MEETING LEONARD COHEN

I was 21 in 1979 when Mr. Cohen appeared. It was at a New Years Party at my house, and it was 12:05 and all the girls had left sometime around 11:30 because I just couldn't seem to make a commitment to any one of them, and they just all split. This was always a problem for me, so, good for them.


But at 12:05, Billie knocked on the door. I'd known her for some time, she was 8 or 9 years older than me. She told me to pack a bag, and she drove me at a breakneck speed to her house, running red lights and defying speed laws, and we ran inside and made love till the Rose Bowl parade started. It was all very intense for a 21 year old, and she read to me from a book called 'The Energy of Slaves" by Leonard Cohen. She had an album of his she played, but I didn't quite get it at the time. I was more interested in Billie, and the bare-naked sultry voiced way she read the book, and those almond eyes asking to make more love, and how easy she made it to be on her wavelength.. Later, when she took me back home she gave me the book. I saw her from time to time, always random, like the New Years Eve, but a few years later she called me one night and told me she was dying of cancer. She wouldn't see me, she said she looked too bad.

The strangeness of this life can't be measured. One day a few years later I was looking through the papers, and the obituaries fell out. I don't usually look at the obituaries, but since they landed in my lap, I had to take a glance.
Billie was in there that day, November of 1989. 
I had the book until a few years ago. The line in the book I still carry is "The truth is tiny compared to the things you will have to do".
 I always think of tea and oranges, and rags and feathers, when I think of  Billie.  A few years later I rediscovered Cohen, and his 1992 release, The Future. 
And when I think of Cohen, I think of Billie then as well.
When he died in 2016 I cried for both of them.
Ah Billie, you were the first and last verses of Suzanne for me:

"Suzanne takes you down 
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover"

"Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror"



Here's to Billie.

KEEP ME OUT OF POLITICS

When I was 20, I had a girlfriend for a while that was much older than I. Her name was Billie and she was very sexy and always wanted me to talk dirty to her. I could never pull it off because I cracked myself up too bad.
Years later she had Cancer and was about to die and she called my mother to find out where I was. My mother wouldn't tell her. Mom said it waas because she didn't like the way Billie sounded. I knew what mom was talking about because Billie had a really sexy voice.
I did talk to Billie before she died, but she didn't want me to see her. She said she looked very bad.

Years before, Billie had given me a book of Poetry by a man I had never heard of.
I loved it and its sticky wet bare-naked style, and one of the poems was brought back to my memory yesterday in an exchage Barbara and I had.
Probably the reason I remember this one, and its the only one I can recite, is because I was a Chef.
I don't know the name of it, or even if I have it exactly right as I have long since given the book away.

Play
Play with me
Play with me a while
Keep me
Keep me heard
Keep me hard
keep me in the Kitchen
Keep me out of Politics

leonard cohen, the energy of slaves

SPLENDOR ON THE HURSTVIEW BRIDGE

Me and that bridge, the Hurstview bridge that passes over 183, we go a long way back. I hear they are tearing it down next week to widen the freeway.

See, when I was 16 I had this pretty little girl friend, then one day she broke up with me and I was all heartbroke. It was like my world had ended. She had told me she was babysitting down the street from her house that night, and couldn't be reached, but being all heartbroke and forlorn, I wanted to talk to her real bad. So I spent a couple hours going through the Hurst phone book and calling every house on her street, asking whoever answered the phone if my girl was babysitting there, and sometimes my pathetic little story would come out, and the old man that had answered the phone would advise me:
“Damn, son, just go out a git you another girl, Hurst is full of pretty girls to call.”
It didn’t do any good, and I just kept calling every house on Oak street. I guess I must have missed one, because by the time I got to “Zystroski”, I had not found her.

