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  Dec 2020 Left Foot Poet
Traveler
Whether a comma, or colon:
Punctuation slows my rolling
I need no period. When I end
no Capitalization when I begin
Rulelessly I flow my art
  Not a single!
Exclamation mark
Are you not the one
Who'll know?
Where a question mark
No longer goes

Warp the structure
Bend the lines
Put in repeat
Let emotion unwind
Make yourself
Your poetry's the best
Be your own ruler
Pass your own test

Take your own road
Where ever it leads
Lover or hater
It's all poetry!
Traveler Tim
.


Hay
No matter who you are
You have my deepest respect!

Vanity
All is vanity
The meanings of passion
The aesthetic expression
The lines we draw and stay within
Even love is beyond intent
Vanity transcends
Flowing from our pens
And so we breathe again
  Dec 2020 Left Foot Poet
Nat Lipstadt
<>

11:03 Sun Sep 20 2020
2nd Day Rosh Hashana 5781
S.I., N.Y.

when I was twenty years younger, I wrote oft introspectively,
nowadays, today, provoked by the High Holy Day, the New Year,

it is my only filter, lens, and this solitary perspective that this moment affords, permits, demands, commands, insists on,  
prepared by this confession, so that I may better return to the union of my divine spark, unify body and soul, recover my true self,
by acknowledging that I am
not beholden to anyone,
therefore, thereby,
     beholden to everyone

how inconsistently wonderful that additional experience, alive in a time of upheavals, pushes me past the first stanza, where most often, my poems, prayers, go to rest uneasy, incomplete, only to be buried alive in me.

Yet, here I am stuttering, sputtering, words that come unexpectedly!
I have reached a second stanza, with the ending well sighted, nearby. The collective, overlaid wake of each passing boat, finger pointing, a road line for following, to a larger directive, a river emptying into a great ocean, birthplace & graveyard

premature celebration as it’s weeks till I return to this poem-in-progress on a bleak week, the winterized grays have dominated, the freshness of sunlight is just an occasional peekaboo.

The larger directive now suppressed, the pilings of damp brown leaves, multi-message; funeral. mounds of good days gone to hell, the inward perspective has returned me to a deep, dark place.

(Stutter, stutter, each day asseverates solemnly with tinges of rancor, no, no, no, still no answers yet, the second and third stanzas are *******, suns of no man.)
  Sep 2020 Left Foot Poet
Nat Lipstadt
~for teach~

tell me, are you ok?

yeah, more or less;
like everybody else,
wires get crossed,
static builds up,
the speakers bleat
when they should blat,
and you try to stop thinking,
cause why hurt yourself
too much?

what’s wrong?

nothing to specific,
that seems to be the problem,
like aches and sharp pains
that come without reason,
on a schedule all their own,
no prior consultation,
permission slip sig forged,
so badly, it’s insulting

it’s 3:14 am, woke up with
headphones on, every tune,
reandomly selected, saying,
only the lonely, solitary man,
miles to go, it’s probably me,
long monday coming,
gonna spend it
looking for the summer

now look at this, me done wrote
another impoverished poem,
just by stringing together
song titles that were selected
just for me by an artificial intelligence,
it’s closing time, in the fields of gold,
prine singing a blues lullaby, just for me,
so I won’t have to think so hard for an answer to

tell me, are you ok?

me?
got no complaints that
ain’t my own fault,
my guilt is plugged in
always charging,
sleep comes in dreams of many colors,
eclectic eclipses, electrifying and elicited,
words come spilling so easy, pre-selected,
elocuted and executed, with madding ease.
two more lines, then calling it quits, but at least
got an answer, why for me it’s so easy,
the being hard

<>

3:32am and the moonlight so bright,
it’s making shadows on earth, left behind
like good graffiti announcing I was here,
maybe I’ll find these words, when I wake up,
wonder who wright these, twasn’t me,
I’m a sound sleeper, can never remember,
dreams, or nightmares, even those in technicolor,
wake up a blank slate, to see,
gotta answer somebody’s question,
if I’m ok?
  Aug 2020 Left Foot Poet
night unkind
the transitional day


august August practicing her Academy Award speech,
“Best Month of the Summer, 2020,” between you ‘n me,
there wasn’t much in the way of competition, nonetheless,
careful chosen backdrop, sound effects, mood music -
The Zombies playing “Time of the Season,” inter-inter,
mixing in cool weather, blue skies, intermittent cumulative
cumulus, pushed around by a whitecapping 16 MPH wind

the transitional effects, the leaves dropping fast, **** pointy
s.o.b., pointy acorns, under bare feet means a lot of cursing,
nobody likes change and kissing sweet summer goodbye for a
chilly tonguing neath a smirking smile, for the fates, having
a mischievous hot streak going, promising fall_ing fireworks,
(insert hacking, can’t breathe noises, gunshots and last rites)

