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  Feb 2017 Nat Lipstadt
lmnsinner
fallow lay in a field, neath soil well over-tilled,
the bones of explanations, excuses, and desperation,
a singular self-destructive but upward thrusted commandment,
compose a poem of revelation,
a poem of destiny and unknown destination

of thee, I write, ashen standing,
with the poker face of a lying son,
before the father confessor mirror,
stand with palms facing outward,
with perfect calm and utter fright

for every nominated error listed below,
when confronted,
hopeless the innocence,
easier now to admit,
with perfect clarity, your innermost
confabulatory familiar friends,
rise to the fire,
first and foremost

belabor not with supposed ratiocinations,
put aside, your ration of
conjured up-for-all, and-all-for-naught excuses,
the prosecutors charges, so thoroughly distinguished,
it disables, speech, vision, all reason extinguished

as the lips and fingers silent move,
the hopeless knowledge of a pardon of 99.9%,
untenable, ransacks,
for what passerby criminal thought
has not resided in your head,
the hearth of who you are?

you,
write of nature, love, celestial notions,
the Etcetera's of life, but to me,
leave the exposure of our uncompressed,
here revealed sinning,
for among those who
unashamedly acknowledge
the intertwining nature of
human failings, and for the balance,
uncap our divine imagery

you write at of those other
nuanced pleasures,
nature, love, celestial notions,
while the sinners wrestle with
the angelic demons of
confrontation and revelation

for your own sake and saving,
do not wrestle with me
for sinners love, welcome
company
For the sin which we have committed before You under duress or willingly.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by hard-heartedness.

For the sin which we have committed before You inadvertently.

And for the sin which we have committed before You with an utterance of the lips.

For the sin which we have committed before You with immorality.

And for the sin which we have committed before You openly or secretly.

For the sin which we have committed before You with knowledge and with deceit.

And for the sin which we have committed before You through speech.

For the sin which we have committed before You by deceiving a fellowman.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by improper thoughts.

For the sin which we have committed before You by a gathering of lewdness.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by verbal [insincere] confession.

For the sin which we have committed before You by disrespect for parents and teachers.

And for the sin which we have committed before You intentionally or unintentionally.

For the sin which we have committed before You by using coercion.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by  desecrating the Divine Name.

For the sin which we have committed before You by impurity of  speech.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by foolish  talk.

For the sin which we have committed before You with the evil  inclination.

And for the sin which we have committed before You knowingly or unknowingly.

For all these, God of pardon, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us.

For the sin which we have committed before You by false denial and lying.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by a bribe-taking or a bribe-giving hand.

For the sin which we have committed before You by scoffing.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by evil talk  [about another].

For the sin which we have committed before You in business  dealings.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by eating  and drinking.

For the sin which we have committed before You by [taking or  giving] interest and by usury.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by a haughty demeanor.

For the sin which we have committed before You by the prattle of our lips.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by a glance of the eye.

For the sin which we have committed before You with proud looks.

And for the sin which we have committed before You with impudence.

For all these, God of pardon, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us.

For the sin which we have committed before You by casting off the yoke [of Heaven].

And for the sin which we have committed before You in passing judgment.

For the sin which we have committed before You by scheming against a fellowman.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by a begrudging eye.

For the sin which we have committed before You by frivolity.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by obduracy.

For the sin which we have committed before You by running to do evil.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by tale-bearing.

For the sin which we have committed before You by swearing in vain.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by causeless hatred.

For the sin which we have committed before You by embezzlement.

And for the sin which we have committed before You by a confused heart.

For all these, God of pardon, pardon us, forgive us, atone for us.

And for the sins for which we are obligated to bring a burnt-offering.

And for the sins for which we are obligated to bring a sin-offering.

And for the sins for which we are obligated to bring a varying offering [according to one's means].

And for the sins for which we are obligated to bring a guilt-offering for a certain or doubtful trespass.

And for the sins for which we incur the penalty of lashing for rebelliousness.

And for the sins for which we incur the penalty of forty lashes.

And for the sins for which we incur the penalty of death by the hand of Heaven.

And for the sins for which we incur the penalty of excision and childlessness.

And for the sins for which we incur the penalty of the four forms of capital punishment executed by the Court: stoning, burning, decapitation and strangulation.

