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 Jan 2014 drumhound
Nat Lipstadt
in the theater,

(awaiting the curtain rising),
woman looks at me,
(I say)
Tangerines.

punches me
in the arm,
again
(and again)
read her mind,
knowing
silently making
shopping list.

in kitchen,

looking confused,
what the heck
did I come in here for,
surreptitious smiling,
(i suggest)
cuppa tea be nice.

looks at me queer
(and says)
**** it,
stop doing  that!


in car,

home bound,

turns to me
(I say,)
veggie burger,
a great idea for dinner.


can't hit me cause

doing the driving,
makes instead
she-laughing,
teeth gnashing
grunting noises
(most comical)

no Houdini,
(who dat?)
5 years on
read her like
the book.

book of poems

she has
co-authored
entitled
**the mystery of no mystery
6:00 PM
In the sun room, smiling.
May 25, 2013

re used, re vised
Jan. 7, 2014
 Jan 2014 drumhound
Nat Lipstadt
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.
Ecclesiastes 3:5.

long, long long
have I known
the contradictory meaning thereof,
for I authored it,
time immemorial

till the day came
when understanding parted,
left for another prophet,
another poet,
for this how the world's words go,
round and around

left me
re commencing
re imaging
re imagining,
new era words,
newer versions,
new heards
newer mergings

stones and embraces
ha!

"Two of my favorite things"

no, that's been done...

"Let's go get ****** and..."

nope, that's been done

So,
spark sublime divine
give me a second chance,
compose me a vision
that gathers these
mutual funds of
contrasting similarities
in a bow tied connection
singular, worthy of
song and daily recitation!

her embrace was a stone necklace
around my throat,
sackcloth was my shroud,
to the sea bottom was impaled,
by the stony apparition
of the unrequited embrace


Ugh

My beloved's embrace,
cracked the stones that surround
my uncaring register,
the cold still waters that hid it
now boiling from
her gathering me in

better.

one last try before I repent

embrace the stones
that obstacle the journey,
gather them in, together keep,
for they are the markers,
you have used,
you have been,
you have exhausted,
so long after the body ashed,
these words will trace for
those that follow the path
you marked with
these same stones
you gathered in
olden days of
simple joyous embrace*

this will,
must have to
do,
for the stones of
the angels of sleep have
arrived and undeterred,
upon my chest have,
inscribed and placed,
while bidding me adieu,
tucking me in,
gathering me to my rest,
a closing eyeing embracing,
in drowsy voices half clear:

sleep prophet,
the work done,
the words piled,
the stones now
mark your the
you final resting place
upon them ecrivez,
In The Future,
Keep It Simple Stupid
Pretty bad poetry, bad pretty poetry...but the spoof is the goof!
 Jan 2014 drumhound
Nat Lipstadt
ten minutes to write.

score the music,

melancholic
the repetitive phrase,
but
I refuse it.

instead I bathtub splash
hard soft rockin' roll,
the boon dog now soaking,
quizzes my sanity
what does he know?

Score the life times.

five minutes to write.
trite crumpled,
hook-shot into the trash,
but trite costly,
one minute of a lifetime,
scared, sacred, but scored by
ruts, grooves, ex personas in my life,
the black markers of my insane
pushed under the water,
drowned by music.

One minute to write.

Poem:
a good start to the day,
please pass the soap,
shampooed the trash out of my life,
the rest, now to start.
PostScript:
if shampoo or soap not be handy,
that trash when it comes,
just refuse it.
He writes as if he invented the word 'yearn'
Wistfulness and want in every line.
It's as though he's been starved of words his entire life
And now he's drowning in the dictionary,
Gorging on adjectives and language
A reformed wordarexic
Flooding the pages with need
And everything I want to read.
I hope he writes forever
For I, too, love to feed.
Wittled stuck One
to Coyote Dingus
wind talks money all day and night
from all directions
but am allowed only to listen

Emotional cocooning
addictive sweet synth sup
as ready as can be
Reshaping wounded amazons
Is no easy task.

Thank you.
Now please pull your head out
before we all starve to death
from this confusing lack of true love

a swan, perhaps?
no, a turtle, one of nine
*i see
©Atalanta Undigested 2013.  All Rights Reserved.
Tiny Nutcracker
Back into the box with you
Until next year - sleep.
 Jan 2014 drumhound
Nat Lipstadt
fresh orange clementines on a
white kitchen counter,
incongruous with a windowed view of
white winter's barometric pressures.

eye illusions,
making no sense,
like me drinking
ice coffee in NYC on
New Year's Eve.

New Years Eve too,
a nonsensical notation,
an illusory line,
imposed upon us by
calendar salesmen and astronomers,
for profit and seals of good timekeeping.

There is no solstice,
no verifiable, demonstrable,
celestial line of demarcation,
just a box on a calendar
of man-made paper,
man-dating
fresh thinking,
de-man-ding,
we gaily clad ourselves
in suits of optimistic armor,
heavy with good cheer,
so much so,
we list to one side
under a burden
of greater expectations

the starting line is
worldwide, continental.

a ball drops
to signal the beginning of a new
human race to
another artifice in future time.

with inebriated staggering starts
over staggered time zones,
thus creating a continuous,
rolling wave-eve of resolutions.

