Best Cohen Poems
Standing before the microphone,
blank faces stare from cushioned chairs
Jewels sparkle, acting like they’re real,
while bow ties just seem sad…it happens
Marching to the beat of clicking heels,
unbuttoned vests as strange eclipsed spotlights
illumine smoke swirls in overhead rafters
flowing from my ember’d fingertips
And my hair is a mess…but it always is
and I don’t care…do you?
I’d clear my throat but that does no good,
gravel has taken up residence…it pays the rent
The room goes dim, the audience worries
Glares spark like steel on asphalt
I can see them clear, slowly fading in anxious doubt
My mind scratches some ink in dusty thoughts…
I love you, I love everything that is you
Need surpasses desire, and I need
My arms long to cling you, crushed against me,
breathing as one, harmonious breath…dusty thoughts…they come
The bass player plucks and that is my cue,
flicking my ashes I begin to read…poetry
and the audience smiles…I am a poet and poetry is cool,
Leonard Cohen was right
The End of Love
A secret grief rips apart all that was
Slaves to the sexual caresses of time
Stallions in black gallop gallantly in fields
Of spring full wishes
Thou seeith the birth of love
Naked hopes surrounded by sweet perfumes
Seduced by the gods or by demon fools
Dancing, towards our own charades we sing
Funerals consume autumn’s dead poets
The gravestone cold and gray
We hug it like a long lost friend
One may see a battle lost
The other a battle won
In November we reminisce the soldier and singers too
Didst you know I was a prostitute?
Selling my soul to the hourglass of eternity
Foolishly hoping to sleep upon her breast
Shivering as others seem to fall right at deaths door
Brimstone, black and rose
The underbelly of St Laurent
Youthful boasts as the old man in cane hobbles
Generations sailed down the main
Some seeking solace others finding fame
Vaguely the recollections appear
Visions inside dreams inside the darkest fears
The end of love is near
For the hand above is reaching
As I float to the end of time
Enchantment in the crypts
Ravens dancing as they consume our mortal
Hearts
No smiles, no sleep
Thou did knowest I’m surely certain
The dance of death
Only to be followed
By a piper
And angels violins
Rags and shrouds, kiss them all goodbye
Hallelujah
In Memory of Leonard Cohen, a fellow Montrealer, 21 September 1934 – 10 November 2016.
Nuancing Andrew Cohen
"If we are interested in learning how to engage with consciousness
at higher and higher levels,
to consciously facilitate its evolution within us
and between us,
we need to look more closely
at the extraordinary phenomenon of [nondual co-arising] emergence
in matter,
in biological life,
[in economic life,
and in political systems,]
and most importantly,
at the level of [Anthro-mind/Earth-body] consciousness.
We need to cultivate our capacity to visualize
and to emotionally connect
with what it would mean
for [positive] emergence to occur
within our own interiors [mind/body landscapes,
co-dominant dipolar Left-Right bicameral Yang-Yin balance],
within our subjective
and intersubjective
[peak-crown-head therapeutic
and valley-root-sensory/sexual body]
experience."
We LeftHemisphere hear
and eco-politically translate
in orthodox paradigms
of prior enculturation
to speak
and mind-0 zone
body-1/0 co-empathically transpose
co-engaging win/win
bipartisan reformation.
An unsavory man from Montreal
squatted in dim lit cafes
writing of the pain of love
a charlatan
he was the darker lovely dove
he inhaled the smoke of Satan
he sang to the devils army
purist of evil
his grave a urinal
to be used, over and over
his words knelt like prayers
and rose like knives.
Thinning morals
he possesses zero virtue
just a shadow
of the fires down below
he sings for the child killers
the thieves and robbers of the land
he chants of love, he means rape
for those not of his blend
his wishes burnt under
hidden flames of hostility
He may dress in rags
he may play the victim
in the end though
he will burn your flesh
a sacrifice
then he will call you his fool
he sang for genocide
not for the goyim half wit
Dead, he is dead
angels he will never see
Oh, God, tell me why
You made my bones
From dust
My soul
From
Hebrew
Clay
Tell me why
You made my mind
From storms
Dark remnants
Of the day
Reveal all your secrets
Why you placed me
In this
Pain
Show me a
Hidden
Higher
Path
The one
From which
I strayed
Refill the pool of
Laughter
Whose waters
Have been
Drained
God
You
Made
Me
So
Sad
And...
Naked I kneel
Before you
Sing your
Yahweh
Name
Naked in your
Temple
Bathed in
Holy
Shade
Tell me why
I was born
A priest
Fallen
And
Betrayed
Fallen
From your
Garden
Lost
In every
Way.
There was a boy
Playing on a swing
Deep in love with life
Loving everything
And he'd speak to God
When all alone
Making deals with God
'Bout his dreams and hopes
When the night would fall
And he'd lie in bed
Listening to the tunes
Playing in his head
And the boy made a wish,
Prayed to God up high
"Let me write a song
Makes the whole world cry
Let me write a song
So tender, sad, and sweet
The kind of song
Drops men to their knees."
Nowhere near a man
He didn't understand...
