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.

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.



 

YOUR BODY'S REALLY YOU

'its comin' from the feel that it ain't exactly real, or its real but ain't exactly there"

I never would have figured her for a Leonard Cohen girl. She is hard as bricks and tough as nails and stubborn like those Garbage bags that "time will not decay" but we stumbled across this song and she was hooked. Now that I think about it I should have known cuz she has a really nasty little sense of humor....



CLOSING TIME
l. cohen

Ah we're drinking and we're dancing
and the band is really happening
and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high
And my very sweet companion
she's the Angel of Compassion
she's rubbing half the world against her thigh
And every drinker every dancer
lifts a happy face to thank her
the fiddler fiddles something so sublime
all the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka-dots
and it's partner found, it's partner lost
and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops:
it's CLOSING TIME


Ah, we're lonely, we're romantic
and the cider's laced with acid
and the Holy Spirit's crying, "Where's the beef?"
And the moon is swimming naked
and the summer night is fragrant
with a mighty expectation of relief
So we struggle and we stagger
down the snakes and up the ladder
to the tower where the blessed hours chime
and I swear it happened just like this:
a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
the Gates of Love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
CLOSING TIME

I loved you for your beauty
but that doesn't make a fool of me:
you were in it for your beauty too
and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring,
declaring,
declaring
that your body's really you
And I loved you when our love was blessed
and I love you now there's nothing left
but sorrow and a sense of overtime
and I missed you since the place got wrecked
And I just don't care what happens next
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between,
I guess
it's CLOSING TIME
Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between,
I guess
it's CLOSING TIME

Yeah, we're drinking and we're dancing
but there's nothing really happening
and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night
And my very close companion
gets me fumbling gets me laughing
she's a hundred but she's wearing
something tight
and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth
which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth
except to say it isn't worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights
we're busted in the blinding lights,
busted in the blinding lights
of CLOSING TIMET

The whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights
we're busted in the blinding lights,
busted in the blinding lights
of CLOSING TIME

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"

HE RIDES THE DRIFTS LIKE AN ESCAPED SKI

“What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love,”


– Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers.

Gathered at Alive On All Channels

The Traitor

Now the Swan it floated on the English river
Ah the Rose of High Romance it opened wide
A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer
and the judges watched us from the other side

I told my mother
"Mother I must leave you
preserve my room but do not shed a tear
Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you
it was half my fault and half the atmosphere"

But the Rose I sickened with a scarlet fever
and the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame
She said at last I was her finest lover
and if she withered I would be to blame

The judges said you missed it by a fraction
rise up and brace your troops for the attack
Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh see the men of action falling back

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
that they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I'm listed with the enemies of love

And long ago she said "I must be leaving,
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon
You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping
Run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan"

So daily I renew my idle duty
I touch her here and there -- I know my place
I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty
and people call me traitor to my face

And people call me traitor to my face

Leonard Cohen

BUBBLE-GUM NIPPLES

I was on roller skates at a Skate party and I actually made it five times around the rink before falling, balancing like an overeaten bear, fantailing as a whale on wheels might to "Saturday Night Fever", and when I finally fell I was not hurt but I was so out of breath a little girl (I think it was Brandywines daughter) brought me a "walker on wheels" that you skate with and it is exactly as it sounds, this walker, and many pictures were taken as I went around the rink the way very old people might get down the hall at the Nursing Home or at the Walmart before they make it into the store and get a Motorized cart, but that didn't stop me or slow me down one iota; I even did some tricks too, ham that I am, lifting my leg high like a ham and extended out behind me like a ham as I held onto the walker for dear life and twice passed by where the camera was set up, it was ham and cheese and smile for the camera and this led to a most magnificent fall, a flying freefall that lasted at least a ten-count, with a twist and a triple-toe loop and ended with a big echoing "Thoomping" sound like a watermelon the size of a Volkswagon had rolled off the countertop, whereupon the guy with the whistle was called and there were many concerned faces that appeared in my field of vision while I was flat on my back and completely gassed out of breath but I wasn't really hurt like from a cracked skull or a broken neck I was just completely gassed and I was carried from the Skating surface and placed on a bench the way OD'd guys are put on cots in the freak-out tents at Dead concerts, or the way a fish is set on the board gasping before being gutted, breaded and fried.

