi’s

entered Charlie Hebdo  & called out his name

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Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.. We’ve got to

live no matter how many times the sky has fallen.  

DH Lawrence   Lady Chatterly’s Lover

Live Damn it!  Live!  

George Costanza   Seinfeld

Winter  2015    *on January 11 2015   a 10 yr. old girl was detonated in a busy

marketplace by Boko Harem militants hiding nearby

ERASE

ERASE  ME?

abolish me

demolish me

liquidate me

Euphemisms for my nullification

eradication

burning at the stake

Publishing giant Harper Collins began 2015

with an apology   Last year they sold maps of the

Mid-East sans Israel  The company originally insisted

that: Erasing Israel was necessary  (sound familiar)

since displaying the reality of Israel’s existence would

be highly offensive to some of their customers  

A triumphant whitewashing of a hate crime?  Who gets

to decide what defines a hate crime?  The haters  or the

hated?       Discuss

It may surprise you to know that in modern day Hungary

the biggest challenge to the powers that be is the Jobbik

party  for whom anti-semetic + anti- Roma rhetoric abounds

Adolph would be proud

There is a movement afoot to bring back the prohibition

against marriage+sexual relations between Jews and non

Even walking with a kippa on is not too secure says David Wolfshein

a young Jewish activist in Budapest

All the more astonishing is the case of Bess Myerson (1924-2015)

the only Jewish Miss America   It was 1945   & the director of the pageant

thought her name wreaked of Jew    Go know she kept her name   Bess said:

Whatever was left of myself in this game, I had to keep. I knew I had to keep

my name.

On the tour there were:  NO JEWS  signs  in many cities (T.O: No Jews Dogs or

Negroes)  Bravely Bess spoke on the Anti-Defamation League circuit   Her speech

entitled: You Can’t Be Beautiful And Hate   It is also true that you cannot hate and

be beautiful     Think Adolph

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Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

John Lennon    Imagine

Bess Myerson Jewish Miss America 1945

Winter  2015

COOLEST

COOLEST POEM

Walking along Queen St. today  minus30

10 steps and a mysterious cone of arctic-air

envelops me  I worry that my barehead will

implode  endangering all of the would-be

poems of 2015  As the light returns to Whoville

& the Grinch re-gifts stolen loot up+down the

streets   of the 2nd coolest neighbourhood in the

world   The more I hear this moniker  the less I

like its sound  Who wants to be the 2nd coolest?

Fer chrissakes  there is no 2nd coolest  there is only

the 1st

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Winter  2015

STONES

STONES  IN  HER  POCKET

Scott Carpenter was among the first astronauts

Virginia Woolf was among the brilliant suicides

The look on their faces is not all that different:

inscrutable smiles  expectant eyes  mischief about 

the lips   One explored the heavens +seas   the other

words +rivers   Scott died at 88   Virginia at 59

When Scott arrived in heaven he lifted Virginia from

the Ouse  Why he had endured forces 16x that of gravity

& he knew a thing or 2  about freedom   Scott did not believe

it was just another word    Virginia wrote 9,626 words  & knew

nothing about freedom   Scott married 4x  & had 8 kids   Virginia

once  & had none

The stones weighed heavy in her pocket on the day she had nothing

left to lose    Now a lightness came over her    Scott would teach her

how to fly

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Virginia referred to her husband Leonard Woolf as  “my Jew”  & in her

final note before walking into the River Ouse she wrote: Dearest I feel

certain that I am going mad.

May 2014

HOBO

HOMEWARD BOUND  IN   LAVENDER LIGHT

Her name is Sailor  Her sister was Piper    Sierra

her cousin  a dark crumble under the shade of pines

Sailor walked out of the woods   Sub-zero  one sock

Broken wrist   blood-smeared chin    Father was 48

Mother 46   watching her from River Styx    Kindly man

in woodland house said: I brought her in and washed her face

Courtney Love whose scalpel-face is unrecognizable tells us:

Forget persona  Your mojo is your mojo     Sailor Gutzler

knows a thing or 2 about mojo   Born with a huge dose  propelled

tiny body from upside-down plane into snow covered forest

The newest Boko Haram-boys will need some of her true grit

40 kidnapped on the day the Gutzler plane fell out of a lavender

sky   Why would they covet boys?  With 219 girls still missing  the

question begs an answer    The answer questions our collective grip

on what remains of humanity’s sanity

tiny suicide bombers?

young sex slaves+soldiers?

spectral heroes guiding children out of crashed planes?

