Nat Lipstadt

Mar 2020

onlylovepoetry

part of my job (a love poem)

<>

checking in & on you, part of my job, I explain,
need a status update, re and about what’s new,

on the flora and fauna studded moors, how’s the traffic in Mumbai,
have the Prince and Princess come to visit your nearby island,
how’s that pendant I sent hanging, still cracked, letting letters in,
the curfew imposition getting in the way of your poetry writing,
tell me what it is like to be a young man in Morocco, need your input,
do you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic,
while I hunker down in a bunker, forty story concrete stories on
a gra-nite island,
wondering how you pass your Sunday morning, in bed, in church, in your head,
seeing poem fireflies coming from the beach, how your language takes, enraptures,
captures my cellar pulses electrifying, I am yours unbidden and I forgiven & unfortunate,
swimming on the West Coast beaches, pools and eddies, rip tide currants & currents,
******* me into your world and the fun, the challenges of loving you from afar

do you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic,
locating your presence on the grid, illegally concocting our ionic physics connections
in ways you remain so unaware and me, dancing delighted on the edge between
blurting out how I feel about you, you, in France, and foreign lands, all over,
when you read this, do the hairs sudden tickle, sensing my presence, when grasping
you hand, kissing your neck, do you regain/retain consciousness of my affection,
plain hard and drawn to you, sans affectations, and we walk in contented silence
on country lanes, beach trails, crowded ***** megalopolis city stained small streets,
and now that you know that I feel so much desire to grasp you in my adoration hands,
will you accept that a man’s love who you have never seen can be so willful strong

that

you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic, and the pleasure of it
grows stronger daily when you send me words that infect me with subtlety severe ****,
and now I go, the slipping and sliding into the land of having checked in on you,

where my job is to love you from afar

8:41AM Sunday March 15th twentyfolded twice

#olp #part #of #my #job #love #poem

Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020

a pandemic love poem: “the almost forgotten secret of letting go”

for her.

<>

“you will laugh with surprise, as the anointing oil of relief
crowns your head, slicking down to caving cavities,
river running in crevices, that feed the buried places, replenishing the almost forgotten secret of letting go”^

~

the mind caches certain skills, once learned, never to return,
but tucked away, just in case, maybe, in the nightstand junk drawer of: “don’t need it now but, ****, you never know”

kept around in the lost and hopefully, not to be searched for & found,
a skill set painfully gained, a muscle memory, flabby from no use
but quick taut tightly, snapping back when ****, here we go again

I loved you in ways theoretical impossible till you enabled the possible

lost you for no good reason, in an act history labels beyond belief,
refuses to record, lest by memorializing it became/becomes re-realized,
this intolerable, would be past the ****** eroding barrier reef

the difference between junk and treasures is in which drawer placed,
the steps to letting go once learned, cannot be forgot, the cost,
way way too high, kept around, in a damnable place beyond grief

not to close, handy, findable but easily, avoided, but strange, when
living in the epicenter of the virus, you do some cataloguing, ridiculous,
this touchy-feely escapade, nothing ****-it to be gained, all-too-brief

head shake, took a pandemic to make you go back, rustling among
the ancient, old hand-writ poems, another keepsake kept for reasons
known and unknown, to be **** sure you once owned it, survival skills

In the Pandemic Days of Almost,
somethings will die, some go forgotten,
but the almost-forgetting-skill will survive,
a necessity of the how-to’s:

how to grieve,
how to believe,
how to leave
but live on,
hoarding
all the **** necessaries
ready to be retrieved

<>
Tuesday Mars 24 Twenty Twenty noon

In the Epicenter, New York City

^ https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3484549/you-will-come-unto-me/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3760287/improving-our-collective-lives-one-pandemic-poem-at-a-timefor-who/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3769935/a-new-time-poetry-in-the-time-of-pandemic/

