on the road to lunch
and the road back combined,
i read 102 pages from the book of longing.
it was a footnote
compared to the volumes
writ on your face
in between,
over food.
you left while i was paying the bill.
i watched you leave, headed for normal.
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(epilogue:
the book of longing was published last year, written by leonard cohen, and i actually did read 102 pages of it on the walk there and back; his poems run fast, striking everything in their path. normal is a town in illinois, and she is actually going there. her face was full of endless words during lunch.
it's interesting how reality, when recited, reveals the other meanings contained within everything we live. the moment rhymes with its homonyms.)
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4 comments:
Nice. I like both the poem and the commentary. Is the former of your own creation? I agree with your conclusion in the latter: interesting indeed (including your ambiguous use of capitalization). Taken together, they also leave the reader (oh, look, that's me) with a distinct sense of curiosity about the reality behind the verse. Also, now I want to investigate the book of longing.
@john: thanks; and yes, it's something i wrote right when i walked into the house from lunch today.
"they also leave the reader .. with a distinct sense of curiosity"
that's perhaps one of the greatest things to hear, from my perspective as a writer. so .. thanks =))
on a related note to that, one of the reasons i like cohen's work (and william gibson's, to name another) is that they fill in only enough of the right sort of detail to give us, the readers, room to fill the landscape with our own conceptions without being left completely lost without any bearings whatsoever. the result is a blend of the writer and yourself where they act as a guide through one's own imagination, biases and hopes.
i've read books/poetry that are just sooooo obtuse that it's extremely difficult (at least for me =) to get enough of a feeling for the purpose of the words in my head to be able to come up with any meaningful internal visualization.
it's an interesting balance: how much can you remove without removing the essential essence?
What made you get into Cohen?
@anonymous: i was introduced to Cohen by a very good friend ... we were just getting to know one another when she mailed me a copy of "first we take manhattan" which she had typed out on her manual typewriter, then folded and marked lovingly inside an envelope.
this was the first Cohen i'd seriously read. i'd heard of him, but for whatever reason hadn't actually read anything of his. now i had a reason to.
and pretty much instantly i became enraptured by his style. while the woman and i have long since parted, leonard's words and i haven't. =)
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