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  Mar 2015 Mark Upright
Left Foot Poet
and you want to believe,
that the restlessness will disappear,
new days new ways to conceive
readily for purchase in the five and dime stores
that they did away with
in the years forgotten

shake your shirt sleeve hoping
you can rid the body of the naysayers,
the hangers-on eager to deceive,
leeches you once begged please-come-aboard

asking only that eyes only perceive
what your soul demands it needs,
pants legs flag waving for pocket change
falling out, roll under the bed, thus discovering,
new ideas for old hopes like
peace,
start the world over, you the creator,
signing onto a new lease on life

take best medicine doctors never seem to prescribe,
mirror-stare till you weep from rawness bare,
relief grief honesty, immolating exercises,
un-calculated but accurate, letting your
near dears watch so no explanations buried
for angry revelation years too later after

days and nights of no rest,  
a few hours here there
clumped hours but never conjoined,
and you swear off usage
of conjunctions

all spoken now just verbs and nouns
I was
I am
you laugh cause you know,
mirror nods in certifiable confirmation
this is not the best work you ever ecrived,
but when madness, laced with love regret,
what you will emit, you take it plain,
with lots of ice, the idea-words poured,
clinking each other as icy cubes misshapen,
write it no down, don't look no up,
no editing required, can't go back
and get those too late spoken words

alarm rings buzzes beeps all devices
slightly off time agreed, it's Saturday Sabbath,
thinking good god it's against the law
to think this way on a weekending day,
and you want to believe

in fresh starts but all looks old familiar
desperate inmate things of a discharging
what? and you don't care for any answer
that isn't intimate enough to say out loud
why! why? Why  
                             do you want to believe...
  Mar 2015 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
You say I am far away,

that would be in error,
close, so close, that our words
kiss and create...

my feet firmly planted
on a pathway, a bahn,
that leads to a mystery...

despite all that I possess,
what we need most in our garden,
is but a simple
daisy.

there.
a mystery,
unravelled,
a kiss ethereal
shared,
but the taste of you
on my lips, sincerely.
  Mar 2015 Mark Upright
Robert C Howard
For Nat Lipstadt

In response to Nat's deeply moving poem that included me, I now dedicate this 2007 poem to Nat, who I am sure, knows exactly what it means.

               
She smiled as she
set her lips into
most agreeable motion -
her larynx flexing to
modulate the passing air.

The sequenced air waves
shook my auric drums
and journeyed to my soul.

Out of my reservoir
of ritual response
my lower face
turned a congenial curve.

Two puffs of air
pulsed my vocal folds,
were filtered
by my tongue and lips
and formed a sonic pattern
she was sure to know,

“Thank you.”

December, 2007
Included in Unity Tree - Collected poems
pub. CreateSpace - Amazon.com
Mark Upright Mar 2015
an ample empty Sunday
nothing on the agenda,
the calendars cease their chirping,
it's a kinda free rarely heard

maybe will go see a movie,
walk alongside the East River currents,
rushing somewhere we don't have to be,
maybe we will practice rolling on the floor,
visiting and winding up the grandkids,
then escaping/leaving them with parents,
crazy high and wet & dry

maybe I'll cancel some credit cards,
crack open the briefcase of deferred questions,
have pizza for breakfast,
write half a dozen baker's poems,
finish some more of Dr. Zhivago,
that I started several years ago,
maybe, I'll keep her ******* in our bed,
releasing her when she releases me  
because I released her first

yup,
an empty day ahead
full of the oscillating,
a true east/west directionless
vibrating range of
ample possibilities
  Mar 2015 Mark Upright
Where Shelter
Tapping Your Heart's Savings Account

always a decision -
conscious, despairing
maybe..maybe not...
maybe just don't think about it

when the heart
fires
on only
two cylinders,
the stroke weak,
the "I love you's"
worn, not warm,
you gotta decide

tap the savings account
of good memories,
reasons for
to keep on trying,
to reviving
the investment
of loving her

dreading the drawing down,
watching the balance
wrong way creep,
but you do it
anyway
for old time's sake,
rather than forsake,
it all...

but the tap tap tap
is just a raving
drunk poetraven
from Baltimore,
saying over and over again
nevermore,*
you don't want to decide what exactly
when*
will be
nevermore
so tap tap tap
  Mar 2015 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
Aye Aye
(Poetry is the Adhesive of Our Lives)

6:33 am

for Joe*


once again,
in a strange bed,
in a strange city,
left a cold snowed city climate
debtor-in-possession,
owner of a carryover question
of yours,
what was a
winter prior posing,
is now a plane plain ride over
have coming with me
awaking,
by a sun provoking,
the answer,
now strange composing
in a visually warm city where
beautiful tanned bodies
are mined in beach sand

and
this,
my answer,
it too,
mine,
it too
being mined,
subconsciously working, coming,
f o r m I n g
in my always busy,
overthinking,
daily nighttime shift of
repositioning from a
dark night ended reposing,
into a
sunny day answer deposing

t'is a tricky one,
when one poet asks another
straight out,
after the the fashion of the day,

of my poetry,
whattaya think,
whattaya know...

