I Write In 2019 and 2024 to....

An Eulogy for Leonard Cohen

Flame
Blackened Pages
Notebooks scattered from freezer to pocket to drawer
Distracted by life - drink and opportunities
Disappointed, he turned to music later in his life
His main love was writing and words
Writing was his only solace; his truest purpose
He felt he neglected things - relationships, fatherhood, finances, health
As he was always striving....
"I came so far for beauty, I left so much behind."
His books are his offerings.
His music, at first, a way to attract others to his words
A distraction for sure
A life dedicated to the thing that most defined him - words.
Themes and words that repeated through his work --
Frozen, broken, naked, fire and flame.
It was in those fires and flames we saw
Creation and destruction
Heat and light
Desire and consummation
He lit those flames and tended them diligently
He studied and recorded their consequences
He was stimulated by their danger
For him - "the excitement of thought that was the flame."
If "you want darker, you kill the flame."
But his blackened pages of writing
Were the evidence of his burning soul
With his passing, the world is darker now
But the flame was not killed
His words live on in his poetry
Shared with the world
A bounty that reaches across time
And burns with a passion that is exquisitely translucent
yet darkly funny.

word count = 224 words.
Line count = 34 lines

Notes ▼

Written for: Write From The Heart
July Prompt: Write an Elegy to your favorite musician, living or dead.
*Heart* Deadline: July 25th, 2024 *Heart*

Elegy for Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 - November 7, 2016)
Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist.

Quotes are from Leonard Cohen's works and from his son Adam Cohen's Forward from Leonard Cohen: The Flame - Poems & Selections From Notebooks.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Cohen