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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Poem-A-Day: Tang by Bruce Cohen

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Tang 
 
 

If I do not witness these leaves turning orange, who will?

 

I stir myself:

I like to think

 

Of myself as a reincarnated Poet from the Tang Dynasty,

Dehydrated orange drink

Astronauts gulped orbiting this planet

That became a fun '60's breakfast staple,

 

The bitter tang of a car's squealing tires as it peels out,

Any distinguishing characteristic that provides special individuality.

 

Isn't it a very personal moment when each of us

Recognizes we are failing,

That we're incomplete, outdated perhaps,

& need something new to make us valid,

 

Sobbing on the mudroom floor,

Praying hands through a broken screen door,

Begging the aftermath of someone to come back,

 

Or watching our planet grow

Smaller below us

That we discover it is

Impossible

To ever become

One hundred percent reconstituted?

 

I am not where I am right now, in this autumn.

 

My mind is not what it used to be either.

There is no more just-add water.

 

None of us can prove our previous lives.

 

I mean pervious: I meant disprove:

 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 by Bruce Cohen. Used with permission of the author.  

 

About This Poem
"Lately I have been worried and depressed over the fact that my poetic voice was becoming stale, my persona and language too familiar, and, quite simply, I was bored with myself. In order to shake myself out of my funk I started reading some translations of the more obscure ancient Chinese poets to trigger or shock myself into some alien sensibility: paradoxically, I aspired to be un-American while remaining nostalgic, and because I rarely include 'nature' in my poems I wanted to throw a colorful leaf into the mix. 'Tang' became one of those odd poetic experiments that wiggled the old me out of the new."
 

--Bruce Cohen

Most Recent Book by Cohen

(Black Lawrence Press, 2012)

 

June 26, 2013

Bruce Cohen is the author of numerous books of poems. His most recent is Placebo Junkies Conspiring with the Half Asleep (Black Lawrence Press, 2012). Cohen lives in Coventry, Connecticut.

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