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Rob Cohen Jun 10
Raised on a diet of bible verses,
beatings and curses -
he grew like a rose from the concrete;
feeding on prose, poems and paintings
on pages
of disheveled dogeared diaries.

His days spent playing ball
in hopeless broken glass
grass-less parks;
filled with litter and rabid dogs
across foul festering fields
on the stench-ridden outskirts,
the wrong side of the tracks,
set him up for a back-footed existence.

Washing ***** dishes;
racking,
stacking and packing piles of plates
for wages paid in copper coins,
unable to foil his life of turmoil.
A plethora of poorly punctuated
pauper poems,
written in faded ink on train tickets,
unfolded matchboxes
and scraps of old paper advertisements -
offered no food for his thoughts
nor crumbs for the rumbles of hunger.
Lines stuffed fat with substance
never fed the mouth
that spoke them into existence.

Pawning his tattered and torn everything
outside railway stations
to ragged homeless roommates
for bartered paper-plate morsels
rescued from floors and trashcans.
With his empty bag and nothing to sell
he returns to his cardboard cell,
the darkest corner of his hunger hazed hell.  

Blinded by starvation fed desperation,
he grabbed an apple
from a fruit and vegetable
market-stationed wheelbarrow
only to end up thrown into jail,
mixed with murderers and rapists
                there's no climbing out
of this felon-shaped hole
as his downhill life;
till death,
remains in
free-fall.
Rob Cohen Jun 2023
lyrics on the metaphysics of lust*

   let me kiss you
below the depths
touched by simmering rays
crashing like waves onto your bronzing skin
on a sunny day

may my ravenous fangs
sink into the nape of your neck
holding back the pining force
of seven hundred clamping bear-traps

the safety-nets
woven out of cigarette smoke
& verbose poems
written by a flickering lamp
burning midnight oil
dissolved in the unseeable depths
of those deep-sea green eyes

helicopters whirled in the pits of my stomach
when my gaze found her face
& i could stare until i was able to rig a wig
blindfolded
where each strand of hair mapped to scale

starving to death for your tomb of life
    la petit mort // la petit mort
an afterlife womb
  where heaven & hell mix
        craving more & more

gliding fingers ski southward
tracing outlines along silky snow
    i connect freckles
                                  dot•to•dot
sketching a finger-painted masterpiece
along the canvas of your burning flesh

          hallelujah
                            hallelujah

hips ****** up as lips meet lips
now dissolve on my tongue
                                  
shifting gears & counting speed
melting me as she breathes
earthquakes shake over quivering bodies
turning calm seas into wild stormy high tides

blood rushes into flushed cheeks
she floods my shore
like a tsunami at the break of dawn
on all fours begging for more

black on white strikes gold
while grey melts in between
tap-tap the beat of a snare drum
hitting the high hats where the dots of i
meet the passing crossroads of u̶s̶

sweet & sour sweat drips
splashing from sheets onto the floor
steam sways & burns
as the scent of burning wood
fills the empty spaces of our room
an unspoken language with signs of smoke
as flames burn through the old
& come again glimmering new
Rob Cohen Jun 2023
Orphan Ontology (an obituary for father time & mother earth)


swap the snapping turtles for shadow puppets
it's Plato's cave all the way down

shimmering hexagonal revelations
stream through my Dimethyltryptamine daydream

out of my eyes unfurled the room
& then the world was birthed from my womb

faint as a whisper, yet haunting
a spectre lingers in the ether
heavy charcoal clouds hanging over me

under orange smoke, I pray
in dusty days of this drought-stricken
Eleusinian mystery  
where the flowers which you painted in the spring
have turned a pale shade of grey disarray

a black hole sun hovers where the superlunary
ought to be
& i find myself lost with insomnia
seeking aletheia on a polar night
stumbling around the thorny maze of my own creation
in the tattered pair of shoes
painted by Vincent van Gogh

in that little ice age
Nietzsche's demon spoke the cursed words
spelling out my Sisyphean eternal recurrence
to carry an acacia cyclops cross
sprawled across the breadth of my back
crafted by my clumsy hands
splintered & ****** as they deserve to be  
for letting you slip through
when my skies were still blue
Rob Cohen Dec 2022
douse my beehive mind
in liquid amphetamines
to steady the blurry split screens
of multi-tabbed greyhound speed
barking madly at stalking shadows
fallen from my heels
jolting me out of my skin.

throw a rope ladder down
into the entrapment basement
resident stage to the passive aggressive
clinking cutlery orchestra
conducting butter knife cutting taunts
torturing my melted butter split aura.

hanging on to the edge of a chair
inside my chest where every breath
echoes the beat of a marching band
& trembling hands stand
on melting ice as they somersault
in the winter solstice
frozen from cavity vault to my face.
              
i look to see through sleeps eyes
where the mercury penny drops
under arrow pierced apples
in shade dripping with nights clarity
on a melted sea beneath
the flowing eastern wind
blowing the misty uncertainty to smithereens.

neuron explosions sketch constellations
out of flame infused
squeezed citrus peels
as sparks dance
where beasts of land, air & sea
collide in dotted starry symbols
drawing borders across synchronicity.

my rubber soles are worn thin
while stones fill the insides
but rubber-band wings stretched wide
bending tides & mountains appear as molehills
from weightless vapor heights dissolving the sky.

i seek the calm of crocodile waters
where i can stretch my legs
on fertile silt riverbeds
& soak in the golden sunshine smile
washing down in spectacular arrays
of scepter conjured waves.

