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  Nov 2017 Nat Lipstadt
Mary Winslow
Ragged clothes on the sidewalk, toddlers murmur and cry
cold morning air where abandoned row houses
smell of whiskey, sage, and molded cotton

diesel exhaust belches into light breezes
forests of burning coffee beans mingle
into their hearth, the children, this is their nostalgia

everywhere leavings of life scatter driven by wind
cover unhoused, distressed, makeshift families
they stand shoeless as fortunate people drive past

Glut of humanity smells of wet newspaper
grey gulls picking at grimy cellophane
cardboard litters muddy sidewalks
above the billboard the wealthy jeer at them

sitting by a liquor store with bars on the windows
shut out of row houses with black wrought iron gates
basement stairwells filled with trash

men in alligator boots ready to lunge
into the lives of slick, bright, vacant women
this is the fate of feminine mother love

Thriving in dead landscapes
growing lost opportunity
under skyscrapers where it is always
almost dusk
©marywinslow2017
  Nov 2017 Nat Lipstadt
Mary Winslow
Reading John's book
Seal Rock
sitting on a pile of burned driftwood
on the beach
where people are scattering
like jacks
beneath a beach ball
slapped into the air it falls
amongst the group
a few dive for it
someone throws it again

While sanderlings
dance along
the fray of the waves
the sun disappears
in dark clouds

I open Seal Rock put it over my head
as raindrops fall
poetry satisfying so many needs
my wreath, my hat
my shelter
in bustling adversity
I hop over puddles
in sprung rhythm
while gulls
haggle over shells
the words and memories
trickling into my scalp
right off the pages
as we are all climbing
towards the parking lot
stones sliding beneath our feet
a beach ball lodged under a boy’s arm
I keep this slick shingle on top
word pendant
a dream shroud whispering
shedding the storm.
©marywinslow2017 This is a repost, rewrite, of an earlier version. John Haislip was my teacher at the University of Oregon and a Northwest poet.
  Nov 2017 Nat Lipstadt
L B
Did I touch you as I left?
That night of beer and music
Almost tipsy,
laughing good-byes

Backing into blindly
I felt an arm... a moment
guide me
before I all but fall
against you
Knew that warmth
of mass was male

You exhale
I sense your being--
behind
Amused
By accidental intimacy
I come unglued
By your flirtatious
catch of eyes
in lowered light
By faint fragrance
of whatever it is
you've drunk or used
to put yourself together

Turning
guarded
Apologize
glancing down


Women always look, though
however briefly
Anyone ever been to this pub?  :D
In the sheets of drizzle below the autumn cloud
eyes beaming with the glow of love
wave at the receding figure
to the farthest visibility.

The man leashed to the cubicle with the screen
would think of those faces
when the day is at its broadest invitation
and light like the luminous ether
fills every dark pocket of the land
listening to the rhyme of the clock
from his abyss of ratios and rates
while the vagabond clouds come together
and break apart in the game of revealing blue
painting new faces and waving hands
on the landscape of the gate
up to the farthest turn
in the sheets of drizzle
beneath the autumn clouds.
  Nov 2017 Nat Lipstadt
betterdays
the cherry wood box
sits on the mantle
it is a reminder
of his love
handmade, upon a lathe
from a burl of an old sweet cherry
it is smooth as silk to touch
of a deep yellow redish hue
carved to look like the rounded back
of a cat curled in on itself, asleep
the rings once present in the tree
give the box the look of a tabby cat

inside the love notes we share
it has over time become a letterdrop
today....his note...invites me to
a night of gentle but thorough  love
my note....says...yes....please
  Nov 2017 Nat Lipstadt
Still Crazy
For Berlinski

<X>
it's so true, can't believe it though,
this fact so well known, my cells fibers denied it asylum,
mocking me with a berating ****** single-cell-syllable of
shut-up

my runted eyes never spake this confess out loud
but here it is,
a silent truth rutting onto the **** mirror paper-white screen
where the pixels do my screaming pleasing easy and the
goldie oldie ***** stains, asking "you again?"

silence reverberates, like a tree falling in the forest,
the screen where I live, holy matrimony 90% of everyday
for better or worse, still crazy, the years get longer and the
the poems stretch out, ******* sag, and pseudo-crazy making me
lazy tired

no shy guy me, but the word waste of pointless,
sends me silently screaming to the bedroom where under covers  
I count threads. herding words, making pleasure gutter noises,
that can only be heard by the audio surgically implanted
in a human chest, and the dust mites

*but the blunt i smoke stimulates the nervous brain system and the gibberish comes furiously fast, trying not to burn the sheets
that just were laboriously added up to soft and silky when served with a side of naked girl and discovered that I talk hugely stupid when stupid and ******, oh so common, and
the s-words cut bluntly and satrap sharp where there and when the plain sentences become bread knife sharp and the poems gestate in 9 minutes because nothing is blurred and all use Exit 74  on
the interspatial, intracellular inter-pet

fully formed, in finery, winery celebrated, spilling wine on those sheets and now I am cursed cause words are the master,
leaving me just the mature, shy crazy boy, the muted tool;
oh god, dear god - Oh GAWD!!!
please let me be still crazy till long after my
bleached bones rumble,
"boy, it is time to be in that in that valley"
for suzy
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