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  Jun 2019 He Pa'amon
Nat Lipstadt
~~~

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”  Henri Bergson


well in that case,
I’m either the most immature teen here,
or Rip Van Winkle

the re-creation process is six, nearly seven,
decades long (you thot days, ha, no way),
can’t recall the last name
I called myself

the delving, the researching, the forgetting,
the fifty first dates of no short term memory,
the checkdown, throwback Thursday of
did I write that?

no recollect, the pretense of
prehensile strength to touch
you and me simultaneously
might, could be true,
if you claim I authored it,
ok with me and all that

life taught me this,
the one who oft  hangs around
very young kids
learns a lot,
and soon recognizes

maturity indeed endless
but not senseless
just a poem-of-the-day process

indeed

every sense says the minute difference
between this morning and this approaching midnight,
an opportunity to grow up, stand straighter, uprighter,
write down my failures one more time,
cause that is the sterling hallmark impressed upon
thyself, ourselves,
that is genuine maturity,
the courageous wisdom to start all over again

the clock has transgressed,
moving past
the 12:00am digits,
which for cause
makes me giddy,
it’s permission to write a new one,
of course,
maturely thinking I still got one within,
a newbie, an aged day-old brand new baby,
a poem,
of course

god bless, I’m all grown n’ growled up,
with wisdom to know I don’t got nada,
but own the immature youthful courage of maturity,
to keep on trying, endlessly,
being your obedient-servant
~~~

p.s. this is kind of love poem of thanksgivings,
a love poem with no misgivings,
a thank you for the fragments of sharing -
hold so dear,
the best reason to mature,
the best reason to change,
the best reason to write
right now, here comes the mojo
my newest oldest friend,
reminding for the last and first time

that I’m all growed,
using the bigliest words I’ve known
to say baby, hey baby,
good night good morning
write us a poem,
a thank you note,
from one who blessedly forgets his name,
day in and year out


For that guy,
you, that ancient kid,
That poet-in-retrograde

so rewrite the title, a refresh,
are you immature enough to write?

1:12am

~for the crew~
  Jun 2019 He Pa'amon
Nat Lipstadt
poems are cheap they say, the supply exceeds the demand,
all are product of criminal mischief, and Lord, I know,
I’m one of the most thieving, most mischiefing ones

when no one was about, I scribbled many notes,
transplanted from my eyes, for a bottled voyage
to fallow beaches for sandy seeding

no matter IF these poems are from your womb ripped,
****** red concoctions of life’s cute cutting edge inscriptions,
no one cares re your titanic love’s labors, your children’s betrayal

no one cares from whence and wherefore they birthed,
all words, low class and progeny, not prodigy, of demeaning circumstances, best tossed back without much foolish hesitation

writ with pen tip of broken green glass from a parking lot,
the point I broke once more before my commencement,
inked from a wicked witch’s melted green spittle pooling alongside

poets of no way, falsely prophesying falsehoods most singularly bad,
waste not-want not, time better spent than reading rhymes of stolen disrepute and cloudy ownership and ignoble authorship

unless you among a blessed few, who see a full blown poem in glassine clarity, birthed fully formed Elton songs in a mouth full of amniotic fund, you, put down thy laboring eleven instruments

if words you claim of new parentage, you as the mother dear,
know there is nothing new under the sun, even these very words,
scripted by Israelite king whose tomb gone, he, too, poet forgotten

join me in a needle park of junkies who tried and failed, nickel bag
smoking budget dope words, in cigarettes of mostly discarded seeds and twigs, hallucinatory inhaling the same vision again & again

you refuse, naturally, glamming in notional newness, your arrogance, a plentiful commodity of wood-be writers by thousands buried in wooden caskets, under wooden inscription-less crosses

and of the trillion readers possible, to coloring picture books and instant grams, all have gone to the labor-free glancing look-see
of a seconds-short, lengthy meme, 10 second videos, 140 limitations

of the greatest, of Shakespeare and Coleridge, reader’s fast-dying, sunburned neurons reply; “free ***** of his Love’s Labour’s Lost, and the Ancient Mariner, overdue, free him too!”

ancients mock you aware that there be no verbal combination yet to foretell, what Lear said, that’s the the idea, “When we are born, we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools.”^

fools we are, for there be no fore, the tale already told, once before & more, vaingloriously does this poet’s false vanity speak, so, so boisterously,
  
“why my tale, why my tail, is as new as the oldest fossil”
^ King Lear, Shakespeare
  Jun 2019 He Pa'amon
Nat Lipstadt
strangely, I think that this
ought be, must be, responsibly,
be the best poem I’ve ever writ,
(though unlikely, as the best will always be the next)
that mine own eyes commissioned,
better be,
just got to be,
this holy-moly notion jeepers weepers,
conceptual rocks me deepest,
an awesome responsibility
to find away of saying
that this beyond conceptual,
coring, especially special sample