For [transgressing] positive and prohibitory deeds, whether [the prohibitions] can be rectified by a specifically prescribed act or not, those of which we are aware and those of which we are not aware; those of which we are aware, we have already declared them before You and confessed them to You, and those of which we are not aware --- before You they are revealed and known
  Feb 2017 Nat Lipstadt
onlylovepoetry
a teeny tiny
whited-out blank space,
the tenuous boundary that separates,
higher man from untamed beast,
so powerful when respected,
the crowning hallmark of human acclamation
we all do wear by right of birth and breathe


you see it right?

that invisible peaceful white
spatial, tiny yet palatial dot that separates
us from rack and ruin,
the mighty differential pause between

in civility and incivility

come not to preach or harangue,
my counsel kept within the
between beats of a mournful drum,
respectfully and slowly banged

each silent separation a prayerful plea,
the inserted peacekeepers of our spoken words,
employ well those powerful pauses that refresh
the speaker and the listener so well

leave behind your
self-righteous disbelief in others' beliefs,
that morphs into no toleration,
an arrogant surety,
that surely the ****-ytical results of
your thoughtful processes,
inevitability correct and brook no resistance

the shrill strumpets
of either side
confidently worship at no church
but to the false gods
of their own mirrored reflection,
who smiles back approvingly
at those who scream the loudest...

outlaw the outrage of your rage,
come to my white clothed table,
put aside the wrath of overbearing,
represent your disparate conclusions
with harmonious, breathable pauses
to reflect and respect
our distinctive and distinguished differences

no one ever lost a reasoned argument
that began with a considered, well tempered

good morning

what has this to do with
only love poetry?


*well, everything...for you must love thy neighbor
as you love yourself
Feb. 2017
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2017
J'accuses
me,
that Stevie Rhymer
felony thievery, wholesale robbery,
of them blunts of good words,
and stashed the hiding fumes in my lungs

plead guilty,
with a Cool Hand Luke
studied pretense and a
huge ear to ear smirking of a
"who me"
innocence

it seems mucho unseemly,
bright pink tongue laughable,
stealing that chaste yellowed white chaff conceptual,
innocenctal,
cause i'm knowing it's well buried, lost-littered,
across the poppies of a poem-field
GPS mapped as
My Very Own Private Flanders

this one-night-only lynching of a yoga-flexible,
occasional reappearing conscience,
taking a short bow,
loosened by a
Manufactured in the USA,
cross-continental heat seeking arrowed
verbal verdict

soul and control,

two words that should rhyme,
but don't,
so in the valley of the bleached bones,
find me spending my last San Fran dime,
entrance fee to the accountant's confessional,
who greets me with a quizzical
why the hell are you prepaying this year's sin tax?

this confessing gig
awfully tiring,
like locating all those
?'s, periods and commas,
punk'd punchuation on the the keyboard,
of who you are

yeah, stole them all, them words,
burnt off the serial killing numbers,
now untraceable, masked in a thousand poems
that no one commissioned and barely read

in a vision,
i see my Barre gray gravestone appropriately blank,
steel cut smooth,
like a clean sheet of foolscap

an enterprising thief came along,
stole all the useful
Alphabets and numerals
to my vociferous silent applause

you see Stevie,
all those good words,
and literary hints from an over educated man,
ain't worth a good *******,
when u just lazy emoji these days

so take 'em, anyone,
great honor to me to see them
pray rise someone else's field,
in a new poem
by somebody else
J'accuse; look up Emile Zola

"In Flanders Fields" is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae.


