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  Jun 2015 Bus Poet Stop
Left Foot Poet
If she didn't color her hair,
what color would it be,
I ask,
making early morning holiday
bed talk

Gray, she replies

disputation, I say,
for I see yet much
brune underneath,
nary a single hairy grayling

smiling with affection,
she salutates:

appearances of a changeling,
perhaps,
I am or always be,


like one of your new poems,
using old words for new colors,
my rainbow always ends,

decorating our bed
  May 2015 Bus Poet Stop
Nat Lipstadt
I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, like your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day,
too bad your schedule
is fully booked,
but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees,
for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put,
not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand,
my resume is absent of
razors and pills,
poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths,
here are my sums


If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones,m my unsolicited ******,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command,
by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...


If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself,
parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged
the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011
hard to believe this poem will be 8 years old, soon enough; I well recall writing it and willx return to the sunroom soon for inspiration and an afternoon nap.
but I have been to Kent,
back, thrown forth and back again,
so oft
that my words cannot
properly best
the nature of my
welling affection
sufficiently well

nurse us,
the world,
children, old souls, family,
in a big old house,
with poems of ribboned words,
that come daily(!)
like the sun riding up,
ending our days
with a sunset color collage
and always a
sweet good night
to her princes and princesses

unasked for, but so long overdue,
I over do what needs
not just saying,
but witnessing,repeating

this woman
upon who mine eyes have yet to
gaze,
yet upon me,
she has so oft touched,
grazed
with deft phrase,
poet alive read,
I have no need to go to Kent,
for she
thru words,
resides inside my humbled
palate of
poets admired...
Bus Poet Stop May 2015
~

a woman, weeping,
at her own wedding dinner,
copiously, bleating sobs,
unsignaled, unprovoked, inexplicable.

misunderstanding guests,
shifting their weight
from foot to foot,
searching for a combo-pose of
of joyous discomfort.

all is well, say the wedding singers,
hymns of wedding songs they perform,
encouraging the standers-about
to dance,
all whom are inconsolably confused about
the wed woman's recognition of a
moment's milestone marker
which distinguishes, her totality,
feeling the differential between
the miles ahead,
the miles already passed,
but cannot answer
the singular considerable consideration question,
is this mine, the right road
and am I
who I am supposed to be,
or the supposition of others

which is why bride weeps at her wedding

~

a sober, industrious, quiet man
of many middle years,
seen sway dancing on the lawn
at 6:00 AM,
to sounds unheard,
was it music, voices,
a breaking point,
the birth of madness?

we, who watched from within,
behind a safe boundary
of glass and stucco and timber,
jealously considering alternate theories
of creation of the universe,
dual roles,
observing guests and voyeurs,
prayed for ourselves,
desirous of his wishes granted,
swayed with him,
in flagrante delicto,
co-conspirators unseen,
but jailed,
behind protective walls of
glass and stucco and timber,
sotto voce confessing priest-worthy sins
while protesting their innocent knowledge
of a man's delightful craziness,
a distraction from
weeping brides

~

the parents posts to Facebook
pictures of children,
warily unaware that their favoritism
is slip showing

oh they favor the youngest son,
beautiful Joseph with many colored coats,
possessing the practiced cuteness
and skillfully employ how to manipulate it sweetly
on suspecting adults

the  eldest daughter,
unconsciously,
is the child made over
into a physical representation,
a manifestation of themselves preserved
as parents are wont to do
just because
they can
~
the swayer wedding guest
pray~dances to the tune of:

give over, her to me, to me,
to replant her unsuspecting
in garden wild,
feed her colors of her as yet unthought of,
foresee her aching beauty,
teach her freedom dancing by the sea,
weeping at her weeping
at her wedding
simpatico with her,
confusion and joy and fear

which is why the man sway dances
on the lawn at 6:00 am and weeps
copious bereft and joyous,
at the possibilities of conquering life
and foresees
the child wedding weeping
and weeps in anticipatory empathy sympathy
at their cojoined
kinship fate

~
Bus Poet Stop May 2015
The dermatologist demands a pre-summer scan of my visual delights fully magnified.

