I am with you now…                                                             ­                                   
                                           our distance banished, in skin-close loving warmth.

Your smile....                                                        ­                                                    
            ­                               melts the icy chill of loneliness with springtime sun.

Your eyes…..                                                          ­                                                  
                                       shine brightly now that a missing part of you is home.

Your lips……                                                           ­                                                 
                                         express a long absent love in intimate eager urgency.

Your arms..…                                                          ­                                                  
                                              banish an acre of empty bed in skin-close comfort.

Your body……                                                           ­                                               
                 ­                shivers in anticipation of loving touch that is meant to be.

I am with you now…                                                             ­                                   
                             ­                              …needing you…holding you…loving you.


Sweet dreams my love.

Sail away with me today my love
And make love under the stars
Mid-winter Nordic dawn becomes
A Flam frozen train to paradise

Sail away with me tonight my love
And make love under the stars
Mid-winter Nordic dawn becomes
A fjord of fog bound waterfalls

Sail away with me tomorrow my love
And make love under the stars
Mid-winter Nordic dawn becomes
A slip-sliding memory of closeness

Every day living is a new room

I used to look forward
To the adventure of new
But now I know that I am
One of ten thousand guests
Who have slept in this bed
I feel my room is full of
Tired spirits of the night

Escape is to my old room now.

How can you
Experience the
Pain of now when
You are not living
In the moment?

How can you
Claim that your feet
Are on the ground
When your head is
In the clouds?

How can you
Tell everyone that
You have the answer
When your love is
No longer with you?

I am a much loved dog, but
I wish I were a cat, since
They have nine lives, and
My master Mattis likes to pull
My ears and has even thrown,
Me out the window, of a moving
Car, which would have hurt a lot,
If I was flesh and bone, but I am
Not, just a much loved cuddly
Toy, whose name should be
Houdini, then I could escape.

When I close my eyes, I can see your smile,
Distant yet, I feel you are closer than skin,
You are my other half, you make me whole.

I love you completely, I know you feel this
Closeness when apart, and with me always ,
When I close my eyes, I can see your smile.

You cannot know, the pain I feel without,
Your touch, on waking, a precious moment,
You are my other half, you make me whole.

I imagine just like in a dream, the feeling,
Of coming home, I see you standing there,
When I close my eyes, I can see your smile.

You run into my arms, young lovers again,
That feeling of first love madness, always
You are my other half, you make me whole.

Your love, my life, my road, my reason to be,
On the empty road, you are my beacon light,
When I close my eyes, I can see your smile,
You are my other half, you make me whole.

You know without understanding
You see without appreciating
You speak without listening
You hear without silence
You buy without needing
You read without feeling
You feel without caring
You love without living
You are without being.

Imagine the  world ….                                                                                
                                                                ….if you had never said “Hello”

Imagine the space….                                                                                  
                                                                 ….where you were meant to be

Imagine waking up….                                                                                
                                                                            ….in a forever empty bed

Imagine the absent closeness….                                                                
                                                                       ….and perfect pleasures lost

Imagine a time….                                                                                        
                                                                        ….before your tender touch

Imagine the future….                                                                                  
                                                                         ….if fragile friendships end

Imagine the energy….                                                                                
                                                                    ….we must spend to stop this

Imagine the heat….                                                                                    
                                                                     ….that our love will generate

Imagine the reward….                                                                              
                                                                          ….of this lifetime together.

I might have been a poet,                                                      
                                                who was dreaming of the stars.
I might have been a scientist,                                                
                                             who was inventing nothing new.
I might have been an honest man,                                        
                                                      who could not pay his bills.
I might have been a millionaire,                                            
                                                    who was jumping to his end.
I might have been a criminal,                                                
                                                        who was living like a king.
I might have been a terrorist,                                                  
                                                    who was fighting for a cause.
I might have been a politician,                                                
                                                  who was playing ***** games.
I might have been a lover,                                                        
                                                  who was lost in search of you.
I might have been a failure,                                                      
                                                     but you made me what I am.

In dreams we feel the impossible is easy
In dreams we flee the burdens of this life
In dreams we fly to worlds that don’t exist
In dreams we find the love that cannot be
In dreams we follow a path that never ends
In dreams we fall forever in a nightmare chase.

In dreams we live the jumbled fragments of our lives.

I know that I loved you,
And more than a little,
But now you are gone.

I feel...

