Leonard Cohen wrote this poem in March of 2015; it’s included in his recently released posthumous collection, The Flame.
KANYE WEST IS NOT PICASSO
Kanye West is not Picasso
I am Picasso
Kanye West is not Edison
I am Edison
I am Tesla
Jay-Z is not the Dylan of anything
I am the Dylan of anything
I am the Kanye West of Kanye West
The Kanye West
Of the great bogus shift of bullshit culture
From one boutique to another
I am Tesla
I am his coil
The coil that made electricity soft as a bed
I am the Kanye West Kanye West thinks he is
When he shoves your ass off the stage
I am the real Kanye West
I don’t get around much anymore
I never have
I only come alive after a war
And we have not had it yet
March 15, 2015
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Excerpted from THE FLAME: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings by Leonard Cohen, edited by Robert Faggen and Alexandra Pleshoyano, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 2, 2018. Copyright © 2018 by Leonard Cohen. All rights reserved.