Sailor Gutzler was taken by ambulance to Holy Sister’s   They set her wrist

& a family member collected her  as the world woke up to a nascent year on

January 5, 2015

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PRINCE

“I  WAS RAISED TO BE CHARMING NOT SINCERE”

(Prince Charming)

In December 1647  Puritans put an end to: drunk excess

papist superstitions  +carnal delights   They banned Xmas

Riots broke out in Canterbury  This year at Christ-tide on the

outskirts of Tijuana  young girls sought sanctuary    At least

20,000 people are trafficked through Mexico yearly   The vast

majority  women+girls

Hilda was 9 when she arrived at The Garden House for victims

of child sex trafficking   Sold by her family   she is now 18  & has

not spoken a single word since arriving   On the night before Xmas

she emerged from a cocoon of silence:  I’m happy  +kind of sad  but

it’s okay now  she said

Mary Ellen Bartleby  California District Attorney  noted:  

With a pound of cocaine, if you sell it, the cupboard is bare.

But with a woman, you can sell her several times a night;  

seven days a week.

If the cave painters were to scratch a portrait of Xmas 2014 onto

the rockface  it would look like:  a genetic mutation  of innocence

a microbial form of hatred seeping into human DNA  for millennnia

And we call them  primitive   

Might it not be time to Rise Up in some small way  against the hypocrisies

of everyday?  You know  like: peace  goodwill  +progress   the ships that

sailed without us    This year China banned Xmas calling it: Ancient Kitsch  

which really is a much more apt description  of China

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Pope Francis in his first mass of 2015 said that everyone has a God-given

right to be free  This at a time when 36,000,000 people live as slaves, are 

trafficked into brothels,  forced into manual labour, or are born into bondage.

(Walk Free Foundation  Australia  Global Slavery Index)

Winter 2015

SPNAR

SPLICING BASED ANALYSIS OF  VARIANTS

Pronounced spanner   Combs the human genome to

seek+sort mutations   Will soon be used to identify

traits that make people  healthier  smarter  happier

But what about  holier than thou   hipper  hotter

The mutation that is 2014’s breakout demographic:

the urban(e) hair covered hipster

Yesterday I overheard one faux bushwhacker waxing

poetic on life after 95: It’s like winter-camping   cold+

dark  +nothing else to do  so you just go to bed   he said

How’s that for plumbing the ungraspable depths of our

mortal dissipation?

In an age when anger is the most popular emotion in Canada

linked to all manner of heart related ailment  acute myocardial

infarction  arrhythmia  +stroke  and the experts say: Identify

Your Trigger Points  & Avoid Them!   Air-rage  road-rage 

sidewalk-rage    +wrap-rage: using an ice pick to open a plastic package

The gentle philosophy of the neo-hippie is a thing of beauty   If all else

fails: tune out  turn off   & calmthefuckdown   Float into oblivion  where

you won’t care that the terrorist in the cave is collecting Air Asia planes

+messing with the worldwideweb   with our heads  +has made Seth Rogen

a household name in a way that Oscar never could

Reminding us that the Great Book was not written with us in mind

So in 2015  I implore you to:  listen for the sound of one leaf falling   of

one hand clapping    +of Judas laughing

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Winter 2014

HEAR

ALLAH  AKBAR   HEAR O ISRAEL   MERRY CHRISTMAS

The man behind me spits out words like: barbaric  apocalypse

bloodbath   Then: what ya gonna do?   Words fail   as he flails

in the morass of language   trying to analyze the day’s events in

Pakistan   In the end he fails miserably

Jittery we sit  not narcotized enough yet to the onslaught of massacre

over the past 48 hrs.  We eye one another suspiciously in this grand

hall at the University  a perfect choice for the terror machine to land

On tv yesterday handsome  ex- CIA said: Citizens must become vigilantes

Learn the correct ways to wield machetes  concealed under skirts   inside

strollers  down your pants

In Peshwar more than 145 dead  mostly children   100+ injured    Taliban

loves late  hates: wonder  miracles  education   Yesterday they stormed a

school with 1,500 students  methodically shooting schoolchildren in the

head  Setting teachers on fire   Have we witnessed such hatred since the

Nazis?  Or are such comparisons odious?   Maybe yes  +maybe no

Amir Ameen 15  recovering in hospital was taking an exam when gunmen

entered the classroom   They shot students one by one  mostly in the head

he said     They shot my teacher +her baby daughter  I am the only survivor

from my class  I played dead when they checked me

decimation

armageddon

end of the world

There is no shortage of precise language to describe these last days in  the year of

our Lord   two thousand +fourteen   World War III is a war without borders   It is

also a war of technology    Just look at what they did   to Sony

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Winter Solstice  2014