If there was to be a but one,
a singularity, a distinguishing feature
of what the human definition
innate contains,
how choice that we animals,
elevate ourselves to being human beings,
the only ones capable of wonderfully weeping

the implications are an astounding!

what a glorious burden,
what a wonderful decision,
the designer slipped in this microscopic checkmark,
somewhere in our cellular DNA perma-dynasty,
runs a common thread, these saltwater fears,
a residual global amniotic fluid hint,
from where we humans out-of-crawled

that empathy,
the signal of an elongated journey of eons,
the marker that says
show the caring,
a trait-ed statement,
us, unique

so often do I weep,
sometimes visible - in my poems listed, oft indicated -
so you could know its sharing was an absolution
that I granted myself,
that that particular  poem was a costly one,

womb bloomed, tongue taken, eye written

sometimes invisible  - even more, do they,
(nobody knows, nobody sees)
just well up, eye cornered kept, secreted,
only skin-staining the underneath-my-eyes
one more shade darker,
a reminder to all, to mirrored me,
that to forgive myself doesn’t
forgive forgetting

is this then my best?

sufficient to breech your
reserves of pseudo-cool,
that correct boundary pretense that keeps us as
mismatched separates?

you be the judge, you be the jury,
you be the prosecutor and the defender,
for it is all of us
standing in the dock,
on trial,

for in our lifetime
guilty of the inhuman crime,
of not crying enough
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bodysphere/features/4837824
He Pa'amon Jun 2019
Hello there, it is me.

Who am I, you ask, 
well, to be honest, I am not quite
sure.

Who is this
        I
I speak of?
Is I am or am I is?
Who is me?

I have not met this I.
I have not met this me.

But they can tell you much more about me than I can -

They tell me I am woman.
They tell me I am white,
Jewish,
smart,
promiscuous,
fat,
kind.

They say I am defined and thus I try to define:

amongst the 1's and 0's,
those bits concretized in the grid of the orchestrated I for all the Others to consume.

I do not know this I,
and so I consume myself so that I may learn and I may imitate.
So that I can be I,
But who am I?

I say I am strong, but I know I am weak.
I tell myself I am the smartest dumb person, and the dumbest smart person.

Yet I am not who I was ten years ago as I am not who I was when I started writing this poem as I am not who I will be when I finish.

So who is strong and who is weak?

I am all that I am and all that I wish I weren't.
I am everything and also nothing.

I am not man, but I am not woman.
I am neither kind nor mean, fat nor thin, smart nor dumb.

I am desire and I am pain.
I am suffering and I am happiness.

I am the breathe I am taking but I am also the tightness I feel at the armpits as my chest expands,
there isn't enough space for the world in my lungs.

I am larger than the world,

I am fluid.
I fill space,
expanding into,
invading the empty.

But I am the emptiness.
I am also the world.

I am you.

I am.
He Pa'amon Jan 2019
no longer will i punish myself
and instead i will forgive

forgive not only the mistakes
-to err is to be human you know-
but the critiques and the shame that i have inflicted on myself

i once believed these negativities would mold me into something better
but there is no better that would absolve me

and so

i give myself permission to be
without constraints, or qualifications
without remorse, or judgment

everything i need i can give to myself
and i should give to myself

unconditional love
for all that is
and was
and will be

i am both my mother and my daughter
and i shall care for myself as such
and i shall love myself as such

and i shall be loved and i shall love
He Pa'amon Jan 2019
what if i just was?

when you zone out, where do you go?

if you look at anything long enough it turns into exactly what you were looking for.

i am looking for nowhere.

hiding in what was.

i want to be in between the lines of my childhood memories,
in between the folds of time
in the solid swaths of color

huffing on emotional echoes.

i want to be in the stills from a movie, but not the running film.

where do ditzy people go when they ditz?

i want to live in the moment before you wake up, when you nuzzle into the void between consciousness and unconsciousness

the in between inhale and exhale

how do i know what words to let out of my
brain
mouth
?

who is the author of my thoughts?
what is making me write this?

i want to be mad
delirious

just be.

i am.

its okay.
a poem written while tripping apparently to let sober me know how to get back there
He Pa'amon Jan 2019
my room is clean,
my plants are dying.

the one peeping out behind the door
cannot get enough light where it is,
but i like the way it looks in the corner of my room.

my banana tree is slowly molding from the inside out,
has been for the past two years.
i tell myself if i keep ignoring it,
just keep watering it,
the tree will rid itself of its disease all on its own.

my room is clean,
i am dying.

i keep my surfaces shiny and dust free
the dirt from underneath my nails remains in the pots
but i haven't left my house in three days

and i feel the mold creeping up around my throat and down into the pit of my stomach.

i am just another plant that needs water and light,
maybe i need to be repotted.

my other plant is plastic, though,
she's doing fine.
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