In response to “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” by Leonard Cohen
The Parallels began when she was born in the House of Mystery.
Just like our Nancy dear, back in 1961. Which was very long ago.
Freedom left her bones, with the quickest slice of a razorblade.
I believe she cried to herself, while sitting on the opal stone.
Wishing she was forever, or forever in someone’s heart.
She had been waiting for the necromancer, to put a spell on her ideal imagery.
When the parties began at night, by morning guilt had overcome.
Strangers would become forgotten, and her anger would build the mirror.
The prescription for her pain, was castaway in the pebbles of mysteries.
And medicine to distort her beauty, and mind-bending remedies to blush away her gems.
There are clouds looming over the big-top, does your circus dare?
Maybe not in danger, the world is just an Emerald Green. The clock burns another tick-tock.
Born in ’81. Though retro in her fame.
She’d dress like Edie Sedgwick and Natalie Wood sharing the same brain.
The hoodwinks would use her, they’d mind read her away from her pearls and jewels.
The prosaic alleyways would rob her of her strut, and she would be left in the palms of her hands.
Planning suicides in privacy. Planning suicides in the shores of a billiards room.
Planning suicides outside of gentlemen’s clubs, or a bastard’s hideaway.
A tiny spider hiding in a web spun a million miles, hoping to never face the shame.
The viral night ripe to the taboo thoughts. That suicide was the light on a beaming beach.
From the numbness in her feet, to the fingers, to the bosom, to the neck.
From the mouth to the deadening eyes, to the mind with freedom on the brink.
She was a Capricorn. She was inside the constellation, in prayer that night.
Her labor was trying to find faith through long pages of a dusty diary. As songs begin to outro.
Surviving another day. At peace for a moment in tears staring at a cupid-arrow weathervane.
For a while feeling the stress strip away her identity. Sitting in her mystery.
In the welcoming arms of the Noctilucent clouds of the Baltic Sea.
Calling out to Geneva from the salons to the brawn of a whipping post.
The evening begins to creep in with many masks to beset her surface.
Lacerating herself over the waters, ocean sips back into the vacuums in her house of mystery.
In 1961…In 1961
To now. In a new twilight. We still fade away. To a hideaway. That we only know of.
Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey WrenHard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle
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 can feel your skin breathing in orbs
kisses that feels like surgeries
and the money dies off when you are greedy
and we step right into a Midnight War
Millions of Judases in the wilderness
The sick and the crimson
In torment, so petrified
One breath, chokes
Hallelujah
In chaos
the hammer smashes in the glass
We are hidden behind these walls
a combustion in bones
and all to become vapor
In this Midnight War
Where the glitter turns to ashes
breaking from the chairs, a howl
Hallelujah
The spectres and the stars
Looking as one
Like in a mirror of night
We have been forsaken of riches
They loot the diamonds from the heart
And the robbery is simplistic
we feel translucent watching the seas
The Midnight War cripples
And the waves clash together in an
Everlasting
Hallelujah
The virgins spin down
with chapped lips
and breeding, hungry eyes
You are numb to touch
A revolver, an allergy
The flaming of whips to erase your mind
The pearls, they fall to the fire
the path is a torrent from fibrous roots -
to the vines of cherries
Angelic songs
Obliterates, to my auditory invisibility
In grief, in pain
Praying in puns
Hallelujah
So, Midnight passes
And we are back to 1 a.m.
Time for the blossoms and the honey
woven into the fabrics of Earth
tip toes the demons away
White horses begin to gallop -
wildly around the curves
and suddenly your eyelids open
back to the reds, blues, orange in the sunlight, surrender
hear the hearses beginning to putter
the gas kills off the energy
HallelujahAvailable Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey WrenCurrent bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!Poetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers
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