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 Nov 2022 Mercy B
Nat Lipstadt
1:47am. Standing on my thumb

awakened by my badder bladder, disobeying the rules,  
one reaches  for the tablet’s reassuring whiteness and
its scrolling alerts; ascertain that the world order is yet
extant in a normative disarray, the elections are over
yet not, my sports teams have creaked to losses,
my inner devils are resting nesting in anticipation of another
day of sweet self-torture and guilting for a life full of
sinning and mine failures, a dawning realization grasps
my twilight self, half-awake & somewhat sleepy, that
I am writing poetry in the nether space where rules
and space are permeable, my river of conscience consciousness
flows between the gaps of truth and disfiguring lies, and that
I am standing on my thumb.

Yes, a single shorty, stubby, chubby digit is firmly attached,
arrested onto the screen, a portal tween love stories, podcasts
of human grief, leaking creativity and foundational support,
I am upright, upside down, feet in the air and kept there by
a small undistinguished and unattractive teeny weeny appendage through which hard data, drowsy dreams,
arousal, stories are bytes flowing in conflicting directions,
all at risk, great risk, by defying gravity, and the awful pull
of the accumulated weights of sorrow and grime of wasted opportunities, unbearable weight of lightness & love both
taken and given, potential horror stories, and the deniability
of humanoid excuses is pathetic and inutile, indeed, futile.

my suspended state of betweenness, the past and future,
caught up in animated currents of the perpetual and eternal,
unbelievable fantasy and unrecoverable missed opportunities,
cognizantr of a chasm division entre my failing body~shell and the sparking consciousness that cannot destroyed.

all while upright standing, aloft by a single but critical thumb.

the watch face glows 3:12, this episodic journey will be eradicated, molecularly scattered, permanent only in its
self-destruction and the remaining disquietude of the
unrealized reality of a naissance  and a renaissance
having occurred,

I am no longer awake and never was…

NYC
Thu Nov 10
2020
 Aug 2019 Mercy B
Nat Lipstadt
for you, of you: you’ve been between my ears

close enough to being on my mind,
almost the same thing,
though that’s unfairly inequitable, we both agree,
for when in an ear one opines, too oft it escapes
out the other side, only a tree ring mark left,
someone was here, present

as for the Confucius confusion in

ok, who’s writing this poem to whom,

cause it’s never clear between us
who is
asking the questions,
since the answers come
demanded and undemanding,
fomenting newer questions and follow through,
before, as well as,
‘please sir, may I have some more?’

the mutualizing game tasking begin-began-begun,
for this, our lovely crazy teasing of our-thing, ago began,
don’t recall who or how intimated-initiated
this oil drilling exploration,
who is the annointer and who is the annointed,
who seeds the plants, picks the fruit, and who
gets paid with cloves of poems, by the bushel

you say I’ve been on your mind,
which we now have both pointed out
is somewhat extraordinary since,
the sight lines are drawn through
long distance cloudscapes that travel
through underground cables,
making everything said,
fallow and rich-ending, deeply frustrating,
impossible to see the outcome

clouds usually imaginary, (not like now),
making visibility normative poor,
unlike the real ones I’m flying at the moment through,
ensconced in front row seat 1F, heading northwest passage,
passing by so ridiculously close to where
you are minding the soil,
as I am
mining your soul’s soil, tilling it between the ears,
of you, by me, for us, and the excited sadness
makes me happy and yes, inequitably, again,
hopping-mad

because your breadcrumbs and dark Swiss chocolate bars are
scattered and defaced, bitten and chewed, lovingly licked melting,
we who cover our tracks too well;
but what I do have, makes me ravenous,
having read all your poems,
in random order and then one more time,
sequentially

I see your history, near escapes and resurrections,
in fine grained moody minutiae punctuated by huge gaps in between,
that we must cream fill with clouds of wondrous loving curiosity,
a torture so exquisite, only the gods could have invented it like
Sunday Night Football,
and crazy sayings,
like I love you too...

been on my mind and I imagine you
hot and sweaty,
bent over, aching tired, from
picking weeds (gotcha),
when sudden one of us stands up straight, back aching,
screaming out loud
this is crazy, and follows up with
a *** Darius type proclamation,
who’s writing this poem to whom
issued to the upwards-skywards,
but addressed to ourselves,
the poets

as we search clouds by the thousands,
is that you in that cloud, in that poem,
I look down thinking that, that must be,
the plot of green and dusted light brown ground
where she has gone into hidey-hole hiding,
disappearing for months at a time,
before arising for the sticking of me
in the sticking place,
wounding me fresh with brand new poems
scandalous and imaginous,
and our imaginations are both
too skilled

so here I close, overwritten, overridden, too long,
overshot my imaginary bounds, so one
pulls down the shade over the oval window
through which too many great stories have commenced,
and ended

the thick cumulus shouting
as we look up
as we look down,
saying “enough, you crazy people,
your poems tell too much,”

perhaps, find me in that
next bite of herbs buttered,
and then ask (of course)

who’s writing this poem to whom?

then breathe out, exhaling me a
breath-poem up above, to where I’m hiding
just as I, am sending one to you,
earth falling from thirty thousand feet,
coming to rest on your mind,
in between your ears,
friend

<>

8-6-19
somewhere in the sky, clueless, heading north by northwest
 May 2017 Mercy B
M Sanchez
You do not get to hurt my feelings and call it "art"
I will not gift you in that way
You own all the credit but I refuse to give you fame
This is not a poem
If it were it'd be titled with your name
Details about how the clouds couldn't compete with me but instead,
I am feeling that feeling with no name
And that's why
This is not a poem
As I'm lying on this bed
I will sign it and hide it within my drawer labeled 12 AMs
Because you are not an artist
They create beauty from their own pain
But you have used mine
You will never know what it said
I still love you
But I must remind you,

that this is not a poem.
 May 2017 Mercy B
ThePoet
My desire
of wanting you
was greater
than my
pleasure of
having you

©
 Jul 2016 Mercy B
Nishu Mathur
Monsoon Rhapsody



I am rain on a summer day
Drenching drowsy, lifeless buds
Stirring them to a dancing wakefulness
Washing leaves dull and dry with dust
Dousing fire in a desert ringed inferno

I am the drizzle on a pale moon night
Easing into the heart with music
The melange of water humming with the wind
The splash of puddles in fields of barley
Gently filling thirsty river beds craving for a flow

I am showers before monsoons
Impregnating the air with soothing droplets
The hint of life in an oasis of colours
Breathing moist on a farmer's bronzed skin
Tingling the world with shimmering emerald

I am sawan, the monsoons
Winding my way through a chorus of clouds
Thundering my presence into the sea of renewal
Cascading on sandy shores that glisten with light
Whisking away waves of gold with jubilant darkness

I drape the land in arrays of greens
Scent the soil in my fragrance
Dance with the rhapsodic dance of the peacock
Wreathe petals into flowers that vine
And curve in the soil of growth.
 Mar 2016 Mercy B
Arlo Disarray
The subtle vibrations from earth's rotation beneath my feet are the only reasons I've shifted at all

I've been running in place on a conveyer belt bridge that floats across space
And every time I think I see your face again, I realize I'm wrong

There are only so many places for us to inhabit, and the oxygen is beginning to wear thin
The clever ways in which I use my lungs have begun to fail with time
And I'm gasping for air every time I try to speak

My rock is gone, my boulder was weak
I rot into sand from the tears on my cheek
And a castle can never be made out of me
I would crumble, and my people would drown in the sea

Sandpaper promises are always made to me
They grate my heart to flakes until it's shaped the way it should be
Nails and screws slammed into my skull to make my mind work right
I'm failing at being myself, anymore
Underwater, I take breaths far too deep
And into my lungs, the water does seep

I know how to smile
In fact, I do it well
But I keep handing my heart away to strangers on the very first day
And I'm so tired
I'm exhausted from it all
I can't wait for the day when I wake up, and it's gone
When I'm a thousand miles away with my foot on the gas pedal
Everything is soon to all be mine

The past is forever, but I can't keep it
Nothing is mine here,
I'm climbing uphill by the ends of my fingernails
And I'm slipping
It's time to find a mountain that's easier for me to sink my claws into
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