Touch Wood by R.G. EvansThe poem/lyrics below were inspired by an interview about songwriting with Leonard Cohen. The first line and refrain or both quotes from that interview
Raise an altar of unhewn stone
One gate of horn one gate of bone
Touch wood
Come on touch wood
Black ball white ball juggle them both
Look to the one that you drop most
Touch wood
Come on touch wood
Say a prayer cast a spell
One goes to heaven one goes to hell
No way of telling what’s bad from good
Only thing a soul can do and that’s touch wood
Come on touch wood
Black cat howling on a gravestone stump
Watch where you step and how high you jump
Touch wood
Come on touch wood
Midnight crossroads meet your man
John the conqueroo and glory’s hand
Touch wood
Come on touch wood
One thief on your left and one to your right
Only thing to do is hold on tight
And touch wood
Come on touch wood
Bio: R. G. Evans is a poet, fiction writer, and songwriter from Southern New Jersey. He teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Website: www.rgevanswriter.com
Lookout by Clive Gresswelldedicated to Leonard Cohen
the holy war metaphors are in
wages of the pentecostal sin
harbingers of every thin reprieve
soldierless fortunes armies on their knees
recalling from fixtures the broken cry of hymns
the rattle of the mounting mourning violins
& stretchers from across the chimes of winds
the solitary burgeoning of terrestrial times
the tinkling emergence of solitary rhymes
beside the lakes & the burial of mimes
we seek the hope & glory of appeal
the work towards the journey of it all
& where the men stood motionless on the hill
gathering up the writing on the wall.
Bio: Clive Gresswell is a 64-year-old innovative writer and poet who has appeared in many mags from BlazeVOX to Poetry Wars and Tears in the Fence. He is the author of five poetry books the last two being ‘Strings’ and ‘Atoms’ from erbacce-press (see their website for more details).
Every morning she’s down there
on the verge, barefoot and swaying her weight
like her holy soles are slow-burning
The light here is an old violin, cracked
varnish music
scratching bars through the watcher’s window
and her grey head bows angel time while she dances
if that’s what this is
By the eighth morning I’ve composed her life
from scraps, quilting her song
with real wild bright minors
I toast her with coffee
and sing her down ribbons
The day I leave she treadles the gutter
stormwater, kicks up sticks and feathers
cursing the rain
cursing the pigeons, the windows, the watcher
wearing a whole different heart
and the light is more hammer than strings
Ankh Spice is a poet from Aotearoa (New Zealand), who has an abiding love of the sea, and story-songs that include small mysteries. His poetry has been recently published in Black Bough Poetry, Burning House Press, and Pixel Heart Magazine, and has recently completed his first chapbook. @SeaGoatWhoScreamsPoetry on Facebook.
remember reading about L. Cohen discussion of discipline
in his family before (leaving) his shoes neatly beneath the bed,
lined in rows the Westmount childhood house of his
textile-merchant father.
Blossoms on the Plateau
scatter towards St. Laurent.
At a café, grab a late coffee, Mile End.
– Elated. Artwork to hang at Gallery ___ of
new punk energy competing with empty lots.
A poet encountered Cohen right near here chaotically sprawled
on a bench, static hat, shins crossed,
institutionally bemused.
My father knew clothing, my father knew hats.
In every secret life,
Danceclatter spirit memories,
Reanimated, the dead no longer leave
Gather under pelican shaped eaves
Refugees – taking leave, returning quickly as they arrive–
By harbour, ships, disembarking planes
At official hearings destinies decided by immigration board
on appeal. O, Canada — We who betray everything
–what are
We doing?
Searching landscapes beyond mythic voice,
first languages, anthologized wards
of mothertongue, come alive
to holy gathering, catchments of double-rainbows
above camera shop,
on The Main, to St. Catherine’s Street,
expanded histories,
Banging hammers,
gauntlet to throw down bargaining for life
observing, photographing,
the Ascending of the
descending notes,
at the gated freight elevators
in a cessation of rain, orchestral loft curtains
and a cacophony of rattling glass
in choreographic time,
threaded hum of industrial needles, machines,
for fancy fabric, the manufacture of
ghost suits in factories.
Did the street lineaments of longing shape
an arc to the sun in melodic time,
Word became difference
– without a promised pound of flesh —
each visioning, wisteria proposing
darker awakening. To bow and Curtsy. The
– Oars of the St. Lawrence remaining as if
Hallucinatory – at a farther reach –
Prayer,
Continuance. Swirling,
persuasive designs for some new disguise.
In rupture rapture————
Graffitied,
the needle in thread, the lacuna.
Stitches of erasure,
(by attendant lay kept at bay)
a homonym in nominal space
Ofidentity
en/closures.
When You Carry the Flag of Surrender
We aim for song.
Tilt to embrace.
First embouchure, embrace of red, then blue,
a burning white beneath the stair corrodes coruscating struts.
You waited to come back too long,
already threat gave you a name.
Beneath eyelids, the mourning bruised fifth notes.
Minor armies, advancing packs of card sharks,
upon arrival, slight a flock of black birds, ravens,
and your sister’s husband’s brutal conundrum commences.
It’s a war against nature.
We guessed wrong.
Planning for a siege at a craps table
along the loneliest strip
where hummingbirds dance a devious fandango,
on with nightclub nightmares.