#pandemic #poem #almost #forgotten #lipstadt #secret

Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020

a new time (poetry in the time of pandemic)

up at your regularly scheduled night sky patrol,
the colorful clock says 2:47 and
dark skies confirm which 2:47 it is,
for flecks of blackened peppery light exude at this hour,
a time period for former lovers, those old writes enfolded, enveloped,
hiding an active poem volcano spewing bare feet words in clouds of
kidskin soft velveteen cumulus, fleece-comforting slippers of poems

there are half started poems waiting, more than one, triplets in fact,
waiting to be born in the time of pandemic, thinking quietly,
will they emerge healthy and living and grow up to be adults
contributing to society, additives to the engine oil of human living

but the old familiar, dissatisfaction with quality control leaves them
unfinished, poet lurches from dead roses head hanging, a new blues,
disease as an economic and societal differentiation, that you hope,
believe, poems that in due course, all will emerge, for better or for worse,

poetry birthed in the time of pandemic

the city of new york, where I was birthed and will die, a city of
tall buildings, tall tales, short attention spans there is but one nighttime moving automobile observed in a city that never sleeps but now hides blanketed in weariness of trepidation of what are the

well known unknown possibilities in the time of pandemic

and you wonder in this new, different quietude if poems can be born
with birth defects and survive, breathing on a ventilator till they can
breathe by their own lungs, or were they perma-infected on a supermarket trip, a walk by the East River, a pizza delivery man, even

if inspired by a decade-lover, next, in bed, in the time of pandemic

waving to grandchildren in their second story window, you on the street, keeping them safe from you, a modern Auschwitz train station where they separated, the we-useless out, children and their parents, safe in a barbed wire atmosphere, a demarcated world, where some billion of brimming droplets of tears are stillborn

stillborn poems, or perhaps just poems-in-waiting, to still be

born in a time of pandemic

3:29am Sunday March 22, Twenty Twenty
New York City, the epicenter, crossroads

#in #the #time #pandemic #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020

A Reason for writing: “There would be no reward”

~
“My reasons for writing had to be my own, divorced from expectation.
There would be no reward.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “We Were Eight Years in Power”

<>

certain words, hers, previous unknown, or, better,
not yet your own,
acquire your devotion, all the my oh my of possessed tenses,
words ironic, for they are the shoving of contrary adhesive separators,
AC/DC currents running together, a single physical electric stabbing,
owning you, but gulfing away those customized,
prized illusions yet kept,
freeing finally by focusing on the single commandment that matters:

Expect nothing, but write, knowing the only reward,
is the satisfying of self-imposed goals and conditions,
that are will always be,
always,
one more step and edit away from attainable, maybe.

My reasons, my illogical reasonings, admixture of anguished highs and loving lowlights,
a porridge of seeds that need burying to be borne,
in soil of a soiled soul, write to breathe, write to see, write to taste,
write to smell, write to hear my voice say,
not good enough,
even when it might be, just, barely, though that bar is a
moving target,

always
a perpetual notch too high.

My reward for acknowledging, accepting, no denying, freeing, finally,

There would be no reward

11:02 Sabbath
February 22, 2020
from deep in the internal confessional

#reason #for #writing #no #reward #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020

improving our collective lives, one pandemic poem at a time...(For Who)

improving our collective lives, one pandemic poem at a time...

<>

a stray-dog-thot that bites my ankle,
saying ouch, you see a poem here?

it’s 1:14AM on a Sunday and generally I see at this generalized
pre-dawn, can’t sleep pleistocene period, non-extinct poems
roaming everywhere.

but the pandemic on my mind and giving me pause to wonder
how much can I love, and a questioner-poet needs and desires an answer,
post haste, pre apocalyptic.

