To reconcile us

I sing appropriate words --


the old well-known song.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

         Upon Reading Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai

Cohen took his soul out into the desert
He may have left part of it there to burn
Upon the sands of war and the sands of time
A chord that echoes in an Egyptian wind

As with a corpse-like tank in hull defilade
Or an *** rusting among the rocks
The prayers of Yom Kippur in whispers sung
The desert waits for us to worship there

Cohen took his soul out into the desert
We should gird our ***** and go look for it

When Leonard Cohen Met Charlie Daniels, The Devil Went Down to Georgia

~~~
The Devil Went Down to Georgia ¥
https://youtu.be/wBjPAqmnvGA

Charlie Daniels, the country music legend who died July 6, 2020, was part of the 1970 Leonard Cohen tour. (see notes)
                                            
This one is a gift to a recovering addict and a poet, for whom that peculiar, par-articulate, addictive passion, thank the Lord, got no cure.

                                                      <£>

two country boys, ok, so different countries, but both intimately
a-cquainted with the Devil, his song & music-making-copious
a-bilities, his other trois backup ***-sin-tants, The Sin Sisters,
a/k/a wine and women and sweet poetry...

now the Devil mostly gets his due, you pay his price twice, in daily
wear ‘n tear on body and soul, always trying to keep one step ahead,
taking his best, sometimes leaving the rest, but ha! not always cause sometimes a...

bargain needs keeping, gotta keep your word honest, still if you can find a wile e coyote-wriggle-way to be a tad faster, keep them ten  fingers crisscrossed, you might steal a tune or three, before you chanter la finale, sing/pay the last installment...

now these boys were multilingual, one spoke french, the other, southern, but two-gether, they could harmonize the Lord’s Prayer on a banjo, fiddle and a guitar, in une langue ancienne#, formerly spoke in those United States and Canada, now only in the heavens above...

cannot truthful say I ever saw them play on the same stage, no matter,
cause the parallels are clear as a night sky starry moon, the stories they told, in lyrical verse, different cuzins, slightly incestuous, and
infectious too, cause you catch yourself singing redneck in a foreign
language and you’re liking the way women looking at the big star on
a tour bus...

now the devil wanted these bad boys real bad in his pantheon, went
down to Georgia and back up to Montréal au paradis, said to them “no more diddling, just fiddling and singing, time to make that finale payment, principal and interest, come to collect my country boys  and all what they got left...alors allons en enfer mes bébés..”##

now the sounds they made was just too good, the Lord heard it, it was like Picasso painting the sky, and came to collect Charlie yesterday, (07/06/20), Leonard had come up earlier, and if you need to learn how this story ends, well, there’s a poem listed down below avec tous les détails.

but as my straight laced pappy, use to say in his German accented english, in his morning suit, striped pants and Homburg hat, all’s well that don’t end in hell

or something like that anyway.

It’s been months, love,
and you’re far, and have someone new,
but I’ve been dancing all this time,
in our living room, with you.

Even this Cohen record tires,
of playing this song you loved most,
but I swear I feel your hands in my hair,
and you make a handsome ghost.

And I know that this glow is your tail lights,
but I love how it bathes your skin.
I’ve missed all these meals waiting,
so I’ll have my white dress taken in.

Give me a few hours, to tape my face on,
to my bones, my heart: our plans;
truth is, while you were saying goodbye,
I was memorizing your hands.

I hope you don’t mind living this double life,
because I need just little more time,
and if all I have is your absence,
that’s fine.

We are tied in this together
harder, closer and tighter
I had this kind of bad fever
that I can see this last forever.

We are so compatible
like long lost friends
you are my decible
in the tightest wavelengths.

We are close to each other
like long lost siblings
you are my unending river
in one of the world's greatest findings.

We are so wide awake
like a record put on shuffle sings
you are my deadly snake
in the need of poisonous stings.

We are almost inseparable
like a fit thunder and storm
you are those birds that dabble
in the strike at sea out of norm.

We are hardly intangible
like hydrogen oxide in the air
you are the only trouble
in the search for lone hydrogen in pair.

We are so great in tandem
like Leonard Cohen's words of rhythm
you are the heart of my poem
in the greatest invention since algorithm.

You are surely the best ever
as,
I have lost count of my own blinks
you assured me that everything will be better
as,
I will never know what the future bring.

You will not long be remembered,
Not with the perspective you gave me.
But what you have done will forever affect history.

You've left the wire,
Like a man, fighting a fire,
I'm just glad,
That you got to be free.

You were the perfect offering:
You wrote,
You sang,
You played,
Did anything,
But now -
Are there any cracks or crevices,
Windows, holes or doors;
Has the pine split below?
With the leafs gone,
Under Supermoon or blazing sun,
Does the light get in,
Or was it just
Another song?

You took me to the Mekong River,
handing my documents over the border,
to the temple of the left-handed Buddha,
in the hope it would all make sense.

You took me to the brink of a stolen calamity,
you stayed with me in poetry; my eventual insanity.
You kept me with your golden voice,
you kept me with your wit.

You lost me with your genius;
how you discarded it.

You drove me to a calling that I could not fulfill,
just make statuettes from the ash that lines my windowsill.
Call it art, or call it a longing,
call it that animal burn for some kind of belonging.

You were a father, you called off the saints,
you cooled my tongue, my off-white yogi;
taught me these songs of pain, these songs of love
were meant to be sung by everyone.

Not the clever mind, nor the metronome heart
that keeps time with this life, that keeps pace from the start,
but for the stumbling folk, the slow off the blocks,
the maladjusted, the criminal; those who only see dark.

That this chip on my shoulder is a flute in which to sing,
that each failure I live, is a story I should bring
to the table of life, to the feast of recovery,
for every impatient soul with a hunger for discovery.

Each broken chord is a chance to sound alive,
amongst the crackle of the static, there is another side.
Another wasteland companion, another strangled voice,
that amongst all this hopelessness; we always have a choice.

To bend or to break in the shatter of our soul,
sometimes the glass must be half-empty in order to feel whole.
That some convenience pleasure is not always enough,
sometimes we must bear the burden;
sometimes we must hang tough.

Because the words will come, the sun will rise,
amongst the debris of yesterday, there is another side.
You took me to the temple and on bended knee I pray,
that I could lift a suicide, with just the words I say.

The hat he wore with ease
Indoors and onstage
The raspy baritone, the sage
The jeweler with words
That sparkled in our minds
The smiling cynic
The optimist at times
Brave, uncompromising
Knowing it would soon end
We wanted it darker
He knew we did
So he gave it to us straight
Our rhyming friend

I've been to Hydra
Stood outside his home
It's a simple place
Where cars do not roam
I breathed the same air
Marveled at the deep blue sea
I was drawn there by his spirit
By his poetry
And now he's gone
We shall carry on today
We have to
He would have wanted it this way

And we will surely miss him
For us, he does pray.