about
my very own
words,
this communal place,
HP,
an open bed,
where we lie down with strangers,
where we lay down our words,
wake up lovers,
or worse,
ignored,
wake up encouraged,
(can one make hallelujah a verb?)
or refuted,
disputed by
the either/or
ignorant silence of the masses,
of what's truly good,
or sunk
under reedy rushes of swamping
despair,
at the ignorant adulation of the
endless trite, puerile

not one
for shooting from the
hip,
on a subject so
delicate,
that my paused,
slow mo response,
to you,
of course,
misunderstood,
as a red badge of no courage,
a refusal to answer
in this demanding age of
virtual, instantaneous any and every
stray dog thought

multiple shades of a Miami sunrise,
burnt oranges and Van Gogh blues,
frosted strawberry internal pink toppings,
whitish cream cappuccino streaks,
makes one wonder about the
creative design team that brought us the
universe and this all over
sunrise,
all natural, organic visual breakfast
that comes to remind me that
your answer,
you...

for all of us,
in our lives
there is always poetry infused,
there for the seeing,
and
for some,
even
adhering to our
private places

for you, Joe,
there is always poetry,

in this work,
is the continuous process,
self-recreating,
and this sir,
aye, aye, sir,
this one writ,
hopefully a satisfactory answer,
perhaps...
one of resolution,
of adhesion,
silicon bonded

for such is the nature of
this particular Joe,
an inquiring soul,
a nurtured one,
another poetry-partial-birth
child of mine,
born on-line

so,
requiring special handling when
creating, crafting,
******* lines of my presumptuous presumptive
"expertise"
in all matters that
our emotional heart
is the make-up-the-rules-as-you-go
rulemaker

thus,
peril,
fraught, and
simplistic excessive
frugality of word/feelings,
dangerous and inappropriate...

I loke (love + like)^
your poetry fine
the slow revolution of the screws
of growth so readily apparent...

But,
always,
a but,
my demands upon you,
so great,
the expectations of expectations,
greater for you than I dare share,
only since your quest
is my bequest
so shockingly that you dare
directly request

herein,
asked and answer attempted,
yet the risks are I lighthouse beacon
angle too high,
becoming too troublesome,
an Excedrin headache

You don't see,
You don't comprehend,
the way I do,
how far you have come,
your train,
upon which
I am a windowed, winnowed,
passenger,
a pseudo parent
in Loco (crazed) HP Parentis

so it breaks my heaVy heart,
that I want burdensome you better,
so much better...

Oh Toolmaker!
from your
as of yet
swelling unrealized
r e a l
blood sweat and
tears

I want to be forced
by you
to shed my own
tears,
gasp, intake my own
bloodied breath,
sweat when reading yours...
hopelessly selfish,
wholly unsatisfied...

I want
your refreshed wit  born in
Whitman
winters

tales of your Connecticut icy hot
Frost
should lay me low by new poems as good as
Lowell's

tease me, seek me
let me beg,
make me yours,
like Sara Teasdale's
"I Am Not
Yours"

I will you!
will you be,
recreate anew
William Carlos Williams

make me gnash my teeth
when you limerick like my first hero
Ogden Nash

moor my heart like
Marianne Moore

be a new American Master
of this awesome trade,
accepting of this modest tirade,
make new tools still invisible
that will become
more powerful than
any man's hand
can mechanical design...

most of all force me to
reside inside your adoms
locked in my soul's firmament,
until you have fashioned me
into
an obedient tool,
forcing me,
to weep my own
r e a l
blood sweat and
tears
that your words
backhoe excavate
from their hidden places

be mine own
GI Joe
poet~hero

hopefully,
this answers your question,
what I think
of your poetry voyage
to levels of heaven
you are yet
unacquainted

looking forward to an
aspiring spring,
a robust salute of
Aye, Aye,

for I  have fixed the spot in the sky
with the adhesive will keep your star aloft
tween you
and the rest of us
plodders

but now be bounded to lift
us to
unbounded highs
on the wings of the highest
expectations*

of all of us who
admire your journey so...
will not e v e r be satisfied,
until
you exceed,
you succeed,
until
we are such
so sated, so satisfied...
that we see the music,
dance to the words,
in places where the silence
of listening
is the greyest gift
one can give...
^Loke - courtesy of Joel Frye

Of course, I  just happened to hear Christine Ebersole sing this tonight...

It seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe
He's got a smile that makes the lilacs want to grow
He's got a way that makes the angels heave a sigh
When they know, little Joe's passin' by

Sometimes the cabin's gloomy and the table's bare
But then he'll kiss me and it's Christmas everywhere
Trouble's fly away and life is easy go
Does he love me good, that's all I need to know

Seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe

Sometimes the cabin's gloomy and the table's bare
But then he'll kiss me and it's Christmas everywhere
Trouble's fly away and life is easy go
Does he love me good, that's all I need to know

Seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe

Little Joe, my little Joe, little Joe
  Mar 2015 Mark Upright
Nat Lipstadt
it occurs to me
as for a Saturday sunrise,
I'm awaiting,
witness testifying
to the
glory of the glorious,
which color-selected sky today is
pale young girl
wallpaper pink aglow dominatrixed


it occurs to me
there are probably
Thousands
of us
composing, lyric evolving,
at this exact
same minute
all over the world

see visionary behind the eyelids
scenarios, YouTube videos,
all my own, of

words tumbling,
letters individual
joining up, forming,
breaking bad,
reforming,
until and unto
combinations satisfactory

falling
from the sky
fresh direct into our heads,
the random draw
of what we will
"create"

regifted from the universe

this was my daily selection, bread,
that I did not choose, but make believe,
I did

our only choice,
none

here I am again smiley face,
as it occurs to me,*
grinning silly
thinking
I can improve
on sunrises and
poems that arrived
fully formed...
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