Synchronized

 

                 "Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love."                                                                                                               –Galway Kinnell

Here we are,

synchronized lovers,

our scars spookily entangled

three years apart.

No longer ourselves.

Everything is finally now,

Everything forever here.

A catastrophic aortic dissection

befalls you

as you wash your soft hands

in the bathroom.

My head spins,

my tongue twists

with a cerebral infarct

in the kitchen.

We speed through

the Amsterdam Avenue space-time tunnel

to the St. Luke's ER.

I'm in the ambulance with you,

and three years later

Ana takes me to the same ER in an Uber.

Everything in the present tense.

You save lives there

working as a nurse in the 1980s.

You die in the crash room in 2021,

I massage your feet,

I whisper farewell in your ear.

Doors' down,

I am diagnosed with a double stroke

and survive.

I keep seeing you in the ER.

I bring Danny and sandwiches during your break.

You are pronounced dead at 9 p.m.

I take your clothes home in a plastic bag,

weeping in a taxi with Ana.

Proximities:

Aorta explodes in your chest,

from root to iliac,

Language gets lost and found

in my left temporal lobe.

Kitchen and bathroom,

Close enough.

I see you dead and alive every day.

We live into our 70s,

beating the odds,

without a clue when Death is coming.

On the brightest and most hopeful of days

you collapse and depart

without warning.

I suddenly lose my senses,

I recover in an hour,

a stroke of luck.

Invisible wounds:

you survive cancer, escape COVID,

George Floyd can't breathe in your chest.

Trump occupies my head,

a brain worm I can't extract.

I'm looking for you on the barricades.

You are light years' away

inside me.

We live and die

and recycle,

our scars falling in love.

Reading at the Music Inn 19 November 2024

 My grandson Tolo organized and filmed a lovely poetry reading last night in which I was the featured poet. I haven't read my work in public in ages. 

A young audience, mostly, in an historic spot, the venerable Music Inn, in business on West 4th Street in Greenwich Village continuously since 1957! 

 Not only were these my stomping grounds in the 1960s, but we learned from the amazing owner Jeffrey Slatnick that on that very spot, the original Indigenous tribes of the area held their pow-wows and planned their rebellion against the Dutch, right where the Minetta river passed on its way to the Hudson. 

A magical place filled with musical instruments, a wonderful audience of young poets who gave this geezer a very warm reception. Ana and I were

moved and delighted. Ana took this video of me reading a poem I wrote about Rachel

Vacations

 

1. A visit to the shore

 

I’m on the beach, tired from dogpaddling.

It’s time for a little nap.

 

Before dozing off, I think

Thou shalt 

Thou shalt

Feel immense.

 

The rest of you guys can wash up on the beach

And be shells.

The best kind of shells

Whose iridescence lasts forever.

I declare.

 

Milestones cry,

I am no longer a young man.

I am a man.

Dayenu!

 

Memories curl

On my tongue.

Did I ever see a waterspout?

Ten guys marching at the water’s edge, playing tubas?

Whatever became of my sea glass collection?

 

I dunno.

 

2. Ocean Heist, New Jersey

 

We went to the South Shore

To steal the ocean.

We’d planned it for months

And God found it funny.

 

We were spotted by a lifeguard,

Of course.

The cops brought us in for questioning,

Waves lapping in our pockets.

 

I felt like a fool,

Sand in the crack of my ass.

 

Once, I was handed a lever

And told to move the world.

And I did, I budged it a little,

In my own way.

But that was a different caper.

 

Oh Ocean Heist!

Here girls drool

Over my six-pack.

Danny is safe and happy here.

Rachel smells of breastmilk.

 

Here they train porpoises

To be bus drivers for the Short Line.

Here I eat chicken parm in the Hotel Arizona.

Here I plot with Bob to make a million dollars.

 

Asked why I did it,

I just played dumb.

“Basically, I dunno.”

 

I managed to slip away

And hide under the boardwalk,

Which soon was a future boardwalk,

A raft for refugees.

 

It was getting late.

They warned they’d come for us

If the sea wasn’t where it was supposed to be

By sundown.

 

I swear we always intended

To give it back.

 

                        - New York City, 20 August 2024

This poem imprisons tyrants

Kindly note, dear friends,

That the tyrant has finally been imprisoned

In the second line of this poem

Watch him shrinking here

In the second stanza

Listen, he’s weeping

Rivulets of his tears

Of what: rage? remorse? Fear?

Snake their way from his cell

Into this stern, unforgiving stanza

Only to disappear

Down this one’s drain

Put your ear to the next line:

Songs of freedom!

And here the poem thinks

It will end

Clumsy, clueless

Just beginning

- New York, January 21, 2024 

A war

 Suddenly ambushed

By whatever the hell

Holds up the ceiling

And nails me to the floor

I am an inch tall

I weigh a ton

Red fluids slosh

That woman in the blue sweater?

