Mark Upright

Sep 2017

Nat Lipstadt

Good on You (a love poem),
this one, is, good, on you.

phrase uttered, measured, apace,
each comma,
a paused breath of:

admiration, enveloped by
a secret pleasure coating,
saucier prepared,
the base, the pleasured secret in this
mans minds eye unseen.

each comma,
precisely the carbon copy of the
comma curve of dark hair that
falls from a forehead down to the chin,
in a museum quality photograph,
as if it was intended to hold, contain,
your sly blunt moody,
and full plated whimsy,
when that half-smile poesy is in place.

good on you,
slow please,
not
goodonyou.

did you think, I did not have, a special bottle,
a Grand Cru,
a pinot noir, in the reserve,
inside the locked cellar of me,
to be used to anoint mine own
English Duchess of Burgundy?

well and proper aged,
but unlabelled,
till you provided
the appelation, the domaine,
good, on, you.

the bottle dusty, the feelings, not.
if we never meet, matters not,
the gentility, tous les bons mots,
good in you,
hid in in all of the
astounding incredible poems
I well-addicted need,
those archeological mounds of a life,
I excavate and well heed,
going from one to the next,
me, the bumbling bee,
pollenating, following the path of the
watermarked tracks of
the King's Cross,
alas, they do not offer a couchette,
from Terminal 4 to London Bridge

unlike a teenager
happy to confess,
I am even younger,
an old fool, a geezer,
in love with a museum quality smile,
as he totters down to the Tottenham Hale station,
to catch the blue colored line, to the station after Vauxhall)
(oh dear, what's it called again?)
walking 10 to 2, saying ta to all
who assist his
two hands on an old man's bent feet,
steering the wheelhouse heart through its tubes

this is an undedicated poem,
retuned and returned,
addressee unknown, yet I know
by the greening dew droplets decorating faces,
that come so easy,
not a one wrung out,
you know
the who's of the true ownership,
the clarification,
in the bread crumbs,
fully disclosed,
left by me,
but for me,
in order to retrace my steps,
to find the railing,
when the steady on need arises

some Tuesday next,
will disembark from a riverboat,
at the old Tate,
spending my afternoon,
staring at an imaginary museum quality photograph,
till the guard surly reminds the pesky Yank,
its past closing time,
the man who will not be moved,
for already he, past overcome,
so why be thinking on why leaving,
for he will only be back again tomorrow.

so different.

mine, simple declarative sentences,
typically matter of fact,
so **** presumptuous,
those ill mannered,
know it all Ameddicans.

yours, lace doilles,
in a pub, with Hilda and Bill,
drinking pale ale,
from a porcelain cup,
and I am laughing,
Why?

It is all,
Good on Us,
a, love, poem,
indeed,
no kidding kid.

the object of my affection shall remain anonymous, in proper British poetic fashion

Sep 2017

onlylovepoetry

the grit courage of trust (a love poem)

the grit courage of trust**

still too young and now, too old, to comprehend,
love~trust and all its secondary derivatives,
not extant on a plane of new bed sheets of
silk~linen tablecloth rectangularity

go into the park's garden;
black soil fingernail coating
awaiting, impatiently for you,
dig in direct hands ungloved

is it not,
sensual and yet gritty,
two coextensive sensations?

slip inside (you/me, me/you),
there is a razor's edge duality duty,
trust, serve and protect,
take and
handle with rough-care, for this our state of beauty
au naturel, the rush and the fall,
the climb and the conquering,
only to start again, each step, each rung,
coated with the
the grit courage of trust -
                                          do you begin to comprehend?

trust is a bumpy landing on a glide path that is strewn
with potholes that can grow into sinkholes without
the grit of trust

the soles of my feet are a message,
gritty from walking
all-life, not just the edges,
is a two act play of roughening,
upon the limbs the things,
that carries us *****
but bares the wearing of
unkind touches of reality
working us over

why the soothing,
but not the smoothing
daily twice is the cream that
emerges from the grit courage of trust

even the vinery's progeny of great love,
grapes that must
embrace the wind and rain,
the wearing down tools of
the exterior that brings an acknowledgement -
                                                           do you begin to comprehend?

this is not an algebraic formulaic solution solvable problem,
this derived from dirt, access to accidental, the tongue and the nail,
the cracks upon the skin, that grow wonderful deeper, unfillable,
where the love gets in,
were the words are written and stored,
rough to the touch,
under the grit courage of trust -
                                                       do you begin to comprehend?

this grit is unbelievable beautiful
only a love po-em.

