Instagram Video April 20, 2019 at 12:40PM

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A reading of Icarus in Green from the last #FAFATL gathering at DaVinci’s. Video shot by @jaykastle – thanks man! And thanks to @artbyfarahmithani for organizing and @freshestpizza for the venue.

Here is the text:
Icarus in green

Icarus in green by David Cohen
2013-01-02

2012-12-30

every verse weaves
another feather into the armature of wax and green branches.

I grow bolder as the plumage thickens turning my arms into wings
Light and strong enough to dare the sky
now aloft,
Am I not Icarus reborn?

I stretch, I soar, arms burning, giddy
hungry for her unquenchable fire
the Sun
my radiant unreachable marble

composing line after rhyme I grasp for the living, life-giving inferno
a verbal photosynthesis
my wings of grass beat beat beat
greening for altitude

I sweat, not with the effort
but the broil

a feather falls as wax softens
but I compose green new feathers to keep me aloft
Thrust abundant in the wax
beat after feet
line after rhyme

Climb! Son of Daedalus, climb!
Climb! Above the gray clouds!
Bask now in the heat of eternity’s fire!
Pound your emerald wings!
Pound your pink thumbs on this tiny keyboard.
Pound until the last feather falls

A green blizzard is coming
a sudden final molting as the warm wax liquifies and runs

Oh treacherous wax!
Oh melty melty wax!

I, Icarus 2.0, fall again.
And even falling I belch green feathers of rhyme
Slapping them to the barren contraption,
They find no purchase
The sticky residue no longer sticky enough

And still I fall
And hit save

But my lines linger
Wafting slowly down
their fate no less certain,
all shall fall as I,
to the oblivion of the sea
But no feather falls as fast as I

And perhaps yet a fine feathered line will tickle the fancy of a passing breeze
and ride upon her whim,
floating onward by some smiling zephyr’s grace,
float on, my green wafting child
Float on

#atlantaartist #poem #poetry #poetryreading #writing #atlantapoet #artsatl #atl #atlpoet #icarus #atlanta #meltymelty #hitsave