She will blast off into space 

At any moment

Spoons and lamps spinning after her

We are smithereens

We are rubble

The bowstring of the day is drawn 

As far as it will go 

Numbered days

Numbered skies

Numbered gardens

Patience of the roof 

Generosity of the shining bridge

Still alive in 2023

A war

                   -- New York, December 20, 2023

Dream: these are the tools you'll need

Last night I dreamt my mother gave me a toolkit when I was still in her womb.
In the dream I am me as I am today and also me floating in amniotic fluid and cigarette smoke 78 years ago.  One by one, Mom inserts little tools into her bellybutton. 

   
"Here are the tools you'll need," she says, rubbing her round belly.

I hear her voice from inside and outside, then and now, echoing down the years and through my veins.

 

Place the clock carefully

Place the clock carefully

In the pasture

On the shady side

Plunge your hand in the sack

Take a handful of seeds

Warm from the field

Thank you flame hair

For looking like lost Lucy

-- New York, February 14, 2016

Terrible things I do to you

 

I put you in Iraq

Liquid mercury quivering

In your red palm

I pick you up with tweezers

Drop you in a beehive

I put you on the toilet

I steal away with your hearing

I give you back to your father the suicide

I crawl into your marsupial pouch

Eat the best parts of you

Chase you like a shadow through the burning city

I undress you a thousand years beyond naked

I bring your bones with me to work

I tattoo your secret name

On my breath

I order you inside my body

Make you look at what's left of yourself

Through my left eye

-- New York, January 3, 2008

The Monkeybergs

 

When the world's horrors...

When the world's horrors get particularly intense and the cries of the suffering are ringing in my ears and the blood splatter is right in my face, I sometimes feel guilt and disgust over the mere fact that my life goes on and the planets of my existence continue in their orbits.  

Some fundamental decency would require the Universe to pause and retch and take some oxygen before moving on.

The human capacity for standing up after falling down is wondrous and deserves a standing ovation. Evolution has given us scars as the answer to injury. Thank god for renewal's potion of forgetfulness. 

But this resilience and all that it implies in averted gaze and suits of emotional armor seems perverse at the same time.  

How dare I laugh, how dare I hum a tune, how dare I feel hungry so soon after the atrocities and the disasters inflict their punishment on our collective spirits!   

That's why the rituals of mourning and celebration of lost lives are so important, the hand-drawn placards, teddy bears and flowers at the scene of tragedy, whispers of condolence and hope to the survivors, to one another. The solidarity of resistance and transformation. Even on social media.  

You are my minyan and quorum, dear friends.  Thank you!" -- Facebook post, 18 March 2019

With nerves coming out of my body

by Jaime Sabines (translation by Robert David Cohen)

With nerves coming out of my body like rags,

like straws from an old broom,

and the bundle of my soul on the floor, still crawling,

everything exhausted, more than my own legs,

tired of using my heart every day,

here I am on this bed, at this hour,

waiting for the collapse

the imminent fall that will bury me.

(Close your eyes as if to sleep

Mustn’t move a leaf of your body.

This can happen at any moment:

Be quiet now.

Handkerchiefs of air turn slowly

heavy shadows scrape the walls,

the sky sucks you through the ceiling.)

Tomorrow you’ll have to get up again

to walk among people.

And you will love the sun and the cold,

the cars, the trains,

the dress shops and the stables,

the walls where lovers are pasted

like decals when evening falls,

the lonely parks where misfortune strolls,

head hanging, and where dreams sit down to rest

and some guy reaches for love under a skirt

while an ambulance siren marks the hour

to enter death’s factory.

You will love the miraculous city and, inside her, the field of dreams,

the river of avenues lit by so many people wanting the same thing,

the open doors of bars, the surprises of bookstores,

the flower shop, the barefoot kids

who don’t want to be heroes of misery,

and the awnings, the advertisements,

the rush of people going nowhere.

You’ll love the asphalt and the skylights

and the drainage pumps and cranes

and the palaces and luxury hotels

and the lawns of homes with guard dogs

and two or three people who are also going to die.

You will love the smell of food stands

attracting the hungry like beacons every night,

and your head will spin around to the perfume

a woman leaves hanging in the air like a boa.

And you’ll love the amusement parks

where the poor go for vertigo and laughter,

and the zoo where everyone feels important,

and the hospital where pain creates more brothers

than poverty can make,

and the daycare centers where children are playing,

and everywhere tenderness sprouts like a stalk

and every last thing has you saying thank you.

Run your hand over the furniture’s skin,

wipe off the dust you let fall on the mirrors.

Everywhere, seeds want to be born.

(Like a scarlet fever, life will suddenly burst from you.)

From Poemas sueltos (1951 - 1961)

For Rachel

Just insert Rachel where you see

World. Where you see

Time. Where you see

Life. Just insert Rachel where you see

Apricot. Where you see

Death.