I say to myself,
what the heck,
why not!

if the whole world
must share
but one
global illusion,

this one,
fresh starts of fresh hearts,
is not a bad one,
maybe, perhaps,
as good as it gets?
 Jan 2014 drumhound
Nat Lipstadt
Disordered Thoughts, Naturally

the ceiling fan overhead
shakes back and forth,
beginning, a train of
disordered thoughts,
this poem,
the caboose.

reimagined, the fan,
it becomes
a yeshiva boy
fervent praying,
his version of ***** dancing,
shaking rocking swaying fervor,
shuckling.

for what does he pray?

for advance forgiveness
for he is simulcast
requesting getting lucky,
to be knowing
the miracle of being
with a woman or a man,
thus, getting closer to
God,
naturally.

He will be excised
for being human,  
he will be excused  
for by definition,
by succeeding and by failing,
in his desire
to be close to divine,
he best divines the
tragicomic nature of the
human condition:
the joy of sin,
the sin,
of a life without joy,
naturally.


Clean sheets nightly,
turn down service,
chocolates on my pillow,
good night kisses
on each eye,
even spooning,
are not among the
six hundred and thirteen
positive commandments
in the Bible.
why not?

why,
cannot this be
constitutionally amended,

by voice vote
of anyone who cares
to shout out a yay,
or blink approvingly,
or signs by fingers
sugar snapping and
hands, toe tapping?

all methodologies
intended to indicate the satisfaction
that comes from changes
made not in,
but also
from
the human tissue of heartbeats,
naturally

Somewhere
a solitary fish
swims upstream,
against the current,
defying odds...

weird,
the ways things should be,
never thinking,
wondering out loud,
why compulsion impels
so many living things
to do the opposite of logical,
natural in so many ways.

never asking,
why a fish must struggle to spawn,
upwards and onwards
to die so it, and the
the man, the bear,
he will feed,
the progeny released
can live?


for if this is the
natural order,
then is not nature,
too oft logically discordant,
and thus
disorder is the
state of being,
naturally.

Something makes me
awestruck and wondrous silent,
ever time I touch a
young child's skin,
joy instantaneous takes hold,
true shock and awe
succumbs me.

cannot be just miracle mine,
the sensation of life so sweet,
wondrous on my fingertips,
that repeated stroking is
******* addictive,
naturally.

what would be the harm,
if this soft shell of derma-finery
were a permanent condition,
a constant reminder,  
we all share,
born and bred,
a premier clean slate of
natural innocence unblemished,
perma-frosted prima face facile,
naturally.

this was how
we were created,
why perforce,
was it deemed orderly,
'better'
to evolve into something
grizzled, cracked and roughened slowly,
naturally.

Strange thoughts
are my normal fare,
if you only knew
the laugh of it,  
you might recommend,
keeping them closer still,
and me
far away from you!


maybe there is a God above,
but if there is,
he be
responsible for the sleepless nights
where stanzas of
whimsy, pain and joy are soldered,
ironed into a coalescing coalition,
denoted as a
restless and disordered mind,
but of course!
not my fault,
naturally!

next time we meet,
see smiles irregularly sweet,
turning,
reversing to and fro,
for such is the
inchoate state
of what transverses
on my cellular network
these rambunctious dark hours,
naturally.
these disordered thoughts, are nature allied, nat-urally...
And the secret things she whispered to me.
Beneath the limbs of the baobab tree.
I held to my lips like molasses and wine
And dreamed of her kiss with the promise of mine.
Turn the wheel into the sun. Forget the stars. Forget the wind. Forget the way the waves are weeping. I am not coming home.

We are never again what we once were. And I am not sorry for it.

Some of them end before the music can even start. And we are left somehow, like monks, pinching book spines like vertebrae. Seeing if we can find our ability to
Stand.
Up.
In words.

Most days.

I am only words.

But some days, I am more.

Some days, the thought of those ivory temples run me up masts..

I am stretched out. Arms wide. Accepting the storm. Ragged.
(Stronger for it. Unafraid to unravel more.)
Inventing time. Investing it back.
Some days. I am yards of cloth, fighting history.

And when my sea is calm:
Puff your cheeks and blow on my spine.
For motion.

I am still.

I am calm.

I am still calm.

I am still calmly waiting.

It's worth mentioning that we never made love.

Now. Everything is different.

I am listening to an ***** grinder, playing my heart on his sleeve. Taking light from my future and shedding it on my past. Saying, "What happened? Where did you go?"

And I try to answer back but find my throat dry and only able to mutter, "I can't feel you, Lord. I can't feel you."

Some days I am lost.

Is it fair, when asked what happened, to say, "She did. Calliope happened to me."?

Start the music. Let the carousel turn. I am not coming home.

Is it fair to say that I am better now. But not always better for it.

I am walking a tightrope of strength and..

Something else. Something else entirely.

Now, I am tired. I am at a loss for words. I am sinking into the oldest crimes in the oldest ways and creating my own wooden chest. You are on it. Carved. Etched. Playing in my mind like laughter on the really cold days. Your fingerprints matching the grain. A petal for each flower I picked trying to fix it.

And this is how it will end. It was this way before it even began. When we found our faults on the back of each others lips with our tongues.

Thank you for teaching me the opposite side of love.

And this is how I will end it.

I will be words. And action. And learn to touch with passion. Learn to make love, like sounds strung together. Masterful. Seamless. As to seem less important. like lyrics. Like an aria. Rising and falling like tides to my mast. Lips pressed and cheeks puffed. And arms outstretched like a horizon to sail into.

And all wonderful happy lies.

I will be more. In hopes of forgetting that briefly.. I once more allowed myself to be less.

And found my self wondering, If it was me who slipped through your fingers... or you who slipped through mine...

I once allowed myself to seem less.

I guess...

I just needed to get you off my chest.
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