for the Artist of Artists
Leonard Cohen played,

the great poet played, touring

as I first gave myself to you

in a pour of valentines rain

where the hipster suburb we washed through

bloomed roses

Spraypainted along the bricks of

white walls amidst

traffic and the smoking news

of burning Victorian forests

that we threw a gig for

all the mohawk tattooed

dreadlocked bands

to charity the fire / victims

with no summer air con

at our makeshift bar whereat

a $5 raffle ticket got you a ‘free’

beer / circumvented the Liquor-Law

Act. that cooled subtropic night

like your negligee slipping off

post-gig in the queensized bed

-room of your all girl

permaculture sharehouse

whose bamboo garden pipes

watered banana groves where the chickens

took flight from nextdoor’s coop of

a black African-marimba-playing couple

who split like unbraided hair

when husband supped from a garden

of papaya-slice smiles, which

dripped from groupie chicks before him

for years till he tasted; as we Hallelujahed!

Cohen songs, half our Boheme friends

grabbed tickets for, while the rest graphed

alien murals through squats they’d long kicked the walls from

like leather jacketed turkeys

scratching up some nest

before studios bought their eggs

and toured them up highways

much shorter than Cohen’s

(that artist of artists)

who donated all from his gigs

to bushfires / as we

struck a match—

called

us