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Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
once upon a wrote


here and there, in fables and tales,
some in no guile and others
in chancier disguises,
some sine-known and some sign-unknown,
some dead in stillbirth,
some penned these words,
some a few decades old,
some of but a moment ago eyelash distant,
making me think that
someday I will scribe,
cobble some truths and
some falsehoods into one
leaping heaping melting scoop,
letting you decide,
which for better,
which for worse...


<•>

"No matter that plain words
are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say,
about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?"

<•>

the reason we say so oft,
in whispers emboldened,

I love you

to our children
is not the utility of
its summarizing brevity

no, no.
it is because
the eloquence of simplicity
supersedes any other poem
any of us could ever write...

<•>

is this craft that chose you,
not defined by machine millimeters,
precision absolute,
curvatures, so eye-pleasing,
they demonstrate no tolerance
for tolerance of the ordinary?

the skill of words, too, cut so fine,
find the  extraordinary within,
refine, refine, refine,
shave away the trite,
the reused,
discard the instant recognition,
unusable

<•>

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the
whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away
what soully belongs to you,
do your own sums,
admit your own truths,
query not the lives of others,
approach the mirror...

<•>

The Truth Burden
is the accursed need obligatory,
the sacred sanctity requisitioned,
when the whenever,
chooses to drop in and upflag the mailbox,
an uninvited invitation,
announcing with precise bluntness,
that precisely now,
is the tool crafted moment
and you fool,
the selected tool

you must render unto Ceaser,
by your own hand,
render your own rendering,
do your own undoing,
go forth and in haste,
will thyself into the cauldron of the
Great Mystery of Creation

you cannot lie in poetry

<•>

come, sit for awhile, in poet's nook,
soft pillows for our hard Adirondack chairs,
situe hard by the bay, if too hot, we'll slow
drift to the sun room of
lace curtains and suicide poems,
still we'll observe the water, the rabbits, the cacophony low,
listening to all the noisier, nosier
creatures asking themselves,
and the trees and leaves,
where did all those poets come from?

<•>

to the interior delve,
via brush or limb,
pen or music,
the exposition, the exploration,
the reconstruction of composing
one's self, creation and destruction
of your own myths

movement of arms and legs,
sparseness of simplicity,
subsidiaries of centricity,
tributaries of complexity

<•>

how cold are the carpenter's hands,
the weather, but an added obstacle,
this heat, makes dying different difficult,
the wood bearing cross requires additional nails
and flesh, for the extra load he's bearing,
when it snows blood in Jerusalem

the whole world can transition
when one man dies and another is risen,
where oh where lies then, the juxtaposition?

there is none, for man is man,
his divine spark, embedded,
to his maker's mark, welded and wedded,
neither snow or sun,
can ever extinguish


<•>

now I ken better distance 'tween
artist and art,
I, a workingman's
daily dallying in simplistic machine craft,
my works deservedly lost in
the water-falling
of the endless also rans

non-nebulous distances.between skies of
Oregon country blue and
the worldy worn asphalt grayed words of
a graying man aging,
then let clarity speak, in plainest harmony,
know my deference’s soars to the high above,
one of us at birth, god gifted,
was not I,
it ain't me babe, but
one of us, his tongue,
like Moses-stung
with a hot coal
of language's divinity


<•>
  Oct 2017 Nat Lipstadt
Poetoftheway
this old poet, one of the first, to see your wave,
when he was playing knick-knack paddy whack on his shoe,
the old poet then played two, and said,
yes, I will follow you

Please
imaging-imaging that old poet with a glanceable cursory,
a small smile whispered, with entourage of a nod and a wink,
stands, knowing he is in the delivery room, a witness,
to first steps of a babe starting a new life
marvelous miracle by touching a button, a new line written,
not crossed but connecting by pressing "Follow"
with a finger from a hand, a human fringe,
attached to a breathing mind and a thinking heart,
the first to follow you, a ceremonial gesture of
innovation magic incantation, a new moon blessing,
a living person believing, remembering, the longest ago,
his first own graceful acknowledgement and eyes speak,

yes, I will follow you

the new poet, astonished at this induction to the smallest
Hall of Fame that they alone own the only key, study that
number, that number 1, the first to follow, kinda looking over
their shoulder to make sure the old poet still there on the morrow,
sure enough there are now two, safe in the back pocket,
a tabulation of humans who speak volumes of trust, saying,
yes, I will follow you

the old poet, imaging-imaging the babe, dancing round
the room, invigorated, challenged and the faucets pouring,
can't write it down as fast as the trains arriving disgorging,
words unique in new combinations and the rush of blood
from heart to head to those newly literary fingers bleeding
happy creatures of creation as if they are Noah
setting sail to save us with verbs and adjectives
two by two all for now species unheard of

the old poet wants to send cautionary notes, the path strewn
with frustrations of no inspiration ditches and inescapable cliches
that sound fresh but just aren't, the disappearing satisfaction,
the inability to get it just perfect, and so many obstacles
to be prophesied,
but he does not, these things must be self taught,
today let it suffice the initiation, the first crowning of
**yes, I will follow you
for this the way of the poet