That to write a song
Makes the whole world cry
Have to hold the hand
Of a friend who dies
Hear your brother curse your name
Watch your mother fade away
While crooks steal your gold
Suffer years being alone
Nowhere near a man
He didn't understand...
That to write a song
Makes the whole world cry
Have to fall in love
Then be denied
Meet hopeless kids
Raised in cruel neglect
Hear animals scream
Tortured half to death
There was a boy
Prayed to God up high
"Let me write a song
Makes the whole world cry
Let me write a song
Tender, sad, and sweet
The kind of song
Drops men to their knees."
If I could reach that boy
Before it gets too late
Warn him there are wishes
You should never make
But that boy was me
And it's far too late
Wrote this song in tears
Wrote this song in pain
And now I'm a man
And now I understand
So torn up inside
Just want to cry
I want to cry... cry... cry
Oh, God, I want to cry
I want to cry
If I could divide the smell of flowers
I'd send some to the falsely charged
Locked in prison cells
Send some to the lonely seniors
Trapped in apartment hells
Send some to the weary miners
Sweating beneath the ground
Send some to the invisible people
Hauling our garbage round
Some answers in life are so easy
Like zero plus zero is none
But how do we divide the smell of flowers
So their fragrance is shared by everyone?
If I could divide the smell of flowers
I'd pass some to the frightened animals
Caged against their wills
Pass some to the dying birds
Choking on oil spills
Pass some to the angry kids
Sniffing up airplane glue
Pass some to the crying widow
Missing the Love she knew
Some answers in life are so easy
Like zero plus zero is none
But how do we divide the smell of flowers
So their fragrance is shared by everyone?
If I could divide the smell of flowers
Then you'd always have your share
If I could divide the smell of flowers
There'd be sweetness around you
Everywhere...
In dreams I appear and take her
Down a path she dares not wander
In a town beset by plunder
I shake her blood and bone
In dreams she asks my guidance
How to live in holy silence
Beyond the anger of her father
Enrich her mind and soul
Hold me inside all the night
Your leader's your baby
Hold me inside all the night
Your teacher loves you crazy
In dreams she feels me beside her
As I stoke her female fire
In a world that feels so lonely
I fill her need and hope
In dreams I appear and take her
On wings of heaven's power
Beyond tears that stain her pillow
She takes my love and poem.
Hold me inside all the night
Your leader's your baby
Hold me inside all the night
Your teacher loves you crazy
Hold me
Cohen Sang Song
Cohen sang song which was a carol;
Now they have Trump over a barrel;
He started new cult,
Called sexual assault;
Not only that presidency is imperil.
Jim Ho Ho Horn
On Saint Pat’s Day, with the Guinness flowin’
All night long the blarney was blown’
I’ll trap a Leprechaun—I’d shout
With chicken soup, not stout!
Then caught the rarely seen Lepre-Cohen!
Written 3/27/22
Darkly touching at the soul for a pulse
Painting sordid affairs with shy lovers
Simple strung elegance meant to engulf
Voyeurs drawn into satiny covers
Deep soft chanting, contrasted by crying
Expertly picking out exalted chords
Selections of angels underlying
Electronic organs ring for the Lord
Examining forms from bleaker futures
Through crystallized visions of long ago
Scriptures of flesh sewn with golden suture
Observing non-secular rites of woe
Endless devotions defining your man
Dissolved by prayers of humble Jikan
I have not prayed enough to be like you,
I have not loved enough to write like you.
The night is my god, stars my angels
I'll never touch,
while the darkness that hides in my pockets
my lover, but we may speak to one another
in the ten minute afterlife of my brain,
trying to catch up to its dead body.
The conversation agreeable
until you joke that my heaven
is your hell, and I realize
the real Leonard Cohen more sophisticated
than such humour, proving
we all really die alone.
From: People More Famous Than Me (Published 2022)
On a brutal winter night
We stood bravely side by side
Against snowballs launched our way
By the enemies of our kind
In a graveyard's mourning light
We both choked up, cried and cried
As the angels lifted him
On Death's gloomy wings of flight
And you declared me dead, my brother
For the crime of being me
For all the faults I have
Well, I still cannot believe
That you declared me dead, my brother
For the crime of being me
For all the faults I have
Well, I still cannot believe
And my only wish for you, my brother
Is someday you'll understand
How it feels to be a corpse
Walking amongst your fellow man
In the haze of our carefree youth
We both wildly joked and joked
About wicked ironies
Of the enemies of Truth
Beside a pool so crystal blue
Really both had hoped
That good luck would fill our lives
In everything we would pursue
But you declared me dead, my brother
For the crime of being me
For all the faults I have
Well, I still cannot believe
That you declared me dead, my brother
For the crime of being me
For all the faults I have
Well, I still cannot believe
And my only wish for you, my brother
Is someday you' ll understand
How it feels to be a corpse
Walking amongst your fellow man
And yet the pain has made me strong
I forgive you, you're my brother
Not so swoon Lenny
You're driving me crazy
he sang poetry
sonorous enchanting tone
metaphorical