I have a book called ‘The Flame’ – a collection of Leonard Cohens work. Aside from being a wonderful tome of a great artist’s curated writings, self-portraits and speeches, it has always piqued my interest in poetry.
I am fortunate as a songwriter that there are always words and melodies falling out of my head, I just have to keep the tap open. However, peculiarities begin once I start piecing these things together; they sort of form their own desires, this lyric wants to land on that chord etc. On some occasions, words don’t want music, in which case I find it necessary to foregoe the instruments. I write a poem instead.
Trouble is, I know very little about writing poems, I just wing it really. It’s very enriching for me personally, but I’ve never thought to share anything as I don’t know if what I’m writing has any merit in a literary sense. People on r/Poetry for instance, have very strong opinions on what makes a good poem.
I imagine you sense there’s a poem or two coming in spite of this, and you’d be right. You can thank (or curse) ‘The Flame’ for that, as something about it recently has really touched me. Perhaps it’s because Cohen never saw it finished; his son, Ethan Cohen, and his publishers completed it based on detailed notes that he left behind. He passed in 2016, yet his elegant and emotional command of the written word enriches my life 9 years later.
Therein lies the importance of sharing then. With that in mind, here’s something I wrote on the balcony of Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, looking out across the water:
Blue-green lagoon
Boats criss-cross like tearing paper
But, it reforms before long
Uniformed, seamless
Crinkled, then uncrinkled
over and over
Here’s another – I wrote this one today at my local park:
I lie in the house
Withering
I walk to the park
Tired
I lie on the grass
Achey
I lie on the grass
...
I'm lying on the grass
I'm gone
for a little while