”Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not comin' on.
I'm just payin' my rent every day in the Tower of Song”
Leonard Cohen lyric from The Tower of Song
§§§
this lyric hits, it’s a ten fingered cheeky ****** marking,
fits like a new white t-shirt, clean~perfect in every aspect,
I’ve just changed song to poetry, so nobody’s complaining
axiomatic, slept less a than three shambolic hours last nite,
don’t ask what I was doing or even a simple why, even the
vultures grew tired, helplessly hoping for solutions to start appearing
water pressure ok, poem spigot strong but the words desiccated,
it’s time to revisit roots, back to where I’ve come-begun, bury losses,
seek no consideration, write in isolation, a-quiet niche, a shhh! beach
my silent reverie owns me and the angels, biggest fans, just can’t
get enough, know their faith is strong, never proofing reads required,
content to wait till find my lost chords, comforts of only fresh truths
so arrivederci, until we meet again, when cadences have resumed,
rolling in unbroken, won’t need other’s words recirculating my blood,
till my slip sliding over, direction from arrows stabbing new openings
rented a storage unit in nearby woods, empty shelves greet ya with a
‘ready, willing, and able,’ many open arms looking for fulfilling, a job, that don’t even pay minimum wage, but the benefits are just fan-tastic
So:
should you spot a man ungainly wrought,
weighted down by a harpoon cross, resting,
‘pon on his cursed Cain-marked back, fingertips,
you need not move to the other side, or hide,
'tis only a make-believe poet, no longer believing,
with his recording device, seizing your rhapsodies
to rhyme with his own collected artifacts, your crinkly
smiles are his meat, his metier, his chosen career,
to be again a comfort caresser of your illusions into
a shapely sculpture of words be-loved, keeping-worthy,
tokens of a reexamined self worth, a new girth, leaner,
a celebration for the keeping, dug up with pail and shovel,
a best left hid on his treasured island, in a treasure chest, only his new-no-good-best-most-satisfying-new-no-good-best-mystifying-satisfying-cursing-muses-who-got-two-knee-on-my-soul-I’m-
howling...
Monday Jun 1, 2020
self-explanatory but if you don’t get it, then:
“there is no “better” in poetry
mine yours theirs, alive or not,
just gasps tears and blood
whimsical smiles and isles
cuts and burns of pained revelations,
hidden in fog,
that words try to delete away,
through the shrouded mists of
human tissues,
unconstrained by the
bounded shape
of the human cell,
our first, our own
self-imposed jail”
