Eliot York  May 16

Hi Nat, thank you so much for supporting our work. Let me know what I can do to make this place better for you. --Eliot


Nat Lipstadt  May 16

stay healthy

she is my Amazon (Prime)

and does all the household ordering electronically

and when she orders a dozen gross (12 x 144)
of scented large garbage bags...

Sensing opportunity,
I quickly give her a list of things I could use

if anyone needs extra white sweat socks,
Mens 10 - 13,
see me first!**

8:35am 6/18/17
S. I.

lellow

she does not understand
why the silly poppy, source of way too many, so annoying
funny smelling scratchy kisses, asks her over and over
what is this color of this 'n that,
stopping over and over sooooooooo many times on just one,

lellow

and why the foolish man laughs and weeps whenever she says

lellow

with deep reflection,
as is her way,
you can see the cogs whirring, she guessing it must be his favorite

but when then he starts giving even more funny smelling scratchy kisses after each

lellow

she decides irrevocably,
as is her way,
the next time he asks she will make a joke to make him stop
and tell him

smellow.

You once asked me who I write about
How these words seem to hold my entire heart in their spaces

I laughed at you, the spite in your eyes terrifying,
and blowing out smoke I spelled the words- no one.

No one comes to mind when I write about love.
No one comes to mind when I write about my heart teetering and thrashing into a million pieces.

A face that will haunt me for a lifetime doesn't keep me up at night.
There's no sad back story to your manic pixie girl dream.

Nothing is here for you to fix and nothing for you to be intimidated from.
No one comes to mind when writing ****** ****** love poems.

Not even you.

My father: all he wanted was a little,
Just a little, peace & quiet.
The War, that so-called "Good War,"
Had given him neither. And afterwards,
The peace & quiet he sought
Was mainly for his own turbulent, disquiet mind.
He spent his post-war years in the building trades,
Employed by The Brothers Levitt—
Shrewd, Semitic Kings of Suburbia--
Leading the single-family housing boom.
He earned our daily bread
Hammering nails & sawing two-by-fours,
No longer blowing up bridges, or killing Nazis,
The Construction Site: far from quiet dawn to dusk,
Creating daily new acoustic trauma,
Canceling out all hope of either peace or quiet.
Given the cutthroat competition for jobs,
He learned a new kind of stress, as more &
More vets--soldiers & survivors like him--
Coming home, anxious to get on with the
Business of life, scrambled for paychecks.
He also learned sarcasm, his cynicism
Masking a failure to cope with Cold War hysteria.
And then out of nowhere came labor saving,
Electric tools, like the Skill saw, LORD OF CACOPHONY.
Decibels: whining, screeching & shrill.
No Quiet. No Peace.