You lifted up with urgency,
the urge, to surrender,
to carry the flag of surrender.
(And safely, the albatross of snow
glides ascending beyond Blake,
rising to the Gate of Hell
Wings shorn with fire).
The yellowing book, it’s pages.
If you are tired enough, you will fall asleep,
fall into the arms of a boulder,
spreading the night moth’s wings around you.
On the ocean, the burning partisan’s ship
sinks behind another neon moon.
Affair
Between the odd and even
I shall be a tailor, sewing pockets
with a wretched hand.
A corruption, failure
of the terms of service.
I gave them nothing, willingly,
I gave them nothing, undue dress.
A shaky signature, handshake
under duress, erasing
distressed seams.
The Committee of Horsemen
and their capital wives
Flying to a ceremonial, under
cloak, the war’s convoy’s coverings
Blanket the skies with parachutes.
I shall be the uninvited guest,
these twisted hands trembling,
winter branches at calico windows,
draperies.
Obscene broncho –
of obstreperous lineage.
Startling twilight of starlings.
Sinking Hesperus.
Rain
1.
The plane goes down
It goes down
It makes the sun
turn a pale green
a pale green
Packages of jealous
nauseous waitresses
That know no limits
know no limits
In the charnel house
in the charnel house
2.
Confusion of smoke
Bodies alight
by the fairgrounds
All the kisses you can
punch for a dollar twenty
five don’t be shy step
Right up
3.
Bop bop bopping
for the wormy wordy words
worthy apple of the jaundice
eye another round
of Government Propaganda
For the Shiny Happy People
4.
Free line dances
for the people
By the acid river backside
pouring out toxic sludge
5.
Captains of Productive
Industrial stewardship
on sacred ground whose
ground sacred check
the grainy almanac
in the gun-sites of the
Military Industrial complex
6.
We capture captions
speak in thought balloons
Sometimes arrogant
overtalking even
The gentlest Master
slips outside benign
speaking behind a billboard
for mouth wash
cattle in the fields, lowing
7.
“It will rain soon,”
Mommy says to
her six year old in Khakis
amidst the smoke beneath
the chocking ruins -- rains
down historical memory
8.
Insects rub their tentacled principal
legs together make the beat
of some new music written
by the Karaoke Moon
9.
We can count
all of the ways
that what was once here
no longer is.
Using an app with magic markers
we make asemic marks
on photographic paper.
Is there hope of change?
Are we impassioned?
Poisoned? What lies beyond
belief is belief in
our own ability to change
out of clothing
make the New Man
look possible
available
fallible as Merchandise.
1985 (A Drum)
A Leonard Cohen concert
New York, Carnegie Hall,
At performance end, more people
than one might imagine prepare for Rapture.
From handbags & from under
winter coats they rush towards the stage.
A price of admittance.
Recognizable is ritual.
My old friend, with whom I attend,
I shall never see again, while,
Field Commander Cohen,
Working for the Yankee Dollar,
Takes Manhattan.
Graciously bowing,
catching in light and furious, bouquets
of cornflowers and roses. The clarion call,
in spot lit time trumpet flowers
opening up pollen in a thousand-handed balcony.
Twitter: @frede_kenter @icefloe_P
Instagram: @r.f.k.vispocityshuffle
Poems 2, 3 & 4 are inspired by Cohen’s poetry book “The Energy of Slaves”
Features artwork by Geoffrey Wren, poetry & stories from David L O’Nan, Ethan McGuire, Tom Harding, Joe Kidd, Robert Frede Kenter, Joan Hawkins, Ankh Spice, Arthur L Wood, Sadie Maskery, Kari Ann Flickinger, ps pirro, Peter Hague, Lorna Wood, Benjamin Adair Murphy, Attracta Fahy, Christina Strigas, Barney-Ashton Bullock, John W. Leys, Amy Barnes, Jim Young, Elizabeth Cusack, Richard LeDue, Michael Igoe, Samantha Terrell, Lisa Alletson, Carrie Sword, Samantha Merz, Janet Beekman, Lennon Stravato, Catherine Graham, William Taylor Jr, Kat Blair, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, S. Reeson, Shane Schick, Gerald Jatzek, Merril D. Smith, Jim Feeney
I Told You
I hung us. I strung us.
The rope-a-dope stylist is
the real alchemist.
Did you think it gave you
a new instinct?
I’ve knives made
from railroad ties
and seen things besides
the truth and its lies.
I tried to warn you before
but you wrote your life
unsure
of its contents and missteps
and flagrant regrets.
The stylist is upset
by things she can’t reset
while you sit knowing a youth
misspent that you won’t accept
and we all have the proof.
I can cut you or cut you,
or cut you and cut you
but nothing will stop me from you
as I tell you I told you so.
Twitter: @aikonnorb
Norb Aikin is the author of Mutants and 100 (Eliezer Tristan Publishing). He is a Mental Health activist
originally from Buffalo, NY and now lives in Cortland, NY. His work has appeared in various online publications,
including Pink Plastic House and Fevers of the Mind.
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Norb Aikin3 Poems from Anthologies by Norb Aikin2 Poems from the Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020 by Norb AikinBOOKS to Read in 2021: Mutants by Norb Aikin
Fevers of the Mind 