I too, would have been Leonard Cohen if it were not for the supermarket by Ramsey Tawfick

music devours its son something in its eyes

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I too, would have been Leonard Cohen if it were not for the supermarket

by Ramsey Tawfick

I

     once again it all becomes the bonfire 
     men in caves leading tribes away from the desert

      once again there is poverty in this story 
      and the poet of the picket line and the poet of the magazine 
      selling digital remedies for the end times


        II.


the altar 
replaced by the 
supermarket 

the last congregation 
passes around a bag of Doritos 

the communion becomes the telephone 
and you are supersonic

ricocheting down the dairy aisle 
sanctifying all the cold cuts you commune 


        III.

my father tells me the algorithm has died/that there was a man selling eulogies/brewing syrups/blind/medicine and snake oil for the healing/come forward/he would say/come towards the centre of the digital/commune with me as if were the pastor/kneel

kneel before flopping pixel


        IV. 


the angels take the last train out of Manhattan 
you stopped driving sometime after dusk
the car broke down and 
you slammed the door behind you 
anger in the streetlight 
you walked out towards the forest 

I watched you 
from a distance 
holding the soil of some distant holy land

I closed my eyes before you started praying

	when I returned you were gone
        nothing left
	only instructions to travel west


        V. 

         god becomes the comic book movie 
         the pulp beaten out of the paper 
         out my eyes - forgetting how to glaze over
         there is always something to look at

         god help me there is always something to look at


        VI. 


         I wrote this letter to you to curb my consumption 
         To stop my fingers growing fatter 

         Love in the time of quantities 
         I begin to eat my pen 


        VII. 


         when you call my mother after dinner 
         tell her I have gone to bed 

         that my spirit stopped growing older 
         in the church of the television 
	         that stasis usurped enlightenment 
        and that I could not bear the weight of it 

         tell her 
         I was not afraid of the introduction 
         only I was scared to speak in the contemporary voice 
cannibalised and hardy - I ate more than I needed 
and before I finished dinner 
I was in Amsterdam
spitting out fish bones 
and listening to the sea


        VIII. 


music devours its son
something in its eyes  
removes the mundane from the skin 
someone pawns the ceremony off for scraps

	the living go on breathing 
		buying groceries 
		driving further out of town 
		and writing everything down 

only now there is no boredom in poetry  
	and nothing left to sell 

Read our interview with Poet of the Week, Ramsey Tawfick, wherein he discusses Leonard Cohen, religion, and the way faith shapes poetry. About this last part, he says:

I find my way back to the sacred voice by accident, I stumble into it like the rosary so I haven’t decided if I am rebelling or affirming but I do think the answer will end up being a bit of both. I think poetry has the ability to reach the divine, what you do from there matters less than the journey, I think in a lot of ways I am substituting prayer with writing…