a poem and a song
with leonard cohen
do you know what it feels like
when language leaves the body. i used to seek it out - the crack.
what happens after. i wanted
to know. where do those words go.
those unsayable feelings
(will they rattle the bars? splinter under the pressure? become
blood? or better still, death?) where do they go? do they exit
the frame, wear foliage, turn forest? air? history? what do they smell of?
those pangs of knowledge that start as stitches; pricks of conscience
in the skin under your ribs; those fragile certainties that have kept watch,
like the angry moon, for nights at end. doing penance. doing time.
a secret thirst stands guard, a sheepish sentinel whose fingers,
nevertheless, coax colour from the eyes of darkness, even as they
hold the cold jute of night, like a whip.
do you know what it feels like
when the city thunders beneath the chestcage, when the streets,
aflame with desire, threaten to veinate the skin with poetry, when the very
air is a shroud. and all the dreams of hide and seek in the park are snatched
from the firmament of children's slumber, in one swift silent motion; when death
is a poem, that will never be told.
even to those who have waited all their lives for the golden word
whose foreheads have touched the mat teaching god to tell the time
who know that even eternity needs help
do you know what it feels like
to dream an idea. to dream
you as a smile i do not want to share
a desire that has lodged between my breasts a little leaf
whose life is little more than a comma at the end of a broken sentence
whose only reason for existence is its incongruence. i love you without
meaning or time in this dogtail world - that cannot be straightened. cannot
be mended. this story that is bent all out of shape hangs on something vague -
the memory of lips kissing somebody's forehead, and leaving sunset
between the creases. an evening
could be an address or a way to meet melancholy.
the word stirs under the cuticle of language. enough.
i want to lie in the lap of time.
don't trouble me now. let me be
a white pebble lodged in the throat
(the anxiety of an open parenthesis
let me be incomplete
leave me to my business
cohen almost had it when he sang
there's a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in
but something else oozes out
and it is not the soul.
i wanted to tell you that this poem sprung up without warning. as hope. not despair. it started with Adrienne Rich, than encountered Ghani Khan, before unexpectedly alighting on the shoulders of Leonard Cohen. hope you, and your loved, are finding meaning in this tumultous time. do write to poetly@pm.me if you have any questions, queries, or comments. i will write back as soon as I find the space, and the time.
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