5:22am

Mark Upright Aug 2017

excess humans, or dear Mr. Zuckerberg, how can you lose when you play with yourself

Mr. Zuckerberg
just another billionaire,
making moola off of us
giving us something free
in return for our email address
so he can sell us stuff and
direct out attention where he wants it
and think we too stoopid to know it

u feeling a flu of guilty
for we, the the ordinary people,
we, the excess humans of the world,
who scrape by day to day,
who don't have a measly million
not even a stinking billion to spare,

should be given a
guaranteed income by,
courtesy of,
mmm
myself, my taxes own?

dude, that is
called
how can you lose when you play with yourself?
which had a fancy name, can't recall tight now
cause I'm worrying about my next paycheck
which is less than half from FICA, and other initials
I don't understand

but gotta go Z,
time got a get on a toad road trip to get in touch
with the common peeps,
we, the excess,
so glad u taking a
p a s s i n g interest in
we, the excess
POD's
(pieces of data)

and if u need a buck,
or have a few to share,
I'll be in touch shortly
after I get fired,
meantime
check this vacation spot out,
Houston

so popular
even u may have trouble
getting a hotel room,
*******

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/26/news/economy/mark-zuckerberg-universal-basic-income/index.html
-/////

NY TIMES
By MIKE ISAAC
MAY 25, 2017
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In March, Mark Zuckerberg visited the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., the site of a mass ****** by a white supremacist.

Last month, he went to Dayton, Ohio, to sit down with recovering opioid addicts at a rehabilitation center.

And he spent an afternoon in Blanchardville, Wis., with Jed Gant, whose family has owned a dairy and beef cattle farm for six generations.

Mr. Zuckerberg in March at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., which was attacked by a white supremacist in 2015.
FACEBOOK
These were all stops along a road trip by Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, across the United States this year. His goal: to visit every state in the union and learn more about a sliver of the nearly two billion people who regularly use the social network.

On Thursday, in a commencement speech at Harvard, from which he dropped out in 2005, Mr. Zuckerberg discussed how his views on how people live and work with one another had broadened, partly as a result of what he has seen on the tour. He said he had come to realize that churches, civic centers and other organized meeting places are integral to building and maintaining a strong sense of community.

“As I’ve traveled around, I’ve sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me their lives could have turned out differently if they just had something to do, an after-school program or somewhere to go,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, who also received an honorary doctoral degree at the ceremony. “I’ve met factory workers who know their old jobs aren’t coming back and are trying to find their place.”

To his critics, Mr. Zuckerberg’s road trip is a stunt and has taken on the trappings of a political campaign. His every pit stop — eating with a farming family in Ohio; feeding a baby calf at a farm in Wisconsin — has been artfully photographed and managed, and then posted to Mr. Zuckerberg’s Facebook page.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, on Thursday at Harvard University, which awarded him an honorary doctoral degree 12 years after he dropped out of college there.
KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“He has all of the mechanics needed for a massive, well-staged media operation,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog group. “Photographers, handlers, its size, scope and scale — all the ingredients are there. And he’s appearing in an environment where there’s no sole Democratic leader or counterbalance to Trump, who’s consuming all the oxygen in media.”

Mr. Zuckerberg has publicly denied that he is using the visits as a platform to run for public office. He has said they are a way to “get a broader perspective” to inform how he runs Facebook and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company through which he plans to give away the majority of his wealth over the course of his life.

So far, Mr. Zuckerberg has made it to roughly half the states, including ones he has previously spent time in. The visits have plunged him into self-reflection, according to four current and former colleagues and people close to the chief executive who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. The self-reflection is especially the case as Facebook has wrestled with more questions about its responsibilities and its role in the lives of its users, many of whom rely on the network for news and information.

The trips are part of a real-world education for Mr. Zuckerberg, who grew up comfortably upper middle class in the suburbs of New York, walked the elite halls of Harvard and then moved to Silicon Valley, where he became a paper multibillionaire by the time he was 23. (He is now 33.)