Too heartless to beat,
Too lonely to need,
Too empty to cry,
Too raw to bleed,
Too heavy to lie,
Too cold to be,
Too sad to try.

Please...

Come back to me now,
You are the love of my life,
The part of me missing.

Darkness envelopes me like a thin grey blanket
Listen to sleeping body snores warm beside me
Imaginary ghosts emerge out of the shadows
Tomorrow’s plans become tonight’s mental list.

Twist and turn, heart beats fast, should sleep
Can’t sleep, get up, drink tea, read email, yawn
Email replies at three clears the decks, wide awake
Online yesterday’s Irish Times becomes today’s.

Skype “Hi” to friends on PST and office in Asia
In bed, read Robinson Crusoe, always meant to
Watch watch, almost five, two hours to breakfast
Sleep heavy eyes, day bright, 7am news, yawn.

Shoes shined
Suit sharp
Shirt white?
Beard short
Breath fresh
Hair trimmed
Nervous sweat
Handshake firm
Remember names.

Three minutes is..
..all you’ve got
To win or lose..
..that new job.

In the middle of the night
I wake to the fear of the night
I am left thinking about my dreams
Not waking dreams of life and love
But these darker dreams of the night
Are crystal clear, tenuous memories
That connect bits of a day now past
With a reality that cannot be but
Seems so logical as I drift into
My dream-world madness
In the middle of the night

She makes him sit and unbuttons his shirt
Makes him lie back and wets his hair, then
Her hands massage shampoo into his scalp
She is irresistible, every moment etched on
His brain, her sensuous touch, an incredibly
Close feeling, as she washes his hair, this is
More beautiful than breath, more loving than
***, more electric than near, more perfect
Than curling up, more intimate than naked.

Dos cervezas por favor in De K’ffe,
Cold bite of the first beer refreshes.
Una mas and workday fades to dull,
The night feels bright and hopeful,
The Palitos de pollo satisfies hunger.
Conversation flows to Cepas de Altura,
Three bottles later the stories repeat,
Groundhog day of interesting lives,
With eternal friendship in every bottle.
Six corks line up like truth bullets,
In an aggression of arguments,
Maybe he has just said too much,
Friendship of an unremembered hug,
Next day sorry and failings forgotten.

Conversation watching cricket flows
Between corporate strangers who
Work together but know nothing of
The others’ lives outside the office
Where work-life balance is a myth
The bowlers bowl and the batsmen bat.

Not much happens between innings
On the field, but the action is in the
Stands, as wickets fall, the barriers
Between spectators vanish, and new
Understandings develop, all because
The bowlers bowl and the batsmen bat.

Wine that universal lubricant, moves
From polite engagement to introspective
Intent to solve all our corporate problems
The laser-like focus as new friends grow
Closer than that 22 yards seem as the
The bowlers bowl and the batsmen bat.

Your eyes are like a window to a cave
Containing all the precious jewels in the world
The jewels are the reflection of our life together
Diamonds sparkle in bright light of an ice-cold day
Topazes glow with honeycomb fire in the evening
Rubies lust for love in a dark hour before dawn
Emeralds release a relaxing sleepy smile
Pearls display the heart of our loving.

My mind is wondering if it's true that
When we die we go to another place
Or have we just turned out the lights.

It's hard to see an empty shell and
Believe there could be more than nothing
When all we leave behind are dreams.

Children are the promised life eternal,
Who drive everything we do in life,
The immortal issue of a mortal man,
The reason to be a reasonable being
The parent, preacher, teacher, tall
In the cycle of life, just dust in the end.

All through the night she keeps you awake.

Her skin so soft as she sleeps in your arms,
Her breath so quiet as you hold her tight,
Her scream of pleasure as you come as one,
Her body on fire as you climb the hill,
Her heart beats fast with rhythm of love,
Her gasps of pleasure as you slip inside,
Her lips so hot as you kiss her so hard,
Her ******* so perfect in the act of love,
Her desire so strong as you feel her wet,
Her passion so wild as she strips for you,
Her love so perfect as you look in her eyes,
Her beauty so radiant as she smiles hello.

All through the night you remember last night.

Living
On the edge
Of adrenaline
With caffeine
No sleep.

Torture team
Manage manager
Calm customers
Shoot supplier
No sleep.

Fixes fail
Skype saviour
Possible plan
Fanatic focus
No sleep.