10/16/17 5:09pm
what an honorific terrific
to be the first to follow
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
The Daily Prayer                               The Daily Prayer
AUG 2010                                            OCT  2017

Be forever young 'n humble;   seven yearlings of plenty famine;
Feel ancient and royal;              youthful graybeard commoner now,
Ride tall in the saddle;              old hoary, crooked headed ancien
Do something nifty;                   content to just, just walk crookedly

Take someone's hand                if they permit, for hands gnarled,
Unexpectedly:                             roughened and time toughened,
Drive home in the slow lane;   only the city bus, now bows, kneels,
Do the de minims;                      how has the minimalist become
Do the de maximis;                     the max, the best old-dog-in-show?
Leave a book on a park bench;  forgetfulness, unintended bonuses,
Use pen n paper, write a letter; the fingers shaky press cell button,
Take a chance, make people laugh; your appearance quite the joke,
Barrel into contention;                 a barrel casket, half your wardrobe
Show mercy to the confused, no arrogance, have mercy upon poets,
Show anger to the abusers. for they fear voices calling out, account!
Bless a child with both hands; now take their blessings returned
Grasp your soul; throw it down, others sidle, it's our time, now,
Then raise a child to the sky.       to raise you up father of fathers
Straight up,                                    straighten your time bents, curves,
Build a continuum,                       honor thy work ever continuing
You and they,                                 we, and you, we are all your steps,
              on a ladder of each poem, to guide us heavenward


*each poem a prayer, each prayer a poem, passing back, coming forth in the crests upon the beach and bay you so loved, the moon and sun both shine simultaneously while it rains straight,
                                    all come, each to recite,
even the One with whom you vociferous argued, unrepentantly,
all here, together placing that weighty last period at the end of
                                        your daily prayer.
https://hellopoetry.com/search/poems/?q=a+daily+prayer

a suggestion- read each side as a separate poem, then across as one

8:37am 10 years later, 10 years lateral, 10 years lovely. 10 years in the writing
  Oct 2017 Nat Lipstadt
Left Foot Poet
the sighs in our chest that emanate from a different kind of
breast cancer*

wrote these words prior,
then, certainly uncertain of the exactitude of their meaning,
clearly unclear of their useable intention,
yet the too real wrathful sensations
that inspired their caesarian creation,
the sigh's very own exhalations,
floatations devices for the interned-no-longer emotions,
escapees via the crevasses of chest ribs splitting open,
return to glory thanking me for freedom given

let posterior eloquence suffice, let brevity guide
my self's interior diagramming,
lengthy explications and deep analytics, I leave to you,
the astonished medical examiner and the horrified mortician

chest ripped, my hand reinserted, the blighted scourges,
the abscessed cancers, the obsessive relentless cankers,
asking shamelessly why have I returned to the crime scene

the sighs are air-borne, ready for air plucking,
all cloud seeded, deeded for poets to seize and commence,
to plant and invent, a mountain top trickle to a mighty
river of poems to be recovered and discovered,
unrehearsed and unleashed

but you and I have unwished, unfinished business,
as of yet unwritten, one last poem to honor our
mutually assured destruction,
for this day will be
rewritten differently
this one, a simple script, a written pyramid,
built by an Israelite, who by command, perforce
mustn't but does write prophecies
that may or may not come to being,
poem pyramids,
surely none will not survive Darius's desert sandstorms
ravaging kisses of time's forgetting
10:02am


https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2141695/my-day-will-be-different-today/
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
Kinda fainted Friday nite,
De doctor, he come, he say,
"Son you done
give us a genuine affright."

De doctor, he come, he say,
"Son, it's the end o' day,
Get your **** in bed straightaway"

"Here's what you be needing:
twelve tablets of hourly salting, no halting
eight hours bed rest, no dreaming,
four gallons o' tap water, drinking,
no stopping,  
"and for god's sakery,
cease and desist from
this writing,
poetry nonsense fakery."


Weakly, I protested,

"My poems are the waste products,
the excretions of salt water tears,
a thousand years in the making,
dreams foretelling and retelling events disturbing.

If not removed, disinterred by their inscribing,
these poisonous emotions,
shall surely cause once more
my fainting and falling demotion."

He frowned, de doctor, he was perturbed,
his medical thinking cap was for sure disturbed!

