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I don't find limiting myself with a title,
There are no boxes left for me to fit in,
Or burst out of....
I find it's excitingly horrifying to be,
This lost.
There's a similar difference between identity and persona,
I am what I am, am I?
What am I?
Do you think the men I have only half loved,
But stroked their meek egos of,
And the woman I have cowered at,
As they screamed my name,
Know what I am,
Is not who I am?
There is a solace to be found in being wanted;
Are you the one they fall to on a late night,
When they are alone and drunk?
What about when their beds are cold?
When they cannot see you because, they are blinded,
By their quest to find themselves more, and you,
And you,
My dear,
Oh my sweet you,
Who is no one in this world,
Are a literally stepping stone in under their feet,
As you wish to be a moon in their stars.
What they don't tell you,
About surviving trauma when your brain is developing,
Is that your world turns to opposites,
Chaos is home
Drugs are home
Hate is home
Fear, is home;
Here secreted beneath my pallid skin,
I try to find them all a home,
Knowing I'll never find mine.
If self care and therapy was literal exercise,
I could bench press all of you, and more,
And save you all;
My motivation to not be broken is stronger than my will to die,
And they'll never know that,
As they try to break me,
Over and over, and over,
And over again.
Everyone's broken.
No sorry, everyone has cracked edges,
Worn
Rusty
Mishandled a few times
Repainted
Cracked
Not broken, slightly damaged.
We, the ones filled with gilded light, and songbirds,
We know the ******* difference between depression,
And eternal internal sadness,
From not understanding love, to
Loving EVERYONE
From seeking solace in the extreme,
To running away from arms that seek to confine.
Where for art ******* thou?

We are not here for your pleasure.
But we are.
How could we be, but anything else?

I tired.
Sorry...
I tried.
Men.
Women.
Whisky.
*******.
Driving too fast.
Telling them.
Saving them.
Being everything.
Hating.
Fighting.
Drowning.
Breathing.
Exalting.
Cryi­ng.
Pain.
Pleasure.
Writing

This isn't a shopping list.
It's. Not a bucket list.
It's what we do to survive,
When you're born without love.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2018
think of your brain as the attic

For L.B.

where the keepsakes can be divided as follows:

A. “why the heck did I keep that”
with an inner smile,
knowing all the while,
exactly forsooth  but why never forsaken,
and which commemoration is  
one of your future
lady-poems-in-waiting

B.  “rest here, till your first time return"
is appreciated approved appropriate;
your place at the dining table
is set, and you, a new keepsake
are the guest of honor
both old friend, and newborn

there is no riding rush to gush upwards and out
but perhaps the anti-gravity  slow pull of
upward percolation

lucky are you in this,

for @4:20am.
my "attic" is the basement
and these  wild-eyed creatures come
sparked  and sparkling,
covered in creative juices
that like a nouveau beaujolais
must be drunk immediately
and demanding joie de vivre

this bursting Butz antic was first (ha!)
described as follows in terms
less poetical,
and more
apoplectical

“the best don’t even flow, they fall out of ya, rough and tumbling,
screaming did ya get that, are ya keeping up,
you can be the self-editing-I need-perfection  roadblock or the delivery guy,  
the one with the towel and the scissors,
who brings ya
a clean new baby, and/or a veggie pizza,
which ya gonna pick?”


alas the pizza store is shuttered
in the wee morning birth borning,
so I choose natural  La-Maze method for
birthing poems,
as my only option,

so says the
poet ****** @ 4:20am on 4/20/18
a good story knows when it is it moment
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2018
for Jeannie Kristufek Hawrysz who once quoted me Shakespeare -
"Of all the words in the universe, when stated thrice, only one royal above all gleams best, an uncoded mathematical tripartite repetitive stating:
love love love this."

----------------------------

third attempt and just not happening
then recall a Ben Folds hand-me-down
heard on Tuesday, passed onto me by Sara B.
about writer’s block

“Kick the editor out of the room”

the best don’t even flow,
they fall out of ya, rough and tumbling,
screaming did ya get that,
are ya keeping up,
you can be the self-editing-I need-perfection roadblock
or the delivery guy, the one with the towel and the scissors, who brings ya a clean new baby, and/or a veggie pizza,
which ya gonna pick?

another nougat nugget:
when you’re stuck, write about the block,
what’s sticking you; one would have thought
some one thousand five hundred poems later,
this one would have been midwifed a long, long time ago,  
but at 4:32am, it’s all I got

rather than throw false news confetti on myself
from the rafters that don’t exist in a citified apartment,
I’ll reward myself with some
rock n’ pop,
a revisitation to the scene of the crime, and listen quiet like and maybe leak back to prone sleep,
in hopes that the rest of the gang,
hoping the words to a  poem-in-transit,
“confetti is just tomorrow’s garbage”
gets off at my dreamy new subway stop


should the wordy birdies shotgun come sneaking in
thru the correct ear
i.e. not the sunken pillow one,
so I have half a fat chance of
recalling its dimensions in an hour, 
when I wake up-officially,


fat chance

later, like 4:56am

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2471979/confetti-is-just-tomorrows-garbage/
  Apr 2018 Nat Lipstadt
Vinnie Brown
Love, Hope, Depression, God, The Devil, and The Sea
Which of you shall it be tonight?
  Apr 2018 Nat Lipstadt
Jeff Stier
The sea is resting now
after a long day
gnawing at the edge
churning in deep hollows
ever so slowly eroding
this peaceful coast

Sand is the issue
of this marriage
sea and sky
combining to
make the land large
in its retreat

A handful of sand
to the winds
my life
to these tides
  Apr 2018 Nat Lipstadt
Dead Rose One
Abbreviations of the Life Human

these little stories, bejeweled poeticals, long tall tales,
short-held breaths from the savings account breast,
all slow withdrawing-dawning,
all are but the abbreviations of the life human

my fav of course,
the one, the twenty six
the aleph best bet

<•>

4-16-18 10:47pm
a mondo Monday survivors prayer
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