NOW

Things seem to keep happening
faster and faster.
That’s the nature of now.
The present zips by
at the speed of time, in a blur
that does not resolve itself until it’s too late
to do anything but watch it recede
into the layered still-lives of memory.
Nothing is as swift as the present.
The future keeps you waiting.
The past keeps you wondering.
The present doesn’t keep at all.
It has no shelf-life, no duration, nothing but its own immediate mortality.
It is and was in one unlasting sentence.
So there you are and were.

(Mike Cohen – Apr 2016)

Ancestry by the numbers.

     HERE COMES THE MOMENT

the sky leans so close
you can hear the high clouds whisper
a secret you knew all along.
It isn’t the message that strikes you
but the clarity of it.  Suddenly
the mud and the dust and the mist
are dismissed and the sky leans so close
you can hear the high clouds whisper,
“Here you are.”

(Mike Cohen – Oct 2015)

                       WORKING THINGS                  

When you get it working you are happy to make
something function, to take
the inanimate and have it dancing in your hand.

Life loves to bring things to life,
to have them join the ranks of those that go
stirring, lurching, churning, whirring, working. 

But all things working –
the gadgets, the gizmos, the contrivances,
the galaxy, the tide, your heart –
all working things
do eventually
stop.

                   (Mike Cohen – Dec  2005)

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Steve Delia and Mike Cohen perform at Princeton’s Café Improv

MAD ABOUT HER

If you’re mad about her
I just hope for your sake
that she’s mad
too.
If she’s sane, or thinks she is,
you haven’t got a prayer.
She’ll just break your crazy heart,
then go find herself some sane guy
who will eventually break hers
because he’s not mad about her.
This will drive her out of her mind.
And if you’re still mad about her then,
you just may have your chance.
(Mike Cohen – June 2012)