No bones were broken, but I was terribly out of breath and after a few moments my heaving labored way of breathing subsided and I looked up to see the most beautiful girl in the world looking down upon me and she was backlit by some Heavenly Light, and there were violins playing and birds chirping and it seemed like she had a halo of stars around her head and Angel Wings tucked under her blouse, her sheer cherub blouse with the big bubble-gum nipples, and I got my second wind, my strength returned, so I motioned for to her "come closer" and she bent down and in my best deepest sexiest Leonard Cohen/Barry White voice I whispered softly into her ear:

''Monique, baby, how would you like to get me out of these skates"

She saved me!

"GOOD ADVICE FOR SOMEONE LIKE ME"

behind the pain

someone is rejoicing

behind the torture

there is love

who's going to buy

this bullshit

if you don't become the ocean

you'll be seasick

every day

leonard cohen

NOT HEROIC DEFEATS

"Roshi [his Zen Buddhist teacher] said something nice to me one time. He said that the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. Which means that this hero that you’re trying to maintain as the central figure in the drama of your life— this hero is not enjoying the life of a hero. You’re exerting a tremendous maintenance to keep this heroic stance available to you, and the hero is suffering defeat after defeat. And they’re not heroic defeats; they’re ignoble defeats. Finally, one day you say, ‘Let him die— I can’t invest any more in this heroic position.’ From there, you just live your life as if it’s real— as if you have to make decisions even though you have absolutely no guarantee of any of the consequences of your decisions"
Leonard Cohen

I often run across the first two sentences in this quote, and its good. But I think you have to have the rest of the quote, Leonards explanation, to really get what its about.

SISTERS OF MERCY, PART TWO

I got these two girl friends, see, and they live together, see, and they are really GREAT girl friends.
I have known them for many years, but had lost track of them until recently.
I have taken to calling them the "Sisters of Mercy" after a Leonard Cohen song.

I really don’t know how I would have gotten through this last several months without them.
They take me dancing and when Kim gets out on the floor, she has this cute little Pony-tail that bounces around like you wouldn’t believe.
The there is Jo and when she starts dancin’ she looks like a Memphis Showgirl on a Riverboat.
And they don’t seem to mind the way I dance too much cuz they only say "No" every now and then. Actually, they don't say no at all.
I dance kind of funny sometimes. It takes some getting used too, dancing with me.

And they like to drink that Gran Marnier which makes em really taste good when you kiss ‘em, but they don’t let me kiss ‘em too much.
I’m always the designated driver because my program tells me that Alcohol is a Drug, and besides, I have a blast just being stone-cold sober.
I call ‘em the “Sisters of Mercy” they are so nice to me.
They have a cousin, and I want to make her a Sister of Mercy too!

Anyway, I have also taken on a roommate. He’s a young kid from my NA program, and he needs a job and a place to live and I have all this room since my kids are gone so I have agreed to put him up for a week or two.
I tell him I’m not around much…I spend a lot of time at the “Sisters of Mercy”
I say
“I won’t be home tonight, I’ll be over at the “Sisters of Mercy”
He will call me and ask where I am.
‘Oh, I’m just over at the Sisters of Mercy, I’ll be home after dinner. We'er having Szechuan Chicken!”

So Sunday morning when I woke up on the couch over at the Sisters house ( we had been out Saturday night and had quite a time), and went to go crawl into Kims bed and lurch over her and wake her up like I like to do, I wasn’t really surprised to find she had locked her door!
So I went over to Jo’s room and she had her door barricaded as well!
See, they are real nice to me, but they are not THAT nice.

Then my Telephone rang and I answered it.
It was the kid, my roommate, his name is Ken.
‘Where are you?” he asks.
“Oh, I’m here at the “Sisters of Mercy.”
Up to that point I didn’t realize that I hadn’t really told him about the Sisters and who they were and what we did.
So he asks
“Sisters of Mercy? What the hell is that, Steve? Some kind of Church?”
I looked at the two barricaded bedroom doors and said

‘May as well be Ken, may as well be!”