S. travels for two days by airplane to fulfill a promise
only to find out, upon arrival, the promise made is
pandemic cancelled.

but the-promise-I-made silently, to her, faraway, that she never heard,
for why, stir-up-the-ruckus, asking for a visit from the evil eye,
if she falls ill, coming back to me, is stone cold stolid, no cancellation policy,
I will:

nurse her, brush her hair, anticipate the achey need normal, before she can ask,
hold my body’s warmth full and frontal, a cooling blanket for heated times,
retrieve her ***** tissues from the floor and make lousy jokes about her lousy aim.

and what I wrote, “improving our collective lives, one poem at a time,”
is here institutionalized, organized, galvanized, mesmerized,

legitimized and lionized,

proving only that stray-dog-thots @nite, they bite,
hard immediate, and that
later is never better

she would say,
“what would I do without you, my children so far away,”
my reply instanced, nuanced, instantaneously, non-Amazon delivered with a double frosted eye twinkle, no-extra-charge,
“hey! that why I get the big bucks, god’s love to deliver!”

she, a profound atheist, snorts with practiced derision, which is fine,
cause I see the welling, tear droplets, laced with viral virus communicators, smiling weakly, asking, instructing a cure:
“play for me some Janis and some Joni, some Mozart and Mahler, climb in beside me, my old man, let us, let us rock our gypsy souls, drinking a case of each other.”

who could refuse such a invitation... to become the plasma of the sun’s corona, if only for a moment

<>

1:38am Sunday March 15th, Twenty Twentyfold

“For Who?” (an excerpt)

by Mary Weston Fordham

Should dark sorrows make thee languish,
     Cause thy cheek to lose its hue,
In the hour of deepest anguish,
     Darling, then I’ll grieve with you.
Though the night be dark and dreary,
     And it seemeth long to thee,
I would whisper, “be not weary;”
   I would pray love, then, for thee.

Well I know that in the future,
    I may cherish naught of earth;
Well I know that love needs nurture,
    And it is of heavenly birth.
But though ocean waves may sever
     I from thee, and thee from me,
Still this constant heart will never,
    Never cease to think of thee.

__________________________
Mary Weston Fordham was born around 1843. She ran her own school during the Civil War and worked as a teacher for the American Missionary Association. She is the author of Magnolia Leaves (Tuskegee Institute, 1897) and died in 1905.

#lipstadt #pandemic #poem #collective #lives

Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020

“Pandemic" by Lynn Ungar

“On Wednesday afternoon, Lynn Ungar — minister, dog trainer, little-known poet — sat down at the desk next to her kitchen table and began to type. A friend had posted something on Facebook about how much we need poetry in this anxious coronavirus age and she thought, “Yeah, you’re right.””

——————————————————

“Pandemic" by Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

https://www.newsbreak.com/illinois/chicago/news/0OQcWxQ6/column-pandemic-a-little-known-poets-poem-about-the-coronavirus-goes-viral

#pandemic #by #lynn #ungar #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020

in the year of twenty twenty (lesser)

ten thousand shall sunrise arise
with confidence and no surmise,
their only skill, a declaration made

I am poet, my eyes see and my tongues
unravel what overlaps, overloads, what
connects us, our sinews are tongue tied

the heated transfer of our gut alpha juices
in ways invisible but fully sensory sends
impulse ******* scouring clashing galaxies

we are a war of worlds, a war of words,
a war of class, gender, crossing boundaries,
creating new ones at our intermittent tangentials

I slip and fall, my face deep punctured, leaking
notions that cannot be stemmed or reacquainted,
alas, alas I-am now poet halved, the clock will soon

leap forwards, words anoint my unhealed scar,
longer for daylight tries to save my taste of immortality
but the year twenty twenty is for the younger poets

their simplicity fancies itself as creatively bold,
but this poet in his declining times of old
knows only my reputation is the being being shortened

their succinct pierces nothing, but egotistical ism
by dawning early light, weep copious for us both,
my holed face gushes what they don’t want to know

poems constructed and constrained by words near expiration,
use or lose the mind muse unkindly warns, the never of now,
by sunrise, ten thousand new and one old poets will meet their expiry date

one old one, be mortality lessened, lesser, used up by the dated date

march 6, twenty twenty
10:48am

#lipstadt #twenty #lesser