Peering into places where no one else has ever peered, even me, reminds me that this is a potentially "disruptive" process.

Eye don't know what his eyes have seen.  

He works in silence pin punctuated by the occasional mmmm or throat clearing rumble.

Snappy removal of neutrally colored gloves signify conclusion, he opines as follows:

"Were you aware," he inquires, "that the lines, the furrows on a your forehead correspond to the life your have lead?"

"You have three, deep deep tracks, and that's a fact."

Yes, eye know,
and each one is a tree ring notation
of my existence.

Each a different year,
each a different moment fearful,
a death and a birth,
a passing, a regaining.

No, not children or parents,
illusions.

Markers of our lives are the
birth and death of our illusionary,
our revelation minutes, that measure and scribe
what dug those furrows is now officially,
no more.

Until we start anew,
a different Pretense,
a channel commenced to commemorate.

Living the dream, they say,
aren't we all, eye think, and so inform him.

The doctor did not bill for this
visitation.
Bus Poet Stop May 2015
Hotel ***

shortly after we arrive, eye call the front desk and ask them
when was the first time we stayed at the hotel?

2010, five years, usually once, sometimes twice de a year was
the answer.

in their computer, the management records our modest likes, preferred newspapers, the firmness of our pillows and that
we require telephonic advisories to adjacent rooms,
code worded Kilimanjaro,
when we engage in Grade A, FDA approved hotel ***.

noisy, twisted, sheet messed, bubble bathed, wall climbing, chandelier swinging, room device only, do not disturb, full on, hotel ***.

but times change us and this time eye reach repeatedly for her bare arms, and one in ten, one in ten, I dare to gentle, to caress... lest eye awaken her...nothing changes, everything changes, the satisfactions express themselves differently...time zone changes, alter body clocks and needs are not auto-instinctual, more cerebral, and yet eye tend to her both  like my woman and beloved child, anticipating her almost every need...and wonder where that
hotel *** drive got misplaced...
them glory days...


when they ask if our stay was satisfying,
my verbal reply is both invisibly straight and di-visibly crooked...

"holey satisfactory, holy satisfactory"

and ever eye am the pun, the jokester par excellent,
hugging nuggets of previous journeys...
retrieved from cold storage, recollections  of
*ah, hot hotel ***!
  May 2015 Bus Poet Stop
abecedarian
Masters of the Universe,
three and some,
nearly four
months tween
me and you
that words
interchanged,
prayers,
asking for the answering job
which was handily God-to-Man
transferred, transfused
tween you and
me
a/k/a
Job...appropriately

you may recall
I was the bloke
who immodestly spoke,
asking any and all
circulating deities,
to tender
their resignations
post-haste,
immediately
for failure to do
the appointed rounds
well enough to this
human's satisfaction

now don't go high hopes expecting
a large confession
about how hard,
ya see it really is
tending the flock be...

nope
I ain't here to beg of you,
take this onerous
from my shoulders!

no, no, capitulation,
my track record
maybe not much better
than what went before,
but you know what I'm about to say,
cause you are perfect

well I still don't like
what satisfies your perfection definition
for my fellow humans,
so I'm keeping this job/Job,
for another few months,
cause I am.
Human
enough to know
that humans keep on trying
and you just gave up
and said let them do what they want
between human to human,
as long as they pay us obeisance

I put sins of
man to fellow man
as my número uno priority
and if the number of prayers diverted
back to you,
in your inbox receiving,
are just the
dues paying kind,
keep'em,
I got more important things to do...
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1020933/masters-of-the-universetender-me-thy-resignation/

Masters of the Universe,
tender me thy resignation,
if but for
a day,
a millennia,
no matter how measured,
any being,
you, purported supreme
or otherwise,
are tired in ways
hard to comprehend

*tender me
thy responsibilities and dilemmas,
have studied your resignations,
solutions that provide no resolution...

I can do better.

Why?

not obligated by parenthood,
rules of randomness superimposed,
all I got is human kindness
the eyesight that
colors life,
tolerates no injustice,
milky white light,
no longer recognize

"there for the grace of God
go you and I"

have no name,
but if you need one for me,
call me*
**human**
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