So I decided the next best thing to do would be to just walk on over to her house, and sit in her front yard and wait for her to come home, where she would see my miserable ass, in the rain, sitting and waiting for her, and she would know then how much I loved her, and she would realize how unkind it was for her to put me through this horrible grief, and since she could not be so unkind as all that, she might take me back, and comfort and solace me in my time of melancholy, there, muddy sad and freezing in her front yard.
And maybe she would do that thing she would do, blowing in my ear and biting my neck because that really drove me wild.
I got to the Hurstview bridge. It was somewhere around midnight in the freezing rain, and as I reviewed my sorry life to this point I determined the best thing to do would be to just end it all, and just throw my heartbroke ass off the Hurstview bridge. It would be the ultimate demonstration of my undying love, equal to that like Dustin Hoffman had made in "The Graduate", pounding the glass in the Chapel, and running off with the stolen bride on a bus.

But something stopped me. I did not do a Billie Joe McAllister off  the Hurstview bridge, but instead walked through the drizzle the 4 blocks back home, and the next day I started taking the old man’s advice about calling all the pretty girls in Hurst.

So every day after 35 years I still pass the Hurstview bridge, and there are two questions that remain.
The first is this:
Am I the only one that ever thought of throwing myself off the Hurstview bridge?
And two:
Does anybody here really think she was babysitting down the street that night?
That’s really what I want to know.

.

LEONARD COHEN ON DYING

“Its very compassionate at this stage, you know, I mean more than any other time in my life. I don’t have that voice that says “Youre fucking up”.

I cried a while to hear the news. I knew I liked him, but I didnt know I liked him that much. But it brought memories of Billie back, and the first time I heard of Mr. Cohen.



 

SELF PRESERVATION

Mother of Invention asked if James McMurtry did any 'Happy" songs..... I don't think so, but this one has a certain hope for the future about it.

I met a friend of ours several months back and my first impressions of her were what this song, “Crazy Wind” is all about.
She seemed like just another of some man's “Bird Dogs in a wire cage.”
She made me think of the book Billie had given me when I was 22 called the “Energy of Slaves” by Leonard Cohen.
and the day my fiance, "Susie the Slut" told me that she didn't want to go from being "Some Man's Daughter to Some Man's Wife"
And no matter how hard it was, knowin' the Ex- Mrs Bulletholes had done the right thing. Hell she did the only thing I left her to do.
It reminds me that there are a lot of men and women out there that STILL want to own other men and women.

Here’s to "flyin' down that 4-Lane."
Crazy Wind

gone off in the pitch-black dark
to work the morning tour
he's halfway to the highway
and he won't be back for hours
his tail lights down the gravel road
you watch them round the bend
nothing's on the TV
but something's in the wind
and it makes you crazy
and it makes you blue
it's a restless feeling
and it's nothing new

listen to the buzzing
of the June bugs and the flies
the sink's all full of dishes
you might just let 'em lie
you might just pour yourself a drink
and sit outside awhile
he won't miss the whiskey
he knows it's not your style
and he don't care enough
to even wonder why
you fight off his fumbling hands
with daggers in your eyes

time sure flies when you're having fun
wasn't it just yesterday you turned twenty-one
does it still matter what you might have done
had you tried

his bird dogs in their wire cage
are barking at the moon
you turn the covers back and hope
the dawn don't come too soon
draw the shades to keep your dark eyes
from the glare of the vapor light
but the sheets are cool and empty
and you won't sleep tonight
with a half moon rising
and a warm gusty breeze
blowing from the southwest
whispering in the trees

the asphalt 'neath the tires makes
a hollow whining sound
and it stretches on forever
through a thousand little towns
with their stores all dark and silent
and their flashing yellow lights
and nobody sees your passing
in the fury of your flight
you'll see them later
some other day
self preservation
what can you say

time sure flies when you're having fun
your mind's all made up now
and it's all said and done
flying down the four lane with the morning sun
in your eyes

J MCMURTRY

SUIT UP AND SHOW UP

"The truth is tiny compared to the things you will have to do."
Leonard Cohen, from "The Energy of Slaves"

My good friend SL, over at Assorted credited Bulletholes with this, but thats not entirely correct. I posted it it to my Facebook last year. Still, its one of my better efforts, and ought to be posted here just the same.
And thanks to my old lover Billie, who turned me on to  "The Energy of sSlaves" so many years ago.
She said it was written against, as Cohen said, "men and women who own men and women"...

"To the men and women
who own men and women
those of us meant to be lovers
we will not pardon you
for wasting our bodies and time"