2 poems for Leonard Cohen

flamingos homage after Leonard Cohen's “The Sweetest Little Song” from Book of Longing 

“You go your way

I’ll go your way too”

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…