Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Jim Cohn
Boulder, CO
Jim Cohn is a poet and spoken word recording artist. He is director of the Museum of American Poetics at www.poetspath.com
Perpetual Adoration
Perpetual Adoration is everything illuminated–– Beads, twins, rainwater, one word sutras, The horseman with suit made of lightbulbs Riding bareback into the Botticelli crying room, The demonstrators dressed in black on busy corner Holding winter dusk candle lit signs Of a nude woman with a huge Persian rose.
Epidural neon mint green vulture, I have a very modern comments system Filled with sailors in the desert digging up paintings, Classified photograms that do not exist, “Impounded data” on the Alabama duck hunter Who shot an angel & the woman in peach shoes who Sued herself for making her own life miserable.
I thought I had found my own calm center, But am amazed at my despair that grows like a Fashion shoot in front of a head start massacre As irrational leaders in measured speeches Wash dishes in the dark by the silk organza bus stop. I am responsive to every detail of the world. Not having a sickness is its own kind of sickness.
24 January 2003
Wire-Taps
after Whitman
I hear the tragedy of wire-taps upon the world house. The yantras of soldiers & revenues & insensate machinery. We are cut off, at the enemy’s mercy, none clapping for us. We will not know what the crowd around us means.
Gone the tender & wondrous thoughts of America. Alas for the generation that would withdraw Unnoticed, silent & speechless––from life escape. Curious, bared eyes gazing to the moon––corpses lit With the many hardships of anguish advancing,
Not recoiling from what my own trampled soul asked, Now missiles are trained on our cedars & redwoods. Thousands sternly immolate themselves for one. They depart with cheerfulness, freely giving up life. They are men & women as divine as myself.
I am more resolute because all have denied me. My affection is greater than had I been accepted. After all the evidence is weighed, where do these wire-taps lead? The answer is there before us, but not in words.
