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  Jun 18 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
the propulsion of compulsion is indefatigable,
it cannot no more, be ignored, as if it is forming
a holy commandment, number 11, you must
write when so ordered, denial is temporary
i n s a n i t y, and the backlog of nuances be
comes longer and longer by the instant

the provocateurs, them eyes, those eyes,
even the ears and tongue join in to instigate,
the cabal of influencers who peddle no product,
demand no payment but total obeisance and
sometimes low-class instant fufillment, for here
I am in servitude,@ 4:33am, by dawn’s early light
(no **** for real), propelled and compelled by
the creative, the spilling urgency of the need
to expel notions of potions that flit between the

frontal lobe, parietal lobe, cingulate gyrus,
and prefrontal cortex: (I told  you, it’s a cabal!)
all  firing
up neurons like electron spark plugs, and only
I can see the sparks colliding inside as letters,
words, phrases, none lazy, all demand long life,

or the Perpetuity of the Momentary”

it grows lighter by the minute and the sporadic
lights across the bay wink morse code secrets
to the observant, and Noyac’s  tree line has
become a distinguishable and distinctive
land mass to which I crossed last nite via &
upon the South Ferry, when all these conflicting
concepts began a painful birthing delivery,
the coagulation of the flighty, merging and
transforming into my child, in my bed, through
the picture window that has so oft been complicit
in the ganging up on my very, very old and restless
brain

but, uh, this ecrivez, this motion that the momentum
of the momentary desiring & deserving of monuments
to the perpetual
won’t be stilled and hours later, with it’s invisible hands
around my throat, it yanks from within what did not
exist ten minutes prior, but always existed inside me
as a jumbled puzzle, gestating quietly till a swift kick
of birthing pains insufferable accompanied by her
raucous dreams, awoke me from ******* and rhyming
Rem Sleep, to now, this moment, named forever as
4:57am and this noisy newborn, covered in embryonic
fluid (wonderful but disgusting really) is all ready pealing and peeling
off suggestions for brothers and sisters, this arrogance
is untenable, but the babe laughs at me, for it knows that
there are hidden, voluminous files of titles awaiting their
turning time of final conception

no longer nighttime, an early forming day, it too,
covered in its own fluidity, awaits discovery, for
the lights from across the bay have gone to bed,
turned off but the greatest, more powerful
brighter discharges
of the Sun Gods

The Bay’s waters are still, though my woman is not,
muttering, still dreaming out loud, as if she wishes
to foment
turbulence, and desires a boat for safe conveyance
across the dark seas of the night to the searing bright
June summer day that the Greek seers have forecast,
and then that moment, like it’s older sibling, will demand,
it’s very moment of personalized perpetuity, its own
unique naming,
a full recording, a welcoming by the Preservation Band,
amidst the glory of its mother mornings colorings of
palest blues, puffery of cumulus whitiwhispers all tinged
in my favorite, flavored color, creamsicle orange,
and the calming power is self evident for the rustling
back and forth of raucous dreams have ceased, and I too
am no longer possessed by the moment, until soon
when the hands creep slow round my throat by a new
moment, and all is lost, all is gained and a newest poem
is brought from the womb of my ancient past, my currency
of the next minutes and the wealth of words that are
available to us all! demands one of us, perhaps you?
to commit its actualized existence into reality

I bid you a soft adieu, for the chores of existence
those demanding pests of drudged biblical
pestilence
can no longer be kept
waiting

nml
5:21am
Sun Jul 16
2024

writ at you know where…
writ in the “moment”
  Sep 2023 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
“the unbound unbinding: an admixture of words and swords…
that will cut a newborn cord of reciprocity of thee and me,
miracle!
thereby, an unbound binding that ties and frees us from
and connects us nonetheless by our shared senses…”

<!>
these words, recalled well,
for they but a newborn issue of a few days, and the notion of binding that
frees us into reciprocity yet buzz~hums
in my brain

the contradictory nature of a cutting
which ties us together,
that an unbinding binds us even more tightly,
I struggle, to better understand the nature how an unraveling
of our connection somehow ties us closer

but re-envisioning
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in my mind’s eye,
that sparking space tween God’s finger outstretched
to bring the enlivening of his spirit to His first enervate, Adam,
the original of we humans,
somehow sates my confusion

to touch each other
at the most primitive basis,
we require a space
between us, in order to fulfill,
a contract contact
of completion and binding


and this bestills and bestirs
my puzzlement,
a space electric necessary
to permit us to
close the human circuitry

!and I am contented,
the contradiction
no more, I sense the
need to close gaps
tween us certify our human resources
for it is the permanent invisible grasping
of our loving minds that transcends
overpowers gaps,
bringing tears of joy to my eyelids,
even as I write these words,
and greet this morning
with
optimism
that every space
brings a richer
closure!
!
9/16/2023
9:48AM
  Jun 2023 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
Fog Happens

Yup. Not profound, even Jung, Kant and Freud,
wouldn’t deny their eyes, would no doubt disagree
with symbolic, philosophical implications, and the
head banging ramifications for the immediacy of
the spiritual impact while driving in this grey ****.

Fog differs every time, and on an island, that’s for
**** sure. Today’s incarnation, the fog comes over
the water, but respects the man-made, timbered,
bulkhead, so the yard, with its circus of ravens, crows,
and other invisible birds, insects, rabbits, is visible,
but absent the inhabitants who are smarter-than-humans,
they remain aboded thinking, only stupid humans believe
they can navigate and forage, in a fog penetrating  in air
that is 97% humidity and 100% peas soup thick skinned.

The time? Of course.

It’s 7:36 AM on the East Coast, and beyond the lawn lies a brackish bay that will lead you to the Atlantic and north to the Titanic, direction Newfoundland. Not enough info to geo tag me, but those who know me, knowledgeable in my early mornings  scribblings, know my whereabouts, my telephone number. Do you?

Fog Happens to everyone and at random intervals, Nope. Not thinking of the brain clouds of ordinary Lethologica  and Lethonomia. (Sunday lazy so just look it up and say out loud, gotta remember them words and laugh out loud cause you ain’t gotta a prayer.)

Fog Happens

in the heart, spreading north to the consciousness, and the lethargy of movement impeded by the lighthouse bells tolling “danger is about,” our light stolen, but you need to know, you’re perilously close to danger. Any action taken when heart-fogged can have awful consequences so stick close to bed, yank out your tablet, write a poem, listen to sad love  songs on that Pandora Station, or send GIPHYs and emojis to your six year old granddaughter who is 108 miles to the west of where you both hide beneath coverlets, and laugh out loud with her like the bells chiming outside, and that helps move that heart~fog hanging low, out to sea.

YUP.
Fog Happens
Fog Passes
Sun Jun 25
7:58 AM
@you-know-where
  Jun 2023 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
Leave if You Can II


I live in the house of poetry.
I ascend her stairs slowly
and leap back down.
I sit in the chair of poetry,
sleep in her bed, eat from her plate.
Poetry has windows
through which mornings and afternoons
fall, and how well she suspends a teardrop
how well she blows until I tumble / With this
I mean to say that
one basket brings
both wounds and bandages.  
I love poetry so much that sometimes I think
I don’t love her / She looks at me,
inclines her head and keeps knitting
poetry.
As always, I’ll be the bigger person.
But how to say it / How to tell her
I want to leave / honestly I want to
fry my asparagus…
I see her coming near
with her bottle of oil
and crazed skillet.
I see her,
her little bundle of asparagus
slipping out her sleeve.
Ah her freshness / her chaotic glint
and the way she approaches with relentless meter.  
I surrender / I surrender always because I live
in the house of poetry / because I ascend
the stairs of poetry
and also because
I come back down.

    — Translated by Lisa Allen Ortiz & Sara Daniele Rivera
Rossella Di Paolo

Rossella Di Paolo was born in Lima, Peru in 1960. She studied literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She made her first publications in the student literary magazine Calandria, and worked as a journalist for several years for the alternative current affairs magazine La Tortuga. Her books include Prueba de Galera (1985 and 2017), Continuidad de Los Cuadros (1988 and 2018), Raised skin (1993 and 2019), Tablets of San Lázaro (2001 and 2020), and The chair in the sea (2016), which received the Lights of the Readers Award for the El Comercio Best Book of Poetry of 2016. In 2020, she won the Casa de la Literatura Peruana Prize and was distinguished as a Personalidad Meritoria de la Cultura (Admirable Cultural Personality) by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.

She is a university professor and directs poetry workshops. Her poems have appeared in anthologies of Peruvian and Latin American poetry. She takes part in exhibitions of poetry, painting, and photography, and edits multidisciplinary editions of poetry.
Mark Upright Jun 2020
my father had a
sense of humor,
and high hopes
for his first born son.

almost named me
Short ‘n Sweet,
cause that is how
most like life.

thot about calling me,
*******,
cause that is what
most deserve to be told.

but he didn’t want
no blowback, so he he
stuck me with this name,
Mark Upright.

all I gotta say is this
and it’s short & sweet:

Dad, take note,

*******,

my *******,

for you, see it,

marked upright.
Mark Upright Dec 2019
she confounds me with sweet raisins and nuts, accolades oh so
high the caloric content....

”Yours [poetry], is subtle,
that seek to grasp, hide and peek,
strong/weak/out-front/meek.
It charms like a snake a wake of ideas,
with innuendo, yet it's sublime,
a bell that chimes, a walk in hell,
a credo a charm, two-arms to keep one warm”

~
**** your praise, cursed encouragement,
leave me well enough to my audience of
the occasional stumbled on, the accidental tourists,
the who few nick my cheek when they randomly seek
a few minutes aside, an at-last-last-chance peek,
giving us both, the reader and criminal, pause,

the pause of
‘who wrote this?’
and it’s innate counter-mate of wonder,
when to my attention brought,
‘did I write this?’

**** praise, poisonous snakes only need apply,
the wake of my ship so quickly dissipates
upon the unmapped, unending Sea of New Poets,
where the 99% just drown the first time round,
and the remaining survivors  glory in fame so fleeting,
‘twere not for the unburied of the internet, their zombies
would too be shipwrecked, ungiving, undead...

a credo? not I.

a credo requires preaching, acolytes according a poet succored reams
of accusative praise, all such leads to ******* up to the egoland
where failures reside alone gleeful pride, and goes to die on bouquets
faded from by over caressing their petals, to floor dropped, in silent admiration, the imagined bells of hell ringing only in the ears
of the delusional deluded

my maturity existential, let it be forgotten, troubling no one,
a new audience of one, owning tickets of broken mirrored pieces,
my layers peeled back, this imagery unrecognized, not I, not I,
for fainted be, the poison of pride denied, for my writings writ
by an accursed one, long since buried in the faint ashes of
lost glorious forgotteness
~
but humbled nonetheless and it is the finale,
“two arms to keep one warm,”
with an elixir of words ear whispered,
**** you know my weakness, and now
my bravado erased by your single touch prophesied
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