Michael Cohen

Exiled To A Country Where the Seasons Happen All At Once
   an acrostic

Exiled to a country where the seasons happen all at once
X-rays showed the disease
I felt winter in my thoughts
Last days of summer on your skin
Early autumn in the music at the strange café
Dared to hope and found spring hiding in a pile of clothes

The days were dark
Only the nights were light

Away from the daily swirl

Can you remember?
Over the hill was another
Under the house was rot
Now and then we laughed
Try this, you said
Row slower, you whispered
You go too fast and yet always late

Who do you do this for?
How is it possible to live?
Everyone is talking
Running is useless
Enough summer for me - no more

Thank you
Heavy mud slowed the car down
Elegance was far away

Slipping
Evermore
Alive right now
Sex eluded us
Omens rang true
No one escaped
Summer triumphed while Persephone played

Hours
Arrived
Polite
Patter
Ended
Nothing
Arranging cut flowers in the Zen tradition
Lonely, I watched you ignore me
Looking only for a horizon through the window

Am I to be here without you? I whispered
That’s not possible

Over time, you’ll survive, you said
No, that’s not true, I thought, and out of kindness
Caught myself, and stopped the words before they
Entered the space between us


Poem by a Pigeon
   'Pigeons are rats with wings' - NYC Mayor Ed Koch

I lift off from Union Square. It's a perfect autumn day.
A slight chill, cloudless sky, and laser sharp sun,
Every color and detail magnified.
A few flaps and we're soaring, my friends and I, up through the tree branches,
Then straight across 14th Street and down 4th Avenue,
Flying against the cumbersome stupidity of the cars below.
Einstein was right, and the perceived speed of their northward motion
Is relative to our flight southwest to the Battery.

Once aloft, we are akin to our seabird cousins,
Although you're blind to our magnificence.
Our eyes cover the entire length of lower Manhattan.
We know everything happening and instantaneous.
I feel in every muscle and feather the speed of the wind, the humidity,
And exert the perfect wing motion - so exact and unseen by humans.
We, literally, ride the wind.

The drafts created by the cross streets, river to river,
that we know so well uptown, become more complex south of 14th.
And we love the excitement of the unexpected.
The winds in the Village and SOHO
And the wonderful wall of Canal Street air
From water to water - are a high. Really.
Rats with wings, my ass.
That's behind us as we linger through Chinatown.
There's always something to eat there
As we hop on the sidewalks along the way.

We're less beautiful on the ground, ugly perhaps.
That's by design. We look clumsy
And our speech is purposely untranslatable and always fools you.
Pigeon-brained. That's exactly what we want you to think.
No different than your government's conscientious disinformation campaign.
When every one of you believes the world as presented to you as truth, success.
We achieved this long ago, from the rooftops in Brooklyn to Van Cortlandt Park.
Ed Koch can go to hell.
'Rats with wings'. We admit that one sticks in our craw.
It feels as if we're choking. And, yes,
We've made mistakes for which we grieve,
But nothing for which you are quick to cast blame.
Disease and filth are yours. Wherein lies responsibility?

We’re more comfortable than you in the realms of awareness and atmosphere.
And it's difficult to put into words the experience
Heading downtown and out over the East River towards Vinegar Hill,
Riding the winds around the Manhattan Bridge
As we play under the amazing metal work and hear the subway above.
The wind under my wing, my friends all around, the promise of food
In the new harbor park,
Oh my god. Nothing compares.
All your insults dissolve.
The cruel children who love to chase us and watch us scatter, forgotten.
Life is in the moment.
The sea and river waters intermingling below.
Some seagulls calling, a few boats sailing, and the endless sky and universe above.
Yes, we are New Yorkers, too. Maybe more than you.
We are the city - try imagining these streets without us.
Impossible, we know.


Just Like the Stitched-Together Man Blues
   We are the hollow men - T.S. Elliot
   I'm going back to New York City I do believe I've had enough - Bob Dylan

We are men of pieces stitched together
Like a Scarecrow’s patchwork coat
Threaded with ligament and tissue, veins
And arteries drained of red-matted blood

The pieces, chapters of Life, torn remnants
Of poor students Mastered in stealth
Doctored in stolen books and food, inept at Love
Romantic of Friendship, drowning in Desire

Kept afloat by the life-rafts of poetry
And the magic of Possibility
Sewn to fabric swarths of mind and soul
Explorers, liars, cowards, and writers

Keenly aware of lack of talent and ability
Lovers looking over left shoulders
Listening through walls and un-swept floors
To the cries and sighs from the rooms next door

Observers, clinicians, listeners, questioners
Always on the outside, dirty noses pressed against the rain wet glass
Doubting ourselves as husbands, fathers, soldiers
‘He was not made for this world’

Whispered behind our ever turned backs
‘We will watch him fail, fall’ and we dig out
From the muddy roadside ditches, hands bloodied
By the shards of broken cheap green beer bottles

Modern Frankenstein, Ancient Prometheus
The forever countless mass of hollow men


About the Author

Michael Cohen is a psychologist and poet. Born in Yonkers, NY in 1950, he has lived in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter for over 30 years. He attended Harpur College (SUNY Binghamton) and studied poetry with Milton Kessler & Basil Bunting. Michael’s poetry publications include In this Sea, a chapbook published by The New School Press, and he is co-author with Ruggiero De Ritis of The Infinite Tie/La Cravatta Infinita, a bilingual English/Italian collection of their poetry. Michael is founder of the NYC-based Wednesday Nights Poets; the creative advisor to Live from Mount Olympus, a podcast series of the Greek Myths; and a frequent reader at various poetry event venues. He received his PhD in Psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and conducts applied research for which he’s widely published. He is currently the Director of Counseling at an international college in NYC and has previously taught at Yale University and Brooklyn College.

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