Forget food
More madness
Temper tantrum
Solution soon
No sleep

Rock & roll
Back broken
Problem past
Adrenaline addict
No sleep

Go to bed – write this poem.

Cohen liquid music trickles into the holes in our lives
It’s four in the morning at the end of December
I came by myself to this very crowded place
Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women
The walls of this hotel are paper thin
Everyone knows the dice is loaded
I loved you for a long long time
I stepped into an avalanche
The door it opens slowly
Baby I’ve been waiting
Like a bird on a wire
If you want a lover
But I am not lost
Snow is falling
Love is a fire
Silence
…..
…
.






Excerpts from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen © 1993.
Published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Used with permission of the publisher.

Birth gives life with an awful
Closeness, since today I
Sent a 1st birthday card
To a part of me, that
I gave to my son.
It crossed in the
Post with his
Card which
Read…

"Ian donates high quality kidney to his son"

In
Giving
We receive
More than we
Can ever expect
When we do what
Comes naturally to a
Parent in this cycle of
Life and living and love.

Taxi from El Alto spirals towards the clogged streets
A thousand metres down from hell to high-rise
Thanksgiving in America a daily struggle in Bolivia
Street lamp effigies signal certain death to thieves
Two bodies on road surrounded by yellow tape
Hombres sleep-like stillness an uncovered curiosity
This morning neither knew it would be their last
Fifty police listen to chief behind mahogany lectern
Death brings them 15 minutes of news-time fame
Cars and peasants pass by with unheeding speed
Is death the end or just another part of life in La Paz?

The hello again smile whenever I arrive home,
A welcome hug when I feel you in my arms,
The want you now look in a crowded room,
A want you back when I am going on a trip,
The sleepy smile as I leave you alone in bed,
A hope you have fun with our boys goodbye.

The holding hands as we walk on the beach,
A million Little Things in our lifetime together,
The no regrets ever as my heart beats fast,
A comfortable cuddle as we drift off to sleep,
The spring in your step after a sleep-in morning,
A closeness with the other half of me - with me.

I have Uptown ******* my DVD,
And Friends on the floor,
I am moving to the music,
And rocking to the beat.

I have training centre every day,
And I am working very hard,
I know that I am growing up,
Everyone tells me so.

I am at Bayside Gym each week,
And have won a lot of medals,
I got them at gymnastics events,
In Dublin , Belfast and Milan.

I go to movies every Saturday,
And eat in Eddie Rocket’s,
I like my dad to come along,
And share my coke and popcorn.

I love my mum and dad a lot,
And brothers John & Steve,
I know they are so proud of me,
Everything I do and am.

I pour my milk into a glass,
And cook waffles for a snack,
I hope you like this little note,
And that’s all I have to say.

Loneliness is an empty democracy
With everything you can choose
But nobody to share it with
So everyone can see that
Life is a passing opportunity

Living is the sticky moments
Between birth and death, if you
Blink and you might miss them
And would be a shame to leave
Life with no ripples in the pond

Love is a desperate tyranny
But every moment is forever
Blink and the picture remains
A forever memory of moments
Life with a legacy of no regrets

Words that touch you physically,
Emotionally, spiritually, make you feel
Younger, stronger, adventurous, in love,
Touch you in gentle massage, fast beating
Heart, tingling skin, enraptured, in words
You see everything, experience feelings,
Beyond senses, living in the moment,
Wanting, waiting, wishing, words that
Touch your very soul in living love.

Alta cocina in Cochabamba for eight,
It’s llama for lunch accompanied by
An Andean black rice which I find
Is quinola, which is easy to like if
You are already committed to llama.

This llama for lunch in Paprika, is good
I wonder if gauchos lasso them from two
Meters, at least, to ensure, they don’t spit
This is why Blazing Saddles used cows,
Makes the movie more macho methinks.

Love is two
Love is hello again
Love is a moment in time
Love is needing to be loved
Love is wanting to hold you now
Love is the spark when we touch
Love is two hearts beating as one
Love is the closeness when asleep
Love is curling up so close to you
Love is emptiness without you
Love is waking to your smile
Love is sad when you go
Love is you and me
Love is now.

Smiling lovers’ eyes dilate in magnetic attraction
Warm bodies embrace the electric charge of desire
Tingling lips licked kiss a “missed you” message
Soft hands explore through summer thin clothes
Fluttering feeling in passion the butterflies fly free
As skin-close lovers assuage each other’s absence

Love could be the sad fling of an old dog
Who could be brought to his senses
With a rolled up newspaper.