Mr. Zuckerberg has said his road trip and visits to churches, homes and workplaces is a way to “get a broader perspective” that can inform how he runs Facebook.
FACEBOOK
Recent events have forced Mr. Zuckerberg to step out of that Silicon Valley bubble. Last year, after the presidential election, Facebook was assailed as a repository of fake news that influenced the way the American electorate voted. People have also posted videos of killings on Facebook, raising questions about what responsibility the social network bears in distributing such content.

(In a related development, the website of The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, was hacked on Thursday with stories briefly replaced by Facebook-related fake news, including some that mocked Mr. Zuckerberg.)

The American road trip follows many international travels for Mr. Zuckerberg in 2015 and 2016. In January, he said on Facebook that he wanted to talk to more people about how they’re “living, working and thinking about the future.” Friends said Mr. Zuckerberg was catching up on many things that he missed out on by spending the last 10 years in Silicon Valley building a $438 billion company.

“I think he’s just really curious and wants to visit all the places that he’s never been,” said Ashley Gant, 27, who spoke with Mr. Zuckerberg when he visited her family’s Wisconsin dairy farm in April. Over a midday meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes and her grandmother’s applesauce Jell-O, Ms. Gant said, she answered the chief executive’s questions about daily life on a farm.

#zuckerberg

Aug 2017

Nat Lipstadt

all poets are human, therefore, all humans are poems

all poets are human, therefore, all humans are
poems*

<•>

"In logic, a tautology (from the Greek word ταυτολογία) is a formula that is true in every possible interpretation."

<•>
hardly a tightly taut tautology,
yet true this, in every possible instance

all humans, poems,

as if their portrait painted

from words dipped in a vocabulary palette

which is why,

you my million muses,

are so oft the themes of *who I write

and when foolish think there is no
inspiration in the air,
your names
each and every,
a title awaiting
finishing

a gift for Jamadhi Verse

Friday, August 25, 2017 6:10 PM,
S. I.

Aug 2017

Poetoftheway

3 Poems for Other Poets

"the ever shifting light of ourselves"
(a poem such as this)

For Jamadhi V.

<•>
8/28/17

at 11:09am,
the phrase arrests itself, then assertive,
ungently demanding fulfillment,
implanted, it cares not my whereabouts,
it is a child~phrase, inexact, mysterious,
wanting its breast milk feeding immediate
no matter where my presence visible

but to me, it stinks of familiarity,
for my shifts, my redrawn shapes,
exhausting, giving me cause to grieve,
write poems such as this,
which I regret both
before~after conception~completion,
written in a fevered misery of fervor,
hoping,
no one ever likes it and its witnessing

as light ever shifts,
it consumes, extinguishes, reignites,
poorly lit, revealing dregs and dustbins

better then to sit in the darkness
the one you call,
getting it over with...

6:00pm
<•>

~~~~~~~~

*the swelling and the spume

for Lucy:

who gave me the title, three poems, a compliment, and the X Factor {inspiration}
~~~
the spume, the sea foam concentrate,
a greener white
by the the salt and the souls of the
million dead organisms,
that are are the compost of its formation,
it, watches the poet, who watches the spume,
come ashore for its final act of
immolation by evaporation

