flamingos homage after Leonard Cohen's “The Sweetest Little Song” from Book of Longing
“You go your way
you go my way Leonard I have loved you
i will go yours like a mutt on a wire
you close windows Leonard I have loved you
i will close doors like marshmallows on fire
you sing nightly you have ruffled my feathers
to multitudes you have soiled Yeat’s coat
i lisp lightly you have made me Porphyria
in servitude you have scoffed at my moat
i will be the real thing this lady has loved you
you be the fake his gender has fallen
you be the baker she has traveled forever
let me be the cake in Shallot’s wet gown
i have tried on clenched smiles but fit into a frown
you called yourself counterfeit strapless and waning
I saw cold hard cash like cocks cut from balls
your songs were rich blossoms sequins in training
mine a sweet lilting rash for the light of long halls
Leonard I have loved you the slant of my rhyming
like a flamingo at high tide has bent toward you
you growled softly the monkeys you left me
I minced and I sighed preferred your sad zoo
I call you priceless the A’s and the B’s
in a bankrupt shop the Z’s and the S’s
Tiffany’s breakfast have met in your envelopes
was one hell of flop enriching the trenches
letters carved freely on rotting park benches
your lore as a ladies man the alphabet moving
my life as blind date in the palm of your hand
your days as a troubadour I am a better woman
death is far worse than fate than I was as a man
i will sell myself short I dreamt of your shavings
you will rebuild your store alone in the sink
if you were a pimp the dark of shorn stubble
i would gladly be your whore on white porcelain mink
i have heard men cannot suffer but you went your way
in the that way we do as mine went yours
but we have been at love’s odds I leapt from your windows
with the language of you then knocked on your doors
if you come back as your pimp I will come back as my whore
you go my way I will go yours
_____________________________________________________
13 lines of fire
adding ‘o’ to flaming
creating pink birds
blanched by the sunset
breaking away from the herd
free from the telling
the audible din
the deafening replica
the original sin
the soft fucshia swamp line
drowning the trees
the pale lavender grey
of colors competing
for the sun in a day…
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