With sighs that made my heart to be a stirring ,
De doctor, he come, he say,
held forth as following, quiet murmuring:

"Here is my prescription:
if you musting,
but with strict limitations it be enforcing:

No more than four po-ems
De doctor permit to be writ


*per hour."
writ 2014 and found lying  about,
face down
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
My vision,
fifty years disturbed,
lines deep grooved,
do my eyes surround,
eye witnesses to all I've seen,
the limited I remember,
and the even lesser,
the clouded remaindered,
I've actually understood.*

By nature,
an accepter, not a skeptic, 
nonetheless,
a squinter extraordinaire,
looking out not in askance oblique,
but for focus, clarity,
unconscious of his
disheveled appearance,  
the crow lines and the forehead furrows
and the crazy hair flying everywhere

Need now two hands to
enumerate the decades of
failed recordings and
misfiled data collections

Stacks of scribble filled yellow legal pads,
black n' white photographs with serrated edges
testify to the existence of the 99% forever gone.

This day's dawn
I squint-eyed watch
as I write,
this day's recording
I squint-eyed tap,
into a tablet,
into a memory.
proof to all,
especially myself,
that my vision,
in both my
mind's eyes and impoverished words,
fail to satisfy history's needs yet again

So I lay awake,
looking south over calm waters,
sun's peekaboo just begun,
realizing that my tainted visions of distant pasts,
of little import,
more **** than treasure everlasting.

T'is the future visions of generations
on lawn playing,
little hands delight exclaiming,
star and bay gazing,
the only vision I e're wanted to deed,
this vision, internal, construct perfect,
resurrected dawn daily, forever

Even if I must squint to see it clear,
its loss an impossible intolerable cost,
an unacceptable fear, all for nought,
even blind in living color,
this vision
persists


Silver Beach

5:53 AM 9/2/12
the vision was eventually realized
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
<•>

Preface
___

early Sunday morning her head, half pillowed, half my-chested, in the shady, darkened room with just enough entering daylight to clarify the assortment of miscellanea you are mind visualizing, ordering...it's the exact time when the disguised passing thoughts traverse mixed in with the ordinary of the day ahead, the day passed, your passionate emails, that require complete, non-hasty, contemplative answering, the onerous chores, the pretend-someday-additions to the reading list, the running time for the my little pony movie (wasn't awful), the chances we will be a football team with an 0-5 record (we are) at the end of the day when god ******, well lit,
it sly sneaks in,

I write for women

auditioning as a possible poem title
and just to be sure, it performs a singing audition, we hear it loud and clear, as it snaps fingers and makes Pandora play:
"Your love keeps lifting me higher
Than I ever been lifted before,
So give me love, Which is my desire"

caught, exposed, *******, brain chiming, nails chewing, cylinders firing, pas de choix, and it's now my fingers turn, not to snap,
but to obediently tap
the truth about me, man

10/9-17 8:29am

<•>

I write for women (give yourself away)

alternating currents, one electrical impulse sparkling sparking
to prove I am among the living, and that the engine, yet revving, the beating, the heart toe-tapping, and the next,
is an explication explosion for each and everyone, for you, just, you,
why, I write, for women, for to give myself away

please say your name out loud
right now, right here, don't process, proceed, if you can't...
then
répète après moi,
"he writes for me and no one else"

it is not sorrowful but it could be,
it is simple words but not simple in the slightest,
for constantly falling is a ******* the soulfulness,
hard, too, is in the re-collecting the absences, the aloneness,
even as hard as the opposite, the constant awrying of the daily plan when so much bountiful beautiful
makes an ordinary crazy extravagant delightful,
so so necessary, so **** elemental - it is true oxygen of sustaining,
so necessary to be beyond

to write that every moment is a possession (yours) would be an
understatement, even wrong...for I am a molecular composite of your mystique mystery, each time i am writing-returning  
one bone chip excised as an accounting, the untainted marrow where-the-will-from-where-I-came from, which is from you,
one birth mother,
but so many names many origins all one cell subdivided

each livre is an escapee, a de-lightening runaway, of me,
and in the emptying is my creating
a happy self conception
a Benjamin Button reversal, as was intended

this is the hardest poem I have written in my abbreviating
years, but if not now, when?
I hand-wring cause
I cannot successfully explain well enough the
why

easy understood, why and try rhyme so naturally

I will once more walk the city streets, each espied
a dream mind-see to connect,
distributor to each of an odd shaped token,
a failed self-explanatory thank you for existing,
no whys or wherefores,be given-out  
regardless of creed, color and age,
but not ***, for absolutely this is all about ***,
repaying the grieving and the believing.
the obligation
the happy diminishment
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