after Alexandra Leaving, a song by Leonard Cohen

<>

to go where?

to a city self-consuming in madness,
giving every excuse to stay, and yet,
it came to me just now when the poet
must be leaving his redoubt, with doubt,
and return to the concrete and anomie
of a different kind of splendid isolation

when the last leaf meanders slow down
to the battlefield, and the falling terminado,
and the tree branches are stick figures, each
finger pointing skyward in an j’accusing manner,
accussing & conceding defeat, begging for mercy,
their pleadings too much for me to bare and bury

when green has been wiped clean, and deleted
from the dictionary of colors, my moth eaten soul,
can no longer be granted a stay of execution by
merely looking at the landscape and seascape
to admire their friendly contrasting schemes,
their installation in me of the awe of a visual
quietude, that was an astonishing injection
not truly appreciated till now, too late and
still early, the awe colorations of nature’s vibrancy

The gods have come, my soul hoisted upon their
broad shoulders, the dead-appearing tree branches
can no longer keep their poet safe, hold him back from
meeting his fate; now, he too is a leaving but
floating upward, unlike like the fallen crowds that have
come to rest upon the soil that born them, now to be buried,
all saying: Goodbye Island Poet leaving,

Island Poet
has no poem, no good understanding, no vision,
had no plan, no foresight, only a hope against hope,
that safety was/is not seasonal, Van Morrison reminds,
“These are the days of endless summer,”are memories,
to be held onto tightly, until when if I pass muster, angels
will return to my island abode, where my natural friends
will greet me again, with a flowering and new births,
and The Island Poet can once again revel in ideas in words like
future, sanity, when boarding the ferry with a one way ticket smile.

this person, who reads somehow
almost every poem here deposited,
how he does it, a secret, well kept,
but hardly hidden, for he signals
his appreciation in so many ways,
and s p o t l i g h t s those who frequent
contribute, cheerleader and coach
with keen eye and sharpness of brain,
he affectively, affectionately, injects &
infects this little expanse,
this Kingdom of York,
where lovers meet,
speaking in their own
dialect of kindness…

writes himself with a uniqueness,
dare I say in his owned style?
there is never a doubt
who has authored his work,
so many superb scripts,
but his better good works,
present in his presence here,
bringing out the best of the
multiplicities of each of us

but of whom do I speak?

Why,

Carlo C. Gomez

of course!

My Night With Paul Simon
(Posted originally on June 5, 2013)

On the night train, the red eye plane,
Flying home to NYCeeeeeeeeeeeee,
From the city of Los Angeleeeeeeez

Feeling flush, dropped some cash,
Got me a seat in extra large first class

Seat 2C, plenty of room for my toes,
To wiggle  to dance, lay down some poetry tracks,
pretending I'm a **** jive,
bad *** from the
make-believe west coast

A short guy, with fedora down low,
An older man,
looking about nine years older
than somebody I might know,
hiding his eyes @ 9pm
neath some excellent Raybans,
slip slides into 2D,
gives me a smile,
And says Hi, I'm Paul

I look once at his face and say,
Listen Rhymin' Simon,
I'd know you any place,
No worries, your secret,
with me is safe,
Cause dudes in row 2,
gottta stick together, be cool,
We're riding first class,
over the land of the free

What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

He said that's cool,
I like to do that too.
Guitars on planes
drive passengers insane,
They take up too much
overhead compartment space,
I just scribble me some rhymes and
Let the music come
when I got two feet
on the ground in the city
we both come from.

Paul:  You got any stuff writ
on that yellow sheet,
or just pretty blue lines,
a big pad of nothing?

Dude: Man you may got diamonds
on the soles of your shoes,
But pay me some 'spect,  
you talking to the man who penned
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland
on Hello Poetry, gad ****!

Paul smiled and said
you can call me Al,
And if you feel like blowing some lines together,
We got five hours till we can see
the house that Ruth built.

Dude: Hit me with your best shot,
I'll show you what I got

Paul: And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping
In a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

Dude: Just cause the union of the  monkeys
in the Bronx Zoo done gone on strike,
Don't mean the lion ain't
still king of the hill
inside this New York city jail

Paul: And the sign said,
"The words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered
in the sounds of silence

Dude: A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet
******

Paul: You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

Dude: Contact with the atmosphere
makes self pity die,
blue blood turn red,
the TNT tightness in my chest exploded
I got no place
to store these words,
the cops think I'm
some kind of
Terrorist

On and on thru the night,
Riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
Ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
Single words and elegies,
Free verse and a lot of fking curse words,
It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ

You may think this story apocryphal
Which is another way of saying untrue,
But I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
To this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
And it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
And it has never since that day,
Left my grasp

don’t believe in
divine intervention,
but all~so(uls)
don’t believe in the
accidents of coincidence

the Pandora Box gods eavesdrop on my mind,
looking to match the music to my mood,
(box to box, they cruelly smile)
Providentially Provisioning
me with inspirational food.
to collect and let
what’s brewing,
stop stewing,
and come out
in a you know what…

that old song,
500 Miles,
keeps
returning, unplanned,
auto play repeatedly
entirely accidentally,
(U believe that?)
my mind keeps on
knowing
I’m up~blowing,
there’s unfinished business
a-firing, a forest fire
of a 500 miles~s-acred blaze,
the firemen intuit ‘tis
of a kind,
it can’t be stoppered
until you and it,
self extinguish, (ex~sting-you~ish (1))
burn itself,
outside inwards,
reverse phoenix,
not sparks left,
until it’s dead

and the song,
and it’s power o’er me,
** ** **, is un~finished
busine business,
having fun with
my undoing

Lord, I’m Two,
both of us,
in words unspoken,
know that the/a fragmentation
grenade that is my brain,
dancing on the thinner
blackest
red line that asunders me,
twice, into two unequal halves,
is inflamed, infected, dejected

Both of us,
hear that dog whistle
loud blowing
one inch, a salty pinch,
or even
500 hundred miles,
makes no difference,
cause Lord, I’m two

reminding how far I am
from my owning
my very own
personal homeland security,
complete with self-sourced,
sovereign jagged glass pieces,
intended to jag, jog, tear, penetrate, break, annoy, till~this line……ends
,
the errata of this man’s
quasi, semi, repeating
mess-ups, that are
erratically invoking
benedictional confessionals,
of poems unwrit

those I dare not,
until and unlest,
you board a plane
to come to save me

Lord, I’m Disordered,
Lord, I’m Three,
a trinity of Myself & I & Me,
siblings who just
can’t along,
but can’t barely survive,
as separate human beings,
for one cord connects us,
keeps attached like on a bus,
though at a modest
moderating distance,
cause the fights are
frequent

Lord, I’m
(yeah yeah Four, say no more,
just rap it up son,
there’s work to be done!)

am I finished being,
an unfinished being,
will I ever make it to Five,
get home, even barely alive,
Lord, will I ever be One,
just like you,
put together,
a jigsaw complete,
a whiskey neat,
a whiskered gnat,
a graybeard bit
of fluff
with a wide smile of a
Cheshire Cat?

Lord,
give me sleep,
& poems born written
pre~complete,
so alls that required is to just hit
SEND,
a journey shelved,
ended before began,
a pieced together whole man,
give me rest,
eternal and blest,
make me an archaic kept,
in an archive slept,
and end this song,
with a fini
of
quietude & peace?


4:35AM
Sabbath Eve
- Av 12, 5784
- Aug. 16, 2024

,000 drafts of poems proposed,
some but a bit, a title, a bob,
some wondering why are they kept
in suspended animation, the fire of exiting
from placenta to screaming baby, most,
patient waiting, over the undivided divide,
the Cumbersome Attention Gap to cross,
to the state of hallelujah completion

this race should be an Olympic one,
it is unwinnable, but only open to poets
who willing to go the unlimited distance,
every finished oeuvre, spawns bornes two
more, so you, fool, even a fifth grader,
intuits the higher math of you’ll never
catchup, but rise invigorated to meet,
greet the wonderous sunrise challenge…

and the promised ones, “next one for you,”
the unconditional incompleyedy poems
so overdue, the muses send an armored truck
to collect just the largesse of fine fines…
as my old West Village friend sang, you poet,
“might as well try and catch the wind”

this leads me to observe a new day’s first
birthday, even as Leonard sings Yom Kippur
hymns of mortality, and all the ways humans
can pass thru the gap in the morn clouds that
is the passageway to the Higher North…

you see, this is this poems day of naissance,
one day, one candle, now extant, but sooner
to be a not, one more poem sent heavenward
after a  brilliant brief coexistence with the
innards of my mind…

in my accustomed position
edge of deck, facing Northeast,
sun rises on my left, it’s  an
early barely warm,
a hopeful leading indicator of a
summer’s day coming resurrection

except? but! it is a windy 68°F
now redefined as effin’ freezing,
to an old navy man’s seasonal attire
well worn droopy and holey
t-shirt & shorts,
but overlaid, today in a wrapper-ed
of a wooly  blanket, purchased on
Amazon,
(whom neglected to advise,
that it will shed
like an eight year old
who has just
embraced the efficacy
the greatest of ease
of telling tiny
white lies frequently)

the ancien regime of erstwhile
(what is that exactly?)
better known as yesterday’s glory,
when pores poured forth streams
of coppertoned stories of
caramel vanities,
lead old fools to contemplate
perspective, something they do
with increasing frequency,
when
they remember
when
etc.

you dishonestly write of the vagaries of a 68°F perspective?  

a heaven for a mayday,
now a cursed starter, inhibiting,
predicting a wintery foretelling of
dreary dregs of a Great Lake
never-ending, graybeard
eternal winter’s sky
(sooo depressing)

and even though the
acorns of August(1)  are
plentiful. a surety that
back to school sales are
soon starting, i grasp my
summer vibes in a
tight forlorn of
yellowing old newspaper
wrapping of pleadings,
“stay, stay just a bit longer”

and though you would
think, believe, with aging
brings the perspective
to accept the changes
of seasons, body, technology,
and the wisdom not to write
foolish poems

but the Zombies defer,
making me deep recall,
the ones that got away
saying perspective is
a second cuz to perspicacity,

and even though,
“She’s Not There,”
reliving pain,
any many of the gone but
variety kind,
it is a necessary
to qualify if only
to be reminded
a necessity for we
old, only humans

no matter the degree
we live through our
perspectives