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~a question of a thousand dreams~^

“Where are you going now my love? Where will you be tomorrow? Will you bring me happiness?  Will you bring me sorrow? All the questions of a thousand dreams, what you do and what you see”

this one composes itself
for all dreams go unremembered
the first, the thousandth, the  every in between,
erased by the push button of opening eyes

but dreams come, marching in, saints mining the raw materiel
the quartermaster has stored, awaiting requisition by an
unarmed unnamed corp, witnessed but never seen

these dreams wisped soft willow budded, tempting taunting,
leaving nothing but unanswered questions that colored come
in black and white

elementary clues,
a pillow indentation,
single hair that stretches
across the sea between two pillows that is blonde or red  
but
certainly unmine,  
dregs of soured sentiment linger like the
aftertaste of too many coffees and stainless steel beers

heated summers breezes give no succor or relief,
and the rain following gives no pleasure,
for now you are hot and soaked,

but somewhere in there a dream is part replayed,
and eyes widening in major league surprise,
the question acknowledged, the dreams quest hinted  

she has gone, neither happiness or sorrow will she
provide on the morrow, no toweling of your wet hair fair,
and you awake sweat besotted, it is not rain, just pain,
and it is only one dream a thousand times repeated

and what you do and what you see
is the abraded night ahead, and
you bitter laugh, for there is no more other than to think,
the question answered, and you beg relief by
uttering
perchance to dream

3:49 pm

see the notes!!


someone accuses me of Plagiarism
because  I did not acknowledge that the quote in marks and Italics was from a famous song written 39 years ago

so here is my response to
“just saying”

congratulations on ******* me off
and yes I agree, you do not know the rules

“#1: Quotation Marks Are for Quoting People—Verbatim
Perhaps it should go without saying, but quotation marks are for quoting people. Quoting doesn’t mean summarizing or paraphrasing; it means repeating exactly what someone said. If you put double quotes around a phrase, your reader will often assume  that someone, somewhere, said that exact phrase or sentence.“

http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/2013/09/11/10-things-you-really-need-to-know-about-quotation-marks/
lyric  from “Carry On”
by Crosby Stills Nash and Young

which is why it is in quotation marks

but you knew that already

my god strikes me dead ic I ever plagiarized in my life; no splotches of apologies needed
  Jul 2020 Nat Lipstadt
island poet
the osprey flys overhead, but the baby rabbit trembles not

~for any grandparent-poet lurking about~


the osprey overflies, a regularity scheduled patrol over
our backyard emporium and all its hors d’oeuvre creatures,
he/she has parental responsibilities, beaks to feed, PTA conferences,
the pilot, a wary watchful animal-his-rights guy, catalogues their still living  existentialism, for though they are not fish, his diet of preference, but in a pinch a rodent  or rabbit stew will do, if the fish are running too deep for no warming sun beckoning them to the surface.

Motel^ the baby rabbit, who lives with his parents,
(who doesn’t these days?) beneath the deck,
chews the clover overnight sprung, blissfully i g n o r a n t,
unawares or ignoring the poet be-laureating (him-her) but a mere
few feet above and away, pays no attention to the Poppy’s (grandfather) lecture about the rules of the animal kingdom,
who, eats whom, and to be more attentive to flying raptors.

thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon, severe say
the textured textual phone-netical all green messages, which
of course is a signal signal to the sun his job is done and can
leave the untanned poet in his state of original sin, soooo deliciously
white that he earns an appraising glance from eyes of the osprey,
a privilege he would happily tan away to promote equality ‘n stuff like peace on earth.

Motel, with his thermometer-humidity nasal instrumentation twitcher, decides, after chewing it over most carefully, time to go underneath where the white half naked people domicile, in order to avoid bathing, not his fav pastime, but making the osprey quitter le ciel, which is French for get out of Dodge, they got babies of their own to shelter and protect, even feed.

The Poppy, contented, thinks to himself, god couldn’t be everywhere,
so he invented grandpas to be “En Loco Parentis”  which
Does Not Mean Instead of Crazy Parents,
but easily could,
for who else writes
poems like this?
^ Motel, (pronounced as Muttle, as in Motel the Tailor from Fiddler o the Roof,
so named because of his mottled fur and markings
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2020
Serving up poetry like ***** and ginger ale
(with a ***-soaked crook and a big fat laugh),
the anti slow-soul-erosion antidote to...normality

way up ‘high’ on a ledge, overlooking the mountain range,
got my Stetson on, canteen full of ***** and ginger ale,
matches in my pocket, Chris Stapleton in my ears, and
a *** soaked blunt between my lips to get even hi-higher

a big fat laugh crosses my lips, creases my face, it’s time
to lean up against that big tree, light myself up, strategize,
how to get even higher, how to get down, how to do both
simultaneously, at the same time, without dying too slowly

the sunrise cheats, clods of plain ugly clouds covered it up,
i know it’s on account of me accumulating, stuff, bad poems,
delayed gratification of not confronting the situational, at the
cellular level, though the intersection with macro-international
clusters of men destructing their corner of the world surely
ain’t helping, but the drip into veins cools the paining’s ardor

the woman is edgy, debating if it’s that time, to give up, to snap
that towel across her face like a forgotten hotel wake up call request,
should-she take the truck and go visit her sister in Ashtabula
for a week of *******’ and staying longer, a couple of years more,
and me muse what i recall from living alone, and how it was easier
and so much harder that the shakes begin but that don’t stop,
but adjust the *****/ginger ale ratio, and things seem fuzzier
and for that I am eternally grateful for the miracle of potato
distillation

could do much more additive, but you don’t got the patience
like I do, so, forgive in advance and here’s hoping that maybe

someday you’ll learn this craft and the  extreme patience it
requires, how to savor a word, its conjunction with the one that
comes before and after, the combinations that make a verse, a stanza
sobering beautiful that it robs your breathtaking sensors, a scar minder to, for god sakes, ****! **** that trip to trite, give us something to shout about,


exhale on the moraine morass, that’s the other side of, yup, over
the rainbow that landed on the peak, cause a peek, is just the start of a trip downwards sloping doggy on my hands and knees and yeah, i’m drunker than I care to deny so I’ll head back down, or roll down, to find out what my next adventure will take, maybe I’ll chase after her,

and fall on her neck with sorries, sorrows, and kisses, besides,
now that I’m done, the sun decides to show a couple of cracks
and that’s some kind of of sign to wrap this sonata up and try a
new fugue, letting its contrapuntal composition tune cleanse me
and
save the day, and a corner of the world, hell it could even spread
like somethings good, successful  counter terrorism, zero shootings in New York and Chicago, forget, yeah, what they call that?  oh yeah,
peace on earth.

just maybe.
07052020
530am

always write about, of and to your peer poets..
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2020
don’t be jealous  (for a poet, for all poets)

~with gratitude, this one for Verlie Burroughs, verily, whosoever she may be~

the poem titles arrive in banana bunches,
grape clusters asking to be mouthed, tasted,
break their skin, juices dribbling on taste buds,
sometimes the title +  poem fully formed,
arrive on the same plane, that’s a first class
ticket to a poetry symposium somewhere near
the se(a)e.

like