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Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
The Deepest Twist

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for my friends who know that when HP says this my 1300th
poem, it’s off the mark by hundreds; nonetheless
1300 is worthy number to celebrate your affections
nat
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you return back my older children, fully grown,
my eldest word babies who never ever visit,
blessing them anew, lavishly, with special wishes

I,
take them,
with both hands, a reacquainting occurs,
the old words, deep twist, now hurtful hurt because
reimagining when and how easy they came to be birthed and
how the replication of that process is now a
practiced impossibility

how they burst forth, in purple majesty, wheat waving,
wholly formed, bathed in holy water, leaving no stretch marks,
only just an empty sac inside instantly needing,
needling me into auto-refilling right away

even the twenty four hour, hard deliveries,
long and arduous, were so easy created faust-fast,
that the errors of typography contained,
became lasting hall marks, iconic nomenclatures of
passionate loving-nonpareil

now, well past point of urgent addiction,
unlike then every glance, each sidewalk cracking,
lamppost shadow casting was
a sea story for a deep dive delving asap

I,
supplied answers for the internal badgering incessant
happy ****** need, mine, to go, spill the words,
cab or bus motion nursing them,
now they come slowly strolling,
semi-formed, needy, inconclusive, reused,
and feeling as trite as a cloth coat from an old thrift shop,
so wanting for tender loving care,
which is to provide when you are
four score

wondering how easy it was in prior times when inspiration
fell like a deciduous tree’s fall colorings gifts or
as little children’s nightly multitude variety of dream tales,
when whole worlds uncovered, nay, universes,
hidden between summers green grass blades,
or in unique snowflakes

the semi-forgot love affairs that parented poems
by the score of scarred orchestral scores,
now love circle-turn in holding patters in the
crowded skies above nyc,
awaiting for a trafficked man to give permissions
to “run-away”land that rarely is granted

once, poems in turbulent fluid born, noisy ripping of skin,
****** by the emitting of  constant calming tenderous words,
wonderful drippings, so many multiple births in a moment,
even the OBGYN is complaining,

give other poets a chance at parenthood!

the awesome anger of human tragedy is now so shopworn
from over experience,
even god visits less and less, for it is written,
nothing new under the sun*

though soon his annual visitors day approaches (Day of Atonement) and god will require new
words of human comforting,
a new poem acknowledging that being godlike
is ******* hard work,
for humans are annoyingly capable of incredulous kindness

how can one justify allowing unlacing acts of insane violence to tear
the hand stitched lacing fabric that’s ever ready
to bring us together in an instant elegiac joining

the truth is every one of todays poem are clawed,
shovel dug out from cavities and crevasses,
your new words of recognition of the oldies but goodies,
iron of irony, make it hard, hard, painful to write
without an epidural to numb the painful
dumbing down

when I am breaching my waters, I am hard to spot,
we ancient humpbacks live beneath the deep distanced,
cold waters for many more minutes
than we need surface for breathing,
the show-off fluking, less and less,
and when we birth,
every two years,
must bring the calf-poem to the surface instantly,
to breath, lest it die,
all the while repeating to ourselves:

what was miraculous writing is now nearly invisible,
to blinded fingers that arrhythmically cane tap,
words difficult to recall, recalculate, recalibrate
into a wholly poem

only the **** tears,
that same shameful violin permanent-accompaniment,
they laugh at me when now, they alone
come first quickest, all too easy,


appearing nataurally,

without a formal
written
invitation
“He says, "Son, can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"

Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright”
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
a love poem, of new & old,
why I am the summer-man!^

summer is winding down,
sky’s multi blues freezer safe stored in ziplock see thru bags,
marked and named by hue, the where and the when,
so when the eyes finally fail, when the squinting don’t help,
when the good things those good blues aroused,
poems, lush and morning thanks for being alive come-not-at-all,
quite the opposite, these cold blues
may help, to recall why it was worth breathing

summer is winding down,
so am I, the synchrony no accident, time,
the Pharmacy kitchen calendar
claiming another victim, willing or not,
those cars and the blue eyed models,
are now but blurred wishes and hopes, even these words, spoken,
not finger scribed, for the keyboard a
jumbled jungle of alpha-numerical
of confusion hellish and
my sons don’t come to clean up my pathetic messes, sending
their little children, beloved concubines of my heart

the daytime watcher, spanglish her native lingo,
tho single words she’s pretty good at too, but that don’t help much;
the grands, toddlers to pre-teens, the eldest a womanly eight,
tries but soon frustration bored, slips away quiet like
replacing her with her two year old sister, who knows her alphabet
which ain’t an exactly a help, but her five pencils stored^ nearby,
tagged with her name, awaiting her poems, her one true legacy

try to imagine her as a grandmother, farseeing the day when she
occupied this too too hard to-get-out-of-by-myself “easy” chair,
making rhymes with her next-next generational  descendants,
faint remembering the silliness sorcery that I secreted in her brain;

zingo, bingo, lingo
tango, ginkgo, jingo,
** ** oh no, oh no!

ashes, gray hairy poppy is a silly,
when he is not a grumpy,
old man all fall down!

which she acts out with giggles galore,
adding a teacup embellishment,
a creme fraiche pearly teeth smile topping,
the day watcher agrees, verrry verrry funny,
but time to me *** and take a needed morning *****

no poppy! no poppy! no poppy!
no nap, no ***, no *****!
thinking the call out is for her,
stomping her feet in an alternating rhythm and rhymes

I, happy poppy, ecstatics drooling out,
foreseeing the rhyme is strong in her,
get wheeled away crinkled and crackling,

zingo, bingo, lingo
tango, ginkgo, jingo
** ** oh no, oh no!

ashes gray hairy poppy is a silly,
when he is not a grumpy,
old man all fall down!



a new genre me of gibberish summertime love poems
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
Fool, who do you think you are,
with work a-piled,
bills and papers
two stacks deep,
that you could
write poetry
while others
soundly sleep?

Fool, by what
god-given right,
by what
impulse idiotic,
do you have leave
to scribble words
that tarnish the evening,
disturb the night?

Fool, what do you
think you know,
what voices do you hear,
that raise you up,
disturb your flows,
compelling you to
write without fear?

Foolish thoughts,
ghostly mind noises,
incomplete visions of
words unspoken,
“I love you” uttered
but once or twice,
and then as just a token,
penance for what?

Fool wakes up screaming
“I do do love you,”
but you cannot hear yourself,
cause you confess
to caring lacking

So, lest the world
I do wake,
poetry by night,
I give and take,
writ in quiet silence,
and do not disturb
my hauntings, by it
somewhat soothed,
less perturbed


3:00am 8/26/93
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
Alaska:
“though the whole world should be mad at once
though the elements should be changed, though the angels should rebel: yet verity (irrefutable truth) cannot lie.”  
                                                         ­                  Erasmus of Rotterdam

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for BJ Donovan, a fine, fine poet
<><><>

verity, irrefutable truth, cannot lie,
or belie it’s non-contradictory nature,
even, in a small airport, a one runway affair,
somewhere in Alaska
ribboned tween icy crags and dagger-ous peaks,
low cloud coverings of sub-zero visibility,
that inquire, in an indigenous tongue
of the flying fool pilots,

“really?”

