THE PERMANENT CARNIVAL (Complete book)
ONE-EYED CAT TAKES FLIGHT (Complete book)
THE RUBBER-STAMP MAN (Complete book)
INDIVIDUAL POEMS
HOWLING NADER
by Mitchel Cohen
I have seen the best candidates of my generation destroyed by incompetents, starving for votes hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the gonadal streets at dawn looking for an angry voter,
electoral junkies transfixed on the ancient heavenly connection to the balloted dynamo in the machinery of polls
who desperate for matching funds tattered and hollow-eyed and high billeted in the supernatural darkness of FEC filings floating across the tops of White Houses contemplating Tuesday
A nation of Tuesdays under the El and saw Ralph Nader striding on tenement roofs towards them, illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating November and the dogs of Gore ….
[my apologies to Allan, RIP]
I am rep for Arts for Peace with Veterans for Peace.
You are me, and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.
I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy
1989. Written during a retreat for psychotherapists held in Colorado
in response to Fritz Perls’ statement, “You are you, and I am me, and
if by chance we meet, that’s wonderful. If not, it couldn’t be helped.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh