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Larry Schug
reports he’s had a good month. The editors of this dam fine magazine nominated
one of his poems,
The Way Horses Are, for a Pushcart Prize and his poem Arrogant Bones
was selected as one of the recipients of the
Friends Prize sponsored by Prairie Poetry e-zine.
Don’t Listen To Leonard Cohen
Don’t listen to Leonard Cohen
if you’re trying to write a poem.
You can’t measure up to Leonard,
the language, the images, the meter;
you’ll just end in gasping frustration,
burning your notebook,
breaking your pencils,
maybe slitting your wrists,
though the image of blood on a blank page
might possess a certain Cohen-ness
if paired with accordions and cellos, pianos,
a guitar with tears falling on its strings,
burning violins.
There are no oranges from China in your life,
no gypsies dance around a fire,
read palms in a moon-lit window;
the birds have all flown from the wire,
the midnight choirs are all shuttered
in passionless bedrooms in dark farm houses,
asleep as deep as Lutherans with clear consciences
who would never sing with gravelly voices
of combing a woman’s raven hair, anyway.
No, it would be best to remain asleep
in front of your TV, accept your ineptness;
you’ll just end up writing hokey lines like
Don’t listen to Leonard Cohen
if you’re trying to write a poem.