Fasting on Christmas Day with Allen Cohen

By Danilee DeVere © December 25th, 2003

( Poem Performed by Danilee at Holiday Groove, Studio Z,
with Phil Deal & Inside/Out Trio on 12/19/2004 )

Soundman of ideas and confidante of many is the visionary creator of a butterfly rainbow
newspaper from Haight-Ashbury that hovered over the world, its counterculture wings
outside the box of formulaic belief systems, experiment in spontaneity revealing there never
is a status quo that jogs in place, since life changes every micro-second.

I wish I had known him in the Summer of Love days when tribes of free spirits connected
and communed for free love, free speech, and free concern. The Human Be-In. The way
be-ing together should be, sentient ones in the three-ring dance of human interaction
peppered with uncanny transcendent love. Flower power!!

Allen's spirit will always be as clear and close to me as perpetual differences calling for
impassioned dialogue and zany discussions in North Beach cafes,
in the Haight, the Mission, Bezerkely, at open mikes, at my pseudo art
gallery apartment in gayville with its Bohemian decor, the way he reads so cool
to Phil's wild sax riffs and my shy keyboards, his unwritten book on campaign
finance reform, and our long philosophizing e-mails designed to inspire crazy
disagreements into the Tango of deeper understanding
about the state of the world, the state of the Union, the state of the cities,
the state of the state, overstating the word state, what is sane about the
insane and insane about the sane, and the last is the first: how to end
the industry of war!

While yet another Texan President demands sacrifice and destruction of yet
another far-away third world country, my New York friend suffers nausea
from cancer. On his last Christmas Day re-invented from Sun god traditions,
what healing is in the original Siberian shamans bag?

Old wise man and the ardent gaze of mystical reindeers uplift ailing children; their flying
archetypes feed on red and white secrets growing bright under dark green pine.

Meanwhile the red and white of Santa listens to requests while blue skies turn gray with the deficit:

Oh let him hear about justice and compassion for the Palestinians!

Please let everyone be someone in the holy land of our souls most fervent
needs! “Change poison into medicine, transform evil by love and enlightenment!

Give cynics a real surprise to change their mind.

Give those who fight and die for a cause a way to live for the same purpose.

©Danilee DeVere

Allen Cohen Memories
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