Love could be the expression of a lifelong love
Of two who became one many years ago, who
Grow together in perfect moments in time.

How do you know how do you tell?
Is our love the real thing?
A fulfilling passion
Or just a foolishness
In our old age?

This frustration can make an imbalance in our lives

Because

Love is not just another choice on the menu.

We miss the body language in our telephone conversation,
Feelings expressed unseen, words of love are just words,
We laugh but fear the loneliness of an unintended slight,
Connected and divided by one dimension in time and space.

We hear and see without feeling on a nervous video chat,
Expressing our nakedness as Adam and Eve in the garden,
Deprived of touch words and pictures are distant and awful,
Connected and divided by two dimensions in time and space.

We hold each other in the tender embrace of long absence,
Whispered intimacies and smiling eyes together at last,
Contemplation of heaven and a hell that was missing you,
Connected you, a part of me, in three dimensions time and space.

Time passes in a mystery of minutes and months,
Days and nights a survival of solitude and sleep,
Life and living becomes an unending wait for Now.

Now is just a Technicolor rush of with you again,
But our time together always is impossibly short,
So that leaving you again gets harder every time.

Why is time a new variable with the one I love?
Why are the colours of love so warm for us now?
Why do Cupid’s arrows still draw blood so red?
Why are grey days bright and rainy days soft?
Why after all these years do I feel like this?
Why is time with you in too-short seconds?

If only our love stopped the earth turning,
We could love in a frozen second of time,

Forever.

Love not absence makes the heart grow fonder
Today we have no doubt that this distant closeness
Between a Southside girl and a Northside boy, though
Scattered by the winds in our banking crisis, that
Brought them closer, though far away showed
Us all that they were made for each other.

Love not distance in those three thousand miles
Brought us together in the city that never sleeps
You my Southside girl and I your Northside boy
Together our challenge is an opportunity for life
That shows nothing will ever do us any harm
And that we were made for each other.

Love not closeness won my candlelight bid
For your hand in marriage today as our hearts
Were the willing victims of bold Cupid’s arrows
So I am proud to say we stand as one, proclaiming
What our families and friends already know that
You were made for me and I was made for you.

Words are just words that may blow on the wind
Touch is just touch that can hurt like a dart
Love is just madness that may bind or divide
Magic is my love for everything about you.

Feelings are just feelings that may change over time
Need is just need that can be selfish and crass
Lust is just want that can often cause pain
Magic is your love and the pleasure it brings me.

Hopes are just hopes that may frustrate and confuse
Stress is just stress that can be destructive and sad
Living is the life that you have given me to savour
Magic is our love and the electricity between us.

The curious belief which drives
A man to **** so many for
The reward in martyrdom of
Seventy two black eyed virgins
Has an ironic twist in the
Disappointment that a belief
So carefully nurtured, if
Houri are hur, and the error
In translation is a paradise
Of white raisins instead.

Memories are
The building blocks
In the house of your life.
You can build a castle,
Or end up homeless.

Memories are
The rolling waves
On the beach of your life.
You can leave with barely a ripple
Or ride those waves.

Priceless,
A moment with you,
In my life, my everything.
I am saving every memory,
Soon, I will be a millionaire,
With a treasure trove of,
Unforgettable moments
Like grains of sand,
Golden for-
Ever.
For
Us.

Like a still small voice in an empty room,
The quiet nightmare of my lonely bed intrudes,
Remembering our togethers, now so far away,
Staring into the darkness at a hungry mosquito,
My endless hunger that only you can assuage,
His endless hunger a ****** angry morning itch
Absence makes the heart grow fonder methinks.

A nurse’s care replaces impossible independence,
Too short heaven in a “delighted to see you” smile,
Lifetime of living remnants in a fragmented mind-
The woman becomes child of the man for ever,
Ten minute memories in oft repeated questions.

Picture book of life a set of disappearing moments,
Flashes of insight, questions prescient in perception,
Family names confused but still recognised for now.
Does love die or become caring for the living dead?
Will a God preserve me from this same living hell?

Looking to snooze on AA922 to Miami today
Little monsters scream all the way for fun
Seat kicking for exercise and expression
****** in mind as red wine spills on shirt
Wishing it was little darlings’ blood instead
Open the door and take them wing walking
Angry parents complain for some reason
Perhaps because I did not bring them back
Now sleeping, no apologies, dreaming that
Business Class minimum age the best policy.