RATED "R"

I’ve known her for years. She is my friend, but last Valentines Day something happened.
She looked at me with those Ice Blue eyes and said so sweetly:
“I would have Sex with you if it weren’t that time of month”

If she meant it, it would be the best offer I’ve had since I can't remember when.
If she did not mean it, it would be the closest thing to an offer that I have had in about the same.
Either way it was the nicest thing anybody has said to me in a long time.

I looked up and flashed her my best smile, wrapped my arm around her waist, drew her slowly to me till we were knee to knee and hip to hip.
I touched her forehead gently with my own. We were eyeball to eyeball.
I said in my best Leonard Cohen voice:
“I must look especially cute tonight” and licked my lips.
‘I don’t know what it is, but there is just something about the way you are looking at me that is kinda getting’ to me” she says as she parts her lips.
“Well, Babe, in that case I’ll just have to give you my stock answer”
‘And whats that?” she whispers.
‘Get a towel”


Happy Valentines Day!

POPSICLE?

--I don't know what to call it, she said

--Call it your friend

--My friend.

She held it, not as tightly as he wanted

--God, it looks so archaic, she said.

l. cohen, from the energy of slaves

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

THE KILLERS

The killers that run
the other countries
are trying to get us
to overthrow the killers
that run our own
I for one
prefer the rule
of our native killers
I am convinced
the foreign killer
will kill more of us
than the old familiar killer does
Frankly I don't believe
anyone out there
really wants us to solve
our social problems
I base this all on how I feel
about the man next door
I just hope he doesn't
get any uglier
Therefore I am a patriot
I don't like to see
a burning flag
because it excites
the killers on either side
to unfortunate excess
which goes on gaily
quite unchecked
until everyone is dead

Leonard Cohen from "The Energy of Slaves"

Interesting article on Stuxnet.

.

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

STEP LIGHTLY

I saw the dove come down, the dove with the green twig, the childish dove out of the storm and flood. It came toward me in the style of the Holy Spirit descending. I had been sitting in a cafe for twenty-five years waiting for this vision. It hovered over the great quarrel. I surrendered to the iron laws of the moral universe which make a boredom out of everything desired. Do not surrender, said the dove. I have come to make a nest in your shoe. I want your step to be light.
— Leonard Cohen


I found this about the same time I found a discussion going on between bunch of straight people convinced that homosexuality was sin and a bunch of gay folks that felt pretty good about themselves, but who were way outnumbered.
You know, watching a bunch of Christians trash Gay folks is really unattractive, but thats beside the point here.
I've said it before- if I wanted to be gay, there would be some gay stuff going on believe you me, and I'd be good at it too- to me its a choice.

It seems to me that the “great quarrel” is exactly all about whether homosexuality is a sin, and whether a white lie is just as bad as flying a plane into a building, and its Roe vs. Wade till Kingdom Come, and this whole long list of abominations to god. The great quarrel is all of this intrigue over “the iron laws of the moral universe” , where people think they know what is wrong and right in Gods eyes. And we surrender to it and we debate it and we quarrel about it to the point that we think it’s OK to “hate a sin”, just as long as we don’t “hate a sinner”.


But hate is hate. Can you hate a sin without letting hate into your heart?

And we reassure ourselves that we have not blasphemed the Holy Spirit, the one unforgivable sin, according to the iron laws of the universe. And the message just gets further lost.

And in all this, the message gets so lost and distorted, the greatest commandment that you pointed out, it just got totally lost in the debate over the iron laws, because to me a bunch of straight people talking about whether being gay is a sin is just a lot of intrigue that sets us further apart from each other.
And the greatest commandment? Its really kind of meaning less to me when it gots down to it.
Its the New Commandment that appeals to me.
Just love one another. Thats all.
Step lightly.

Going Home

by Leonard Cohen

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn't have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I want  him to be  certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision
That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
Which  is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit