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Nat Lipstadt Jul 2019
~for my naturalist, Victoria~

the poems all end up in midfield,
yellow carded, the game a *******,
0 - 0 unsatisfying affair, all the shots
way wide of goal as I search
for the perfect phrase to capture my

twiddling and twaddling,
fussing and haranguing,
harrumphing and bemoaning,
my very own Brexit,
postponed, the hard answers terrifying,
the soft ones, humbug and *******

incapable of lifting a mighty pen,
or a fully worn down pencil scrap,
seen better days, but now,
all leaden ashes, all fall down,
my natural pointer taps only gibberish

in my plain manila actuality folder,
the cut off dates, ignored, so they
cut me off too for good measure,
plenty good bills to due in there,
plenty good ‘orrible poems for company

the pile of to do’s forming a party,
social, democratic, and
anti-septic or skeptic or semitic,
perhaps all three, as they are two jowls
or two cheeks, too many to the windy

all this shilly shallying, or is it
dilly dallying,
is quite simply to say that
my rooted U.K. naturalist
a Sherlockian moors, traversing specialist
cuts to the shortest quick,
by jove, there it is, succinctly red beeping,
in my garden, awaiting a good boiling

I too exhausted from all the
“scrabbling with the day to day”
she so easily summarizes,
though my poetic ego demands an
Ameddican textual emendation


hard scrabbling with the day to day”

or

just an all encompassing globalism

“ditto”

ah, Victoria
hard·scrab·ble
/ˈhärdˌskrab(ə)l/
adjectiveNORTH AMERICAN!

3:37 am July 4th

adjective: hard-scrabble
involving hard work and struggle.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2019
atuned to the true,
you be, you are,
she writes to me

attuned requires two t’s,
at least, so say the dictionaries USA,
perhaps the English ones, more economical

truth, likened to a tuning fork,
with its very own doubling t’s,
two prongs a necessity,
they must perforce perform,
together twogether,
vibrating in a more perfect
union of unison

one for you, one for me, if-for-why
the tonal secrets be heard truthfully

to work properly the tuning fork
must have a balanced motion,
where what is true resonates exactly,
the same for you as it is for me

can one have two dissimilar truths?

I love you.
I love you not.

alas, there are no t’s in love,
and too oft no real truths,
but perhaps, one and one only
truth in truth, is its first cousin cousine,
fanTasy
a perchance to dream...



4:49am Friday
started April 12, 2019;
3:4am Thursday
completed July 4th 2019
The Continental USA
natalino
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2019
higher crimes and misdemeanors,
the accusations are long and detailed
just like the poems I write

the sentencing, sneeringly sententious and luridly sensational,
your vocabulary confiscated
and imposed upon you a concision (ouch)
write only poetic-succinctly

when I cried out from the dock,
“innocent!
the words own me, not I them,”
the words, my jurors, snickered,
the fix was in,
and the sentence of hard labor,
a bad rap time indeterminate,
spent in a cruel and unusual
panopticon,
a punishment to fit the crime


no, won’t tell you what it means,

a private verbalist’s hell
3-31-2019
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2019
Nostalgia April 2015

Greek for “the pain from an old wound”


~~~


time changes words,
the origin-rawest meaning,
oft too harsh and
thus re-sweetened,
moderated for modern
sensitized sensibilities,
no offending anybody anytime

par example,

awesome

was
fearful, terrifying,
alas, now plaster recast,
merely a
junk food word,
a billions times hamburger oversold,
poor little word,
misunderstood,
abused,
clearly, nowadays not
awestruck
by its awesome
past historical
usage

nostalgia

is not a photograph-word
for framing,
in old fashioned sepia colored hazes,
look-backs with
no risks in attendance.
a minor case of
a wistful heart
edged perhaps burnt,
but imagery intact,
always
somewhat sweet,
somewhat sad,
perhaps at worst,
bittersweet

Crap

let me roar now
my anger,
let me vent
mea veritas primogenius

the awesomeness
of the hurts
borne from
ancient lives that I escaped
but yet empowered
to let

nostalgia

make the hate,

the pain from old wounds
refreshed, re-reddened,
living, extant,
wounds forty years young

from places
where a woman hurt me,
hurt me willfully
thus permanent provisioned,
nostalgia is
a daily pill
of accumulated memories
of misuse,
she,
evil calculating so...

take that AM pill
for
maximum hurt,
can only be swallowed dry

weak,
like a Greek
God,
who were
more human than humans,
tag me enraged,
un-gauged,
no
measure of measure
for me,
bitter herbs,
a morning's mourning
potent sweet potion


~~~

in this place,
poem
prior confessed lovingly
an amiable self-pleasuring
an artifice,
enjoyed,
deconstructing words
for hidden meanings^

this a pean pain penned,
truly
an old fashioned bittersweet
sepia colored, burnt caramel colored
rage

this is not
your mother's
the-modern-nostalgic

recalled with
mixture of the painful pleasure
of
no forgiving the sins of
omission of a father,
who could not love openly,
or
the sins of sons,
in turn equally
guilty
of an
insufficiently telling his
pop,
I love you plain
vanilla simple,
regret for love not well
spent}

but this is not the truth of
nostalgia,

just plain regret
of acts of love
not demonstrated
~~~~
this poem,
this day,,
this pain enraged,
old wounds enflamed,
how I gave up to misery
the better part of a life

This is Nostalgia
in its ancient usage
and God help me,
should I ever see her,
I will school her
in the sourced origins of words

Greek algos, pain

and tell her
she sourced me
hell well,
four decades
make me unashamed
to say on this planet,
there are those
even good ole
Natty
will never
forget/forgive
only recall with the
summation of
nostalgic pain,
wounds still
draining
dedicated to my ex.
^see my poem
(I love) Dignity,
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2019
~~

Prologue & Epilogue: How the Poem "The Truth Burden" Came to Be
2016
~~

a twisty, morning borning mystery provocation,
what means
this phraseology, this message,
somewhat comprehensible, mostly not,
tween two poets,
that early-hours-eyes
thirstly imbibe,
these sort of appealingly muddled,
frying words,
so surgically contradictory,
that stab me front and centers?

The Message:
"Poetry is a self-policing agency, enforcing nothing"

~~~
Prologue & Epilogue
~~~

his thinking part
(that part of him, the conscious confused, aching, making,
disaster initialed, abbreviatedly, summarily known as as
M.E.
reads this mystery message,
whereupon  his whole collective,
is instantly over-boarded into
a-sinking-ship-to-shore shape,
that is currently listing,
at
a wrong angle,
a head-in-hands sunk funk

his thinking part,
forced to issue from within his
snowed-in-mind,
a series of serious, ominous
low growls

it's 6:15am on a
snow trampling
Naturday Saturday,
when the Temptress No. 7,
the seventh of the
do-not-do-these-deadly sins,
all part of the  
Ten Commandments of Poetry


#7 - do not write poetry during blizzards

forces me to unsweetenly succumb,
so a fool snowplows on,
incarnating his poetic, natural conflicting notions,
modifying mere growls of
Scarlett's la-de-da pawed phases into
vocal screaming and the labored breathing,
of poetic childbirth

having roused a grumpled, rumpled,
no longer, a winterized saved-from-being-an
emotional-hibernating bear,
having called out the poet out
into the ruckus blizzard
named so eloquently
by the weather bureau as:

"The White Write-Down Blizzard"

each differentiated flake wets my tongue asking only,
create me, explicate me,
hell, just explain me,
this provoking phrase,
giving me the wordy flesh
to flesh out its meaning,
from the successful reckoning of
a pulpy heart failing,
what mean this insane theology?

"Poetry is a self-policing agency, enforcing nothing"

all to to better understand
this no man's land,
this valley of bones,
where my soul has so long resided,
this notion,
amidst the drifts
of cross currents of inbounding
snow flakes crafted,
and crafty revelation,
with unforced, unbelabored, critical
honesty

the why of this rough, hardened cogitation,
has only one answer

"because,"

i.e. to be caused,
without rhyme or reason to
rhyme and reason
a cussed must,
write!

for now residing in
the visionary Venn diagram
where words
(circle A),
and life's fibrous, porous, event driven
breathing content
(circle B),
intersect,
the land where the heated blood circulating,
pin ****** all skin,
A ∩ B
is

this wild land where there is
no rule of law,
except one,
the essence of the sanctity of
the human
poem
The poem, The Truth Burden,
was written during the great blizzard of 2016.
This is a poem is a story about how a poem comes into existence, a visceral response to a message, that begats a poem
in its
own right
  Jun 2019 Nat Lipstadt
Dennis Willis
We sell the edge of things
to each other
to gather strength

We buy the edge of things
to ease our *******
of time

To moderate time's friction
on our hearts
and sense

We are a constant pitch
and changing curve
at no matter what

We imagine is out there while
Only what we imagine
is out there
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