Hearts - beating faster
Temperatures - rising
Eyes - shining bright


Because


Anticipation - almost too much
Closeness - never too much
Happiness - just being together

Halfway across Europe, missing you,
Missing me, forever absent always near.
Moments of intense closeness, followed by
Absence, more painful than a root canal,
But, the moments together, precious,
Beyond feeling, more intense than
Things, which we fill our lives for
Comfort, an antidote to the
Loneliness, that is part,
Of global living
Today.

Oatmealed and omeletted, start to a dull grey Seattle day
Mutual “Good morning” yawns wait the elevator gruzz
Cheery maid vacumates my room in a swirl of efficiency
Brundling my notes and my PC together I walk to work
Strumphing along beside the fumes of the grundling traffic

Email mountains confabulate the uncoffeed hordes
Typed kerattle the calm before the budget storm
Subterranean stocks desphorror of legal gamblers
Bonehead logic meets dumbling marketing aspirations
Now silent nerbling excuses of cur-whipped executives

Micawber’s message crystal in strangression of promises
Fundamental economics the only possible bankerage
Blood will flow in abattoir of management incastrophies
Doe-like and frembling in the light of impending execration
The stapression painfully personal as reality bites as last

Beer time comfrunks gather early in a huddle of hope
Sheep-like they absorb the tendralations of others’ fears
Remonstressing their misfortune in a depression of dinner
Relaxed at last in a hopefindation of beer goggle logic
Sleepfully staring at the mortgage arreared ceiling

My thankful escape to the Murakamied Sputnik symphony
Harmony in the silence of solitaricious nightcap with Hilton Mark
Wishing I was home now with my cuddlicious girl again
Grateful for loving and living in this aventacular world
I quietly srift off to sleep in a snozzle of sweet dreams

When you close your eyes and remember,
The time we never knew this future, where
You are my other half, you make me whole,

The time when you were ten and I was twelve,
Together but apart, in oil and water schooldays,
We never knew, in our separate lives, that
Cupid’s arrows would strike, so that now
You are my other half, you make me whole

I know it’s not a dream, but it sometimes
Feels unreal, our perfect life together, but
Today, we know that we are going to keep,
That feeling of first love madness, always,
You are my other half, you make me whole.

Our love, our life, our road, our reason to be,
In the moment, on our wedding day, now
You are my other half, you make me whole.

Why are you looking at me?
When all I said was “hello”
Don’t you know who I am?

Looking at you looking at me
Makes me worried about you
Why are you looking at me?

So I say “HELLO” to your silence
Like you want to be invisible
Don’t you know who I am?

Like a car crash waiting to happen
You stare transfixed as I stand up
Why are you looking at me?

Thinking you must be deaf
Standing close I shout “HELLO”
Don’t you know who I am?


With every “hello” I will make
The world a better place for all
Why are you looking at me?
Don’t you know who I am?

Old Year on last legs staggers slowly towards midnight,
Memories in our pockets are like butterflies and stones,
A deep dark lake of forgetfulness swallows the stones,
Some sink deep, others shallow, a source of pain again,
Butterflies now free lift our spirits in a tapestry of colour,
Flying high on past pleasures and treasured moments,
New Year born in a carnival of gluhwein and pink pigs.

Snow at last, at minus ten New York wears its winter skin
Homeless escape the streets to the subway train warmth
Animal-house comments from shallow breathing commuters
Shocked smiles from startled stockbrokers and secretaries.

Slip-sliding on sidewalks, fills my shoes with slosh of slush
Hands reach out to hold falling commuter - ouch, thanks
Buzz in Bull and Bear bar, smiles as Russian détente provides
An expensive warm bed for drink-confident conference Adonis.

My girl is far away but close, reading my History of Love
I see her smile that “I want to spend a lifetime discovering”
Valentines’ hearts abound, nervous dates in fancy restaurants
Incompatible to all but each other, tense jazz in the Red Eye.

Night moves slowly…                                                                                              

                                                     …a black treacle river of sensuous expectation


Night moods bright…                                                                                              

                                                           …as electric rush replaces grey day tedium


Night magic stardust...                                                                                              

                                                           ...as lovers’ eyes lock in promise of passion


Night meets sunrise...                                                                                              

                                                      ...as hopeful singles slink alone to empty beds