Insert Rachel exactly where she was standing

Just a minute ago.

At least let her wash her hands

Before saying goodbye.

Break open a headline for her every morning

Feature her on the front page above the fold

Weeping and laughing

Casting a shaft of light

Across bad news.

Now that she’s not here

Rachel might as well be

Everywhere.

Now that she’s not one

She might as well be

Many.

She might as well be

Tuning forks and weather forecasts

Oxygen for heartbeats

And pandemics

She might as well be

Those young beauties painting the sky

Midwifing today because there’s no

Tomorrow.

Lost and Founds are everywhere

So just lose her and find her

Empty handed refugee

Overflowing with riches.

Sing in the chorus of Rachel’s scars

Surrender to the pull of

Gravities she never intended to exert

Dan, take her unused health

A few of her unlived hours will be mine

Unwritten chapters for everyone

All her sweet and impossible to-do’s.

And why not just be her

Be her and every good and kind not-Rachel

Be the solid girl

Left standing in the center

After the fall of the nested Russian dolls.

Hold out your bottomless basket

For gifts she wrapped in life and now must bestow

In death.

The wheel of sparks she spun is still spinning

The seed of power she planted is sprouting

For you now

Whatever you are now.

What’s a catastrophic aortic dissection from root to iliac

In the grand scheme of things anyway?

There’s still time for her

Specificity in the world

A green inch for her in the Secret Garden

A wave for her particle to surf

Deep into the lives of her grandsons.

Rachel, read to me aloud from the book

Of your 72 years

Every night before bed

I’m listening!

The book with 41 chapters you honored me with

And I will massage your feet

Preparing for our dream.

New York, 3 September 2021

Two fragments transcribed from a dream

You chose me

Because I was beautiful

You said you smelled me

A mile away

Purple and red you opened

I lapped up on your beach

Foam on a blue wave

***

You died while making quesadillas

You had just turned off the flame

The heat of the pan doing its work

The cheese melting

The tortilla crisping

You dead

What you were in the middle of

The flame off

Heat in the pan working

What you were in the middle of

You lost

You found

Now in the heat of the work

                -- New York, July 9, 2017

Discovery '65 Poetry Reading

Mark Strand, Jim Harrison, Nancy Sullivan and Robert David Cohen reading their poetry at the Discovery 65 award event.

I'm up first...


https://soundcloud.com/robert-david-cohen/discovery65-92nd-street-y-poetry-center

Poetry I recorded at the Harvard Lamont Poetry Library in 1966

Listen on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/robert-david-cohen/19661028-robert-david-cohen-poetry-reading

To a friend with Alzheimer’s

Everything is falling
Off the edge of everything

I stand at attention and salute
As he spins into darkness

Everything now a filigree of gold
Lifted by a breeze

Fragile fragile fragile

He is humming
Ever singing

                                -- New York City, 5 May 2015

I am Charlie Hebdo

I'm in bed

Thinking of waking

When the day breaks in

Wearing a balaclava

Carrying a Kalashnikov

Shouting my name

Charlie Hebdo

Now that I count my years

On a hand

I say to myself 

I can banish fear

Now that my bed launches me

Into orbits of delight

And peals of laughter

Charlie Hebdo

I know now there’s beauty enough

In the world

To fashion ten billion eyes

Strength enough to wield ten billion pens

I refuse to surrender

I will be the mocking storm

As they place stones on me like a tomb

I will take my little life to the world

                                    -- New York, January 8, 2015

Gran Frijolada

-- for Idelfonso Ramos on the anniversary of his death

Here we are

My brother

It’s time it’s that time again

For the gran frijolada

The yearly mess of beans

I cook up Cuban-style

In your honor

The beans are soaking

My secret ingredient is ready

Here we are

You are on the other side

Resolviendo

Getting done whatever it is

That gets done

On the lush island that is death

On the isle of memory and grateful forgetting

Always 90 miles

Always an inch away

There you are

Still making the documentary of your life

And me

The gringo whose life you saved

With a couch and an abrazo

I’ve still got one foot

Planted and dancing in the dirt of time

The other

Where else?

In my mouth

That won’t stop singing

Here we are

A celebration that must always be improvised  

Motivito to welcome some minute arrived from afar

From thin air you pull

An armful of icy beers

Like rabbits from a magician’s hat

Son de la Loma

Blasting from the cassette player

Heard all down the street

The neighbors dancing too

Heard by lovers

As far off

As the malecón

I can hear it again now

Trio Matamoros

Who wouldn’t dance in your presence?

Your shadow dancing

With a permanent

Smile and hard-on

Stars and cancer everywhere

Here we are

Here we are

Idel

Dumbstruck and far flung

Shipwrecked and rescued

Sheer luck everywhere

Full of beans and magic

                        -- New York, 31 December 2013