which is why the random act of
an unseen ministering force,
fills my ears with humbling glory of
Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei,^
my fresh reminder that this swelling chest
in this temporary abode of mine,
by the sea, passage is prepaid for my
expiration by evaporation too,
all lambs march to the sea,
returning to spume
~
Lyrics to Agnus Dei:
^ Alleluia Alleluia
For our Lord God Almighty reigns
Alleluia Alleluia
For our Load God Almighty reigns
Alleluia
Holy Holy
Are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
You are Holy
Holy
Are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
Amen

~~~~~~

"may all my lost lovers haunt me"

for Vinnie Brown

even your kindergarten crushes?

what burdens you seek to retain,
the edgy border of delicious and pain is a raggedy cut line,
as lost lovings rhymes with duality

Once upon a time,
a middle aged man
left the woman he married,
the one who drained and cruel reigned
over the destruction of his-dreams
for one accidentally stumbled into,
the love who blurred his edges as well,
between forgotten happiness and
pain so bad when she grew tired
of his life's complications and the
valises of drama,
she left him,
weeping on the corner of Broadway and 83rd Street

was that 20, 30 years ago?
a memory
from no matters land
but
the physical ache that marred the hearth in the chest for months and months,
sent him to the doc who smiled sweetly
but gave him, had no, no relief for busted grownup hearts
that had normal EKG's

and that remains a treasured affirmation to this day of
life's capacity to love that comes with an ingrown danger
of never forgetting

did you know the French outlawed the use of the term
Mademoiselle in '12 (Mlle.)?

I loved that salutation,
calling my one true lovers
with the soft feminism of that address

and still do

and you want to recall
kindergarten crushes?

Mister Vinnie
possesses a lovely contradiction,
holding onto
lost lover sickness
that lives on in good love poems

this my new found poet
is how that he, this aching heart,
fast approaching his shore line for one last return and final departure
repays a sweet compliment,
from one who complements
another man's lovely's insane desire to
never forget any of it

~~~~~~*

reading love poetry and listening to
Joni M.,
at 3:09AM
never wise,
but always full of hindsight

#poetoftheway #3 #poems #for #other #poets

Aug 2017

SøułSurvivør

Against All Odds - a homeless man's drive & determination

Here's something you don't see everyday. Although I've seen it a few times before on my street... A homeless man pulling a bicycle which is attached to the most astounding construct! Made of bicycle wheels and plastic webbing, chicken wire and aluminum piping, this huge mobile container for tin cans, and whatever this homeless individual can scrounge to resell, is almost the size of a garbage truck! And carries probably hundreds of pounds of aluminum cans.

In constant danger from cars and trucks, this is an outstanding testament to human ingenuity and dogged determination. The man marches on, stopping occasionally to take a container to dumpsters looking for cans. Whatever he can find.

I asked him if he needed something to eat or drink. He just smiled and shook his head. "I need to move on." And I realized he probably takes advantage of the nighttime to do his searching, as it is too hot during the day to do so. I smile and wave and wish him blessings.

If I ever feel like I am put upon in this life, I should feel ashamed. This man has shamed me utterly. I've invited him up to my porch in the past. Giving him food and drink. He is a believer. And I've never met a more cheerful brother in the Lord Jesus Christ! But he doesn't take any credit for his outstanding ingenuity and Drive. He gives the glory to God. I have tears in my eyes as I write this. He was also an addict and finds it very difficult to find a place to live due to his past. So he sleeps on the streets and does what he needs to do to survive. And survive he does!

I say a prayer for this stalwart. His name is Ben. Will you join me in my prayers (good thoughts)? I think he deserves them, don't you?

♡ Catherine

I haven't been on site because my father had a new procedure done. He is also in need of prayer, good thoughts. I come on occasionally to check my messages and do a little reading. But I honestly don't have a lot of time. Thanks for understanding.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL!

#homeless #heart #life #love #ingenuity #god #jesus #hellopoetry107

Aug 2017

Nat Lipstadt

For Harlon: The River Potion

for Harlon Rivers

the river potion,
the river portent,
the river potent

it is all of these and not one

he is bank sided,
observing the false idols,
the image mirrored
in the glass of the river

transfigured molecularly
he becomes something ferried frothily, forcefully

as if a twig
or a small thing of human manufacture,
an object tossed up airborne-repeatedly

his poetry:
the clash of particles at the many junctions
of objects and water, eddies and the currents,
ceaselessly circumnavigating,
searching revisionary pathways

directed,
but randomized,
prisoner of the flows,
servant to the wind's directives and the
earths magnetic indivisible undulating waves

thinking,
this life,
its unsteady gait,
the irreverent wavering of drunkenness
resultant from potent potions,
portents of inopportune position

in him,
my own histories,
my poetic recordings
also become
water borne,
watermarked,
replayed back for me,
for erasure, censure, closure
and rededication

this River
is a tapestry,
a torn map,
drawn on broken shards
of slivered water,
living with all the others

but we,
are the untitled,
we,
are the un-entitled,
and he is the
Rivers

<•>