try to wrap my arms around the summering highlights, never,
to let go, but you can’t successful hold onto, grasp aholt of
sunlight, traveling clouds, tanning oil, when the breeze is already
autumn weight tweed sturdy strong, and your new bathing suit
(so flattering, so long!) got no unsightly pockets (uncool) and
they got motion, and you have no traction and they just ‘adieu’ you

transition from chilled to trepidated, worries change seasonal colors,
green trees gone, green money worries replacements, and brown is
generally an ugly color, what life leaves behind, brown things,when
things die. Even bay waters have got the fall blues, no more robust
blue eyed girls to decorate white beaches, shades of grays tryout to
be the signature of coloration of symbolic, leave-less, denuded trees

frankly,  I’m in a lousy mood and wait and weight mix, a new coffee flavor from Dunkin’ Depressed, gonna be a big seller if there’s any left, don’t wonder why, ain’t gonna be much around, since I’m gonna drown this magnifique summer body in a tub of coffee that came all the way from June and July, it turned bitter soured, ain’t gonna think twice ‘bout it, heck, after this, may not even think of ‘bout it at all, ain’t nothing to, for, or say...’cept

<> <>

“When a man loves a season
Spend his very last dime
Trying to hold on to what he needs
He'd give up all his comforts
And sleep out in the rain
If Mother Nature said that's the way
It ought to be.”


apologies to the songwriters of
“When a Man Loves a Woman”
  Aug 2020 Left Foot Poet
Nat Lipstadt
~ per la bombardiera italiana di Vienna~

you want a poem of (a)side dishes, instead of a main,
you prefer a side vent, instead of a main event,
but always commence at the commencement ending,
another day begs for the first poem of the day (FPoTD)

the sky produces another hue, a whitish blue,
with violet shadings, majestic clouds slow moving,
heading north, Northwest by North(NWbN)
to New England, onto Toronto, then west to B.C.
but me won’t be there for that new course correction

sent some messengers your way, umpteen Canadian
snowbird geese, returning home, Florida too **** hot,
hurricanes not to their liking, quite the sight, brave old
man in dracula cape-flapping bathrobe, clapping and heehawing them intruders into the bay waters, off his land, their partying
in my no-noise motel against a law, not to mention their
empties and plentiful droppings, but I side vent digress

from where this Mariner’s tale began, but the mental alarm
signals seven bells, return to port, now a mess mate, inside,
delivering coffee in white china teacups to the Captainess,
who in time of war makes tremendous sacrifices, par example,
who due to the pandemic, graciously deigns, accepts paper(!)
napkins, a sign of the gravity of the times, no ironing!


god, I do not understand how you do it, vast eternal patience,
every way, every day, a new shade, you musta been an art major,
or very bored, either way, this goose chasing, cook, exterminator,
driver, poetry-writing no-maven son of a Canadian woman, is
your devotee, morning glory audience, who accepts your sky tapestry, your cloud interweaving laddering, with humble gratitude, a still life never stilled, my eyes, my tongue sings your praises like King David, and that other court-appointed Canadian psalmist^ who  understood, conversing with you is where all hallelujah poem songs main event must begin, fiddle middle, and perforce must conclude, that! the! main event

everything else just a side event, a side venting, a prayer-in waiting,
a get-in-line for another paradise, where poets play cards, smoke see-gars, checking their stockings for runs and new poem ideas, word worshipping the gifts of existence, a child’s ice cream dotted nose, a body’s curves, but I digress...he LoL’s to himself, wondering why his eyes are tearing...as usual, he is clueless, the last to know, but the first to weep because the winter is coming, yet again, a sky will be less frequent friendly, but the know-nothing-man will digress yet again, once more unto the breach...


2020
8:18am
Sat Sabbath Aug 29
as the
poet on the roof,
‘tis I,
asking you Lord,
would it have soiled
a vast eternal plan,
to throw some seasoned salt,
on mes écrits?

let this soliloquy
make my case,
my summer
soul-on-ice,
hungover from
the sorrowed sobriety
that stayed, retained,
the sense of loss
that are the mainstays
of my isolated days


long after I’ve left,
the black velvet of
my screen, and I,
wonder where poems
come from, ceasing to
wonder, perhaps as simple
as some sweet old critter
being a human whisperer


**** the czar
and
**** me too.
  Aug 2020 Left Foot Poet
island poet
pick a word, let it lead you astray, then (soil)


a poem to exclaim, refracting the sun rays emerging
from the curves of your chested heart, the waggle of
ten fingers conducting your inner song, the baton first
waved swipe to earth pointing, let us commence there:

think of yourself, entirety, as soil, you the potter,
what has been planted by others, nourished by others,
along sides of your ingestions, you the grower, seeded
anew, each word, hybrid edging with existing vocabularies

the sun from without, the sun from within, the rivulets
of water, the arterial pathways, feed the treasure chest,
and you, farmer, planter, grower, picker, plucker of the
produce, serve us, baskets grown on the fruited plain of

poems’ soil consisting of the writings grown in the
unique you,
all of you,
body & soul
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