open the gates to my airborne castle
where hope finds ****** interpretations
along the path to eternal symposiums
i'm lead to Jericho's jenga answers.
x
Rob Cohen Nov 2022
i rack the depths of my conscious mind
hoping to find
what the unconscious hides.
exploring the mysterious deep caves
of my psyche,
which hoards buried trauma chests
and rejected repressed reminders
of drunken debauched deeds

those awful humiliating blurs
in the midst of slurs,
and stumbling carcasses
in crumbling grog bars.
where the incongruous combination
of chemicals digested in whiskey pools
of my otherwise empty stomach,
and blood rushing to my heart ache
taking a turn for the worst.

those intoxicating devices
which grip and control without license
act as my puppet master,
for whom i dance without order.
there is no clarity in that dooming bliss
where the infidelity of a lustful kiss
is a casual handshake in a red dress.
nothing good ever happens after 2am,
and 3am is the devil's hour
while 4am knows your secrets
and riddled repressed regrets.

blinded by denial deduced from delirium
I still despise myself the next day
whilst in disarray,
silently craving the grave
before the sun sets on my fragile body.
self-loathing isn't a charming game to play
but it is the tormenting price you pay,
for not all is bliss if you bathe everyday
in the pools of folly.
Rob Cohen Nov 2022
linguistic ******* as the emergence of furor poeticus
  :: out of phonetic oral *** comes lyrical transcendence


  /
acacia thorns pierce the skin
while shittim pierces the veil of the perceivable
as golden incense weaves across the sky
to a sanctuary where we unwind space & time

prophet's write of the vapor turning on lights
and horns shining in rays of synesthesia

magi mixed herbs under the desert moon
which mapped a path through golden the sand

bundle's of wild harmel wood burns
as sparks flicker & dance with stars
in a moon reaching bonfire

under autumn shadows
in the harmonic hum of the aboriginal didgeridoo
drifting on the streams of wattle-seed smoke
  gazing down as the earth unfolds and refolds
            in a cymatic origami cardtrick

out of the soil grows the ship
which flies above the starry skies
fruit of biblical implications
with seeds of knowledge
& keys to ghostly dimensions

    //
Thomas Aquinas
& Meister Eikhart shared the same eye
as you & I
peel wide the smokescreen
& spy through the looking-glass used by god
  which saw god
which was the eye through which the son of god saw
& wept at the stale state
  of the collective unconscious bots
lost in spirals of consumption & mirror reflection *******

this is not the godless wasteland
advertised by the screaming anchormen
    fear-mongers & alarmists
who sell panic by the gallon

with electrodes probing their temporal lobes
the prophets & shaman's
are in the asylums
labeled as ******'s for their visions of angels
& demons
& messages from the god's

an amnesiac species
chasing the neurochemical highs
shaped by evolutionary design
as a means to survive

barrel of monkey's biologically
swinging about nuclear powered technology
        alienated
that far removed from nature (forest. desert. ocean)
planning to leave the planet entirely


    Om Mani Padme Hung
    OM
    Om Mani Padme Hung
    OM
'Om Mani Padme Hung' is a Sanskrit mantra associated with compassion.
the use of the mantra 'Om Mani Padme Hung' is to express a model of phonology in linguistics (the sound quality) and the importance, to lengths of religious significance.
Rob Cohen Jan 2021
i
From the streets of Dublin
the hordes re-Joyce
as Odysseus waxes lyrical
with colloquial finesse
    his golden tongue spitting fire
steamrolling the jargon wagon
on stairway rails from tube to paper.

Live stream of consciousness
flows from depths below
bellowing out of shadows
an intoxicating wave
breaking the surf on black peaks
of spiked stone keys typed in gonzo.

  ii
Aristotle stood firm
at the pulpit in his symposium
while his quill penned poetics
preaching the genius
of metaphor and metaphysics.

Embryonic parsel-tongue
waving a wand in wizardry
from ink fountains bursting on parchment
delivering the gift
of ribbon wrapped eloquence.

  iii
Unbuttoned rolling flow
in fluid monologue
skipping ropes of jazz speak
unedited
unfiltered rivers
where rough diamonds are crowned king.

Standing on one leg
inspecting the heart
the past fell
growing arachnid telescopes
and digging in every anatomical tract
to extract the distilled essence.

  iv
Musical motif
shining constellation of text tessellation

Lyrical relief
binding formation to flex evocation.

  v
Vineyard winding with jump cut scenes
fermenting fruit
ripe for the picking
inducing intoxication laced reading
    sliced and spliced
a chalice of spice
blinking
weaving
overflowing.

Godard's lens zooms
blooming in district cloud nine
rolling ***** of raw nervous energy
shaking from screen to belly.

  vi
Magician of allusion
pulling Shakespeare out of his hat
peeping from leaves of grass
and Walt's multitude of class.

Join the dots and fill in the blank
to a spectacle
for spectators wearing spectacles
who open their cans of interpretation
worming out and ransacking the sack.

  vii
Unchain the shackles of form
abandoning umbrellas
for free falling
s
n
o
w
f
l
a
k
e
s

  viii
From Greek theater's
staging Freud's favourite play
to a trek with a scarecrow,
a tin man and Dorothy's pet lion
  the hard to swallow
jagged little pill
pulls the wool over hollow eyes.

... the lowest form of wit
... the highest form of intelligence
- the wilde wit-king wrote
wearing a fab fur coat.

  ix
Jigsaw piece of the trivium
with five canons plugged into the auxesis
aimed at the poet
while unfolding inner turmoil
and cleaning out the cobwebs
in the closet of self.

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself
Inspired by several of T. S. Eliot's essay's relating to Modernism & lectures by Duke University English Professor Victor Strandberg as well as Gregory Wolfe, writer in residence at Seattle Pacific University, and editor of the literary journal .
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