San Fran dime; look up lyrics to theSan Francisco Bay Blues

sin  taxes;
just google them

Barre, Vermont Granite

ditto Cool Hand Luke
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2017
~~
for Danel Kessler^
~~~

in the early morning
of one's youth,
going to synagogue,
quite regularly,
a fabulous, honorably believing,
father's sole request,
more than a half-century ago

time eroded,
the fallacies of organizing a public meeting time
with a deity who seemed unavailable,
when most needed

instead we chatted
in the late of night of the early morning,
a time and places of my choosing,
for human fools do like  a setting regular,
comfort food for the divine spark within

rising/writing for early morning
poetry mass,
was a noted feature of the twofold meaning
of my latter years

where and whence, now and thence,
irreverent dialogue
tween the invisible one,
that would be me,

(can you see me now?)
and the visible one,
the you-know-who-
maker-of-custom-suited souls,

(can "you" see me now?)

*had become  
quite the regular artistes salon

witty repartee, elegiac conversations,
the residuals, in a rain drain trapped,
products collected by the light of  the early dawning,
apres skiing of an all deep-night long mournful body scoring,
poetic raconteur-ing

heaping spoonfuls of two-way mutual chastising,
paeans to the divinity in human-inherent,
regular debate team features of a
contested dark bedroom,
lit only by tablet light bright,
one if by land, two if by sea,
which the shining path to be taken by
itinerant signal comedic essays,
crafted aboard frigates and kayaks
voyaging on turgid, turbulent rivers,
mean city streets, 
swath cut by switchblades of greed,
exploring stories of the dying lands
of an aging man
fed by the streaming videos tubing down
the veins and arteries of an aging poseur

so in the sleep hours,
when I did not dream,
instead nail bled from my hands
words upon  a cold sweaty screen
from fevered fingertips,
diatribe prayers of hope ever after,
after every
dialysis of the arrogance of human nature,
removing, diabolical urea of our tainted beings,
replacing, with granular molecules of wishful thinking

then it stopped, for unknown reasons,
unbegotten creativity, chilling like
***** and champagne layabouts,
on the upper shelf of a mind's refrigerator,
always ready, just in case,
say
a new borne terrorist atrocity,
a seasonal wistfulness flu,
a cold virus blue through the heart,
love came and went with nary a
how-the-hell-did-that-happen,
even a new born babe joy
to the family est arrivé,
comld torch that heirloom/heritage seeded
inert patented creativity
into anime wakefulness

so here, so hear, I paid-pause,
conclude-delude, at 4:44am on
January Seventeenth of Two Thousand and Seventeen,
winessed by numerals white on a blackened background,
of a digital alarm clock with time, temperature and
the lunar phase of a madman
who twice was Christ told
would be a poet/story teller,
like his mother

a bountiful clock telling,
precision information detailing,
a tale that tells about nothing about a man,
who no longer requires
an alarm reminder to attend
his own moring reborning mass,
on a regular basis,

for his disheartened verbs,
runaway convict adjectives,
con-nouns, whimpering exclamations,
all on the loose,
nice sounding,
but of no earthly use

his lips like (the book of) Ruth's,
move in silent prayer,
only two can hear,
but the low priest observing,
disbelieves, thinking the piety of the poet
is just drunken emotion, not devotion,
kens not the broken poems
of the morning mass service no more,
but for
this one, irregular,
unacceptable exception
5:18am 1/17/17

^
I don't think I can write a storytelling poem much better than this. So happily gift to Denel, who serves the gods of poetry and our works with devotion, and who wrote this and inspired me

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive...

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.
  Jan 2017 Nat Lipstadt
onlylovepoetry
losing you and it's effortless
redefining short and sweet,
a whiskey neat,
eight years, much shorter than the forever,
everyone's grand assumption feast,
wrongly assumed, love consumed,
making ***** of her and me
for believing,
and looking now,
as if it's almost
our own closing time,
the hour of our
just desserts

you lose yourself, asking yourself,
can a three legged stools
with two busted legs be
just merely rocky,
without another hand on the tiller~shoulder,
something

with haunting visions
of falling, failing, flailing,
down the stairs
victim of a stoning, or just ******,
gravity, the Blackhawk down,
the string puller, the no-reason reason

the slow descent,
so effortless, glassine smooth at first,
barely noticed, shrugged away like a small bruise,
then you cannot help to stop and forgive the incessant
wondering of how we got,
the confusion contusions,
now body bejeweled resplendent,
everywhere, in everything

you were once
a rock, a star,
with all the answers to the questions
she was about to ask,
your arm punched,
attached to an affectionate smiling,
for the perfection of our mutuality of
knowing

was her rock,
and now, quietly,
this last piece of jewelry consists of
a necklace of stones,
a choker of
glass pebbles in both our mouths

wry cry
realizing that the
darkness cracks of
busted and rusted,
are voluminous surround sound silences
breaking up,

either side of

*us
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