Nat Lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt 1d

Jenny Xie

Never mind the distances traveled, the companion
she made of herself. The threadbare twenties not
to be underestimated. A wild depression that ripped
from January into April. And still she sprouts an appetite.
Insisting on edges and cores, when there were none.
Relationships annealed through shared ambivalences.
Pages that steadied her. Books that prowled her
until the hard daybreak, and for months after.
Separating new vows from the old, like laundry whites.
Small losses jammed together so as to gather mass.
Stored generations of filtered quietude.
And some stubbornness. Tangles along the way
the comb-teeth of the mind had to bite through, but for what.
She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level,
but they were lower, they were changing all the time.

From Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Jenny Xie. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press.

https://poets.org/poem/ongoing

Nat Lipstadt 2d

Re-gain your emotions, constant decoding

yes, it's true, I
timestamp each script,
The time the day the year, the moment and where, the location's criticality, para-Mount!

return to your poem, return to that place, remember recapture retain,
regain!
The source, the emotional contagion, rage of sadness, humility of sweetness, the loss of loss, insight to the inside,
inside the insight,
recapture and regain,
re-attain!

sift the flower of that past emotion,
re~fresh it as if it was a newborn,
with life extant extended,
fully ahead, relive it as
anew...

This is why we write poetry,
to code ourselves, and then upon rereading, decode ourselves once more!

this is why we read poetry;
to decode, replace refresh neverending reimagining

This is how we store our memories,
This is how we wet our face replenish and re~pour our recycled tears, refresh our bodies,
souls and mind,
and perhaps, even regain the perspective that time like a river,
is forever eroding our memory
on the margin, like rocks in the stream, worn down to pebbles...
This is your re~gained!

8:06 AM
Sunday
May 18
2025
~~~
Manhattan

May 10

Onoma

Her Profile

Her profile dared
the precipice of
the ages, with the
most vulnerable
contemplation.
One could see a
rain of saintly
hands touching her
shoulders.
As if to ask: are you
okay..?

May 10

Milo

Time Marches On

Time stands still
So high up
I, too
Stand still

Still, like an old book on a shelf
Having spent years longing for use
Watching the world go by
While I remain unchanged
Glued to this shelf
Immovable
A testament to my patience
Or perhaps my naivety
Naive enough to believe it’ll end
Naive enough to hope

These hands feel nothing
Unfamiliar in nature
Alien
And I
Still book on a shelf
Ragged
Worn
Crumpled in all the wrong places
Tearing at the seams
Crafted from different materials

But built similar
By a familiar something
Close enough to normal
But not normal enough to be close
Close to those who I love
And those who love me

Solitary
Esoteric
Safely tucked away
But forever alone
Forever stuck
Here on this shelf
Where everything changes
But me

#depression #dissociation #feelingstuckintime

May 10

Aegis Vistoria Penumbra

For One Must Maintain Balance

When she was quiet
I wept
To ward off the silence

When she screamed
I withdrew
So as not to disturb the sound

Nat Lipstadt May 6

Q: What are you after? A: A shared understanding...

how odd, how rare. eyes connect,
and the irrelevant falls away, so,
to the end of the beginning we go,
how odd, how rare, she tired of
players, gamers, inevitable disappointment,
so she assays his
approach, snd speaks first:

What are you after?

no hesitation no guising, no uncertainty, he states with surety,
product of grace added to sadness of series of serious accumulations of
disappointment,

"A shared understanding..."

Equals in their shocked surprise,
both stare, hard, then harder,
examining faces and rising heat,
suppressing the intriguing intensity,
imagining outcomes, not endings,
futures, not casualties, and the
assessing silence, not uncomforting,

indeed, the silence soothes, the
attraction stirring and they answer
the overhanging questioning answered simultaneously, with a
yes, a simple supposition, an agreed upon proposition, a mutuality
calming, and the ending of a
shared understanding...and the beginning of a who knows untold
possibilities

may 5/25

#*** #shared #understanding #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt May 2

let us write cleaner, simpler

"let us write cleaner, simpler,"
says my heart to my mind,

the mind replies,
(nay, whines)
wistfully professes,

"now, now,
all that's within, accumulated wisdom of nearly a century,
for want, for waste, let us
privy you a taste of elixir
of combinatory emotional
potions of our vast vascular vocabulary,
rambled scrambled
wandering among the
envisionings, insertions,
criss crossed propositions,
lay before you simplistic
complimentary complications,
take the adventurous down
a warren of rabbit holes,
let them happily be lost,
deep delve, into mysterious
confusions
let not the joy of
the unraveling journey
be sacrificed on an altar
of absolutism of
clean brevity
never ever
use but one word,
when
a tapestry
can be summoned!"

so we conclaved
and agreed to disagree,

and we each wrote home

#lipstadt #cleaner #simpler