if I or you ask me why I’m here,
Alaska,
the answers come in only three Heinz varieties,
true or false positive, no differentiation needed,
the other, is called
“one who doesn’t know how to ask”

you know him,
the simpleton, the simple one, me,
who can’t frame the question without

risking that he frame himself

betraying and displaying his woeful ignorance,
a veneered confidence of knowing so little about much

in the shed, a/k/a
‘the terminal,’ we wait,
me and an ex-Buddhist priest,
head stubble shaved, of course, round horn rimmed glasses wearing,
stone washed jeans blue, the color of his eyes,
reflecting mine as well as the blue glacier ice
surrounding us both, we,
the extraneous human eagle interlopers

showed him the Erasmus quote, provoking one of them,
thin lined, whimsical, eye-glinting smiles of those
who know the answer
to the knotty ones, or,
know better, that knotty questions one asks himself
when high up in the mountainous glacier ranges,
get answered just by silent patience

he smiled for an eternity of
at least five minutes,
my heart pulsating big time,
this modern man anticipating, in his calm, dulcet two tones,
his understanding of another ancient translating another,
even more ancient, speaking:

”the world is indeed mad,
through neglect letting the elements warp, glaciers melt;
the angels have indeed rebelled at the
foreseen fated falsehoods perpetrated,
verity,
torn asunder,
and the line between balance and imbalance,
so jaggedly ripped in too many places that verity a victim
so badly assaulted, its face is no longer identifiable by AI, worse,
so covered, dying, undiscoverable.

but you ask!
ask of yourself, asking of others, and tolerating
uncurled, uncut uncertainty, you retreat and reconsider,
this then is your answer!
it is the
ASKING,
that is verity, itself! there can be no lying thing in the
quest of questioning
that accepts, rejects, and unceasingly asks again^

this is a the only irrefutable truth and what it asks of you:

never accept the illogic of belief, let your own eyes be the best judge;
ask and ask thrice, be satisfied that being disastrously dissatisfied
is the norm, the mean,
the line toward a perfection that may not ever exist(ed)
for our flaws define us, thus so much greater is our truths when we
we reshape them, ourselves, for verity itself is not so hard to find,
but the finding of one self is too difficult for most


for asking is too painful,
too primordial, and why I am no longer a priest nor teacher,
but a simple observer of the answers that can be found in the
silences of places,
the Alaska’s inside of us,
where nature’s sets
an open table for anyone
wiling to just ask...”
8/18/19
S.I., N.Y.

^”It is not in the asking, but in the searching and wrestling that we gain clarity.”
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
I. nope.



II.
long-windedness verbosity
diffuseness prolixity
wordiness rambli­ng
circuity discursiveness
redundancy tautology
tediousness verbi­age
verboseness length
longevity permanence
garrulity windiness
v­olubility circumlocution
expansiveness babbling
periphrasis gushi­ng
blathering protractedness
waffling lengthiness
iteration repet­ition
prating prattling
jabbering digressiveness
dreariness tediu­m
deadliness wandering
repetitiousness repetitiveness
pleonasm co­nvolution
logorrhoea boringness
maundering superfluity
duplicatio­n tiresomeness
monotony reiteration
gabbiness informality
mouthin­ess diffusion
logorrhea wordage
blah-blah dryness
dullness boredo­m
sameness loquaciousness
talkativeness loquacity
freeness orotun­dity
roundaboutness breadth
gobbledegook gassiness
wittering mult­iloquence
perissology big mouth
gift of the gab garrulousness
staleness tallness
ask and answered
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
called me in for a consultation,

lean in,” he suggested, with nearly closed eyes,

“see the youthful optimistic predecessor,
the conqueror, who could not be defeated,
his thin images within still resides

the man of firm voice who when he spoke
above the rabble, all fell silent, and when he looked,
all could share his visionary insights and did not hesitate,
saying, we will do and we will listen,
but to follow, just did, wrapped
in your confidence

I want that boy back, smooth skinned, fearless,
do not return him till the shadows have dissipated,
the bruised lines of worry have evaporated,
the hands look unscathed, then raise them in
self-supplication, demanding satisfaction,
then in success, born overhead, marking appreciation,

let us adventure forth, straightening tilting windmills,
punishing renegades and dragons fearful,
saving damsels who waited just for our arrival,
shedding courage upon those who watch us,
cheering and being cheerful

here is your mighty pen,
cut sharp the poems out from the within,
read them slow, winding to now crooked old friends,
who remember everything dear, their youth of no fear,
the best of past, dreaming poems, mist born, fog vapor gone,
of black and waiting white, worthy words all revived

return to me in blazes,
sumptuous colors of derring-do,
I need that child brave, for perhaps
you have not noticed my flaking slivering skin,
the expanding cracks that cross my images,
just like you!

I need you to rebirth you,
I need you to rebirth me!

8/16/19 reflections from a blue glacier
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
for you, of you: you’ve been between my ears

close enough to being on my mind,
almost the same thing,
though that’s unfairly inequitable, we both agree,
for when in an ear one opines, too oft it escapes
out the other side, only a tree ring mark left,
someone was here, present

as for the Confucius confusion in

ok, who’s writing this poem to whom,

cause it’s never clear between us
who is
asking the questions,
since the answers come
demanded and undemanding,
fomenting newer questions and follow through,
before, as well as,
‘please sir, may I have some more?’

the mutualizing game tasking begin-began-begun,
for this, our lovely crazy teasing of our-thing, ago began,
don’t recall who or how intimated-initiated
this oil drilling exploration,
who is the annointer and who is the annointed,
who seeds the plants, picks the fruit, and who
gets paid with cloves of poems, by the bushel

you say I’ve been on your mind,
which we now have both pointed out
is somewhat extraordinary since,
the sight lines are drawn through
long distance cloudscapes that travel
through underground cables,
making everything said,
fallow and rich-ending, deeply frustrating,
impossible to see the outcome

clouds usually imaginary, (not like now),
making visibility normative poor,
unlike the real ones I’m flying at the moment through,
ensconced in front row seat 1F, heading northwest passage,
passing by so ridiculously close to where
you are minding the soil,
as I am
mining your soul’s soil, tilling it between the ears,
of you, by me, for us, and the excited sadness
makes me happy and yes, inequitably, again,
hopping-mad

because your breadcrumbs and dark Swiss chocolate bars are
scattered and defaced, bitten and chewed, lovingly licked melting,
we who cover our tracks too well;
but what I do have, makes me ravenous,
having read all your poems,
in random order and then one more time,
sequentially

I see your history, near escapes and resurrections,
in fine grained moody minutiae punctuated by huge gaps in between,
that we must cream fill with clouds of wondrous loving curiosity,
a torture so exquisite, only the gods could have invented it like
Sunday Night Football,
and crazy sayings,
like I love you too...

been on my mind and I imagine you
hot and sweaty,
bent over, aching tired, from
picking weeds (gotcha),
when sudden one of us stands up straight, back aching,
screaming out loud
this is crazy, and follows up with
a *** Darius type proclamation,
who’s writing this poem to whom
issued to the upwards-skywards,
but addressed to ourselves,
the poets

as we search clouds by the thousands,
is that you in that cloud, in that poem,
I look down thinking that, that must be,
the plot of green and dusted light brown ground
where she has gone into hidey-hole hiding,
disappearing for months at a time,
before arising for the sticking of me
in the sticking place,
wounding me fresh with brand new poems
scandalous and imaginous,
and our imaginations are both
too skilled

so here I close, overwritten, overridden, too long,
overshot my imaginary bounds, so one
pulls down the shade over the oval window
through which too many great stories have commenced,
and ended

the thick cumulus shouting
as we look up
as we look down,
saying “enough, you crazy people,
your poems tell too much,”

perhaps, find me in that
next bite of herbs buttered,
and then ask (of course)

who’s writing this poem to whom?

then breathe out, exhaling me a
breath-poem up above, to where I’m hiding
just as I, am sending one to you,
earth falling from thirty thousand feet,
coming to rest on your mind,
in between your ears,
friend

<>

8-6-19
somewhere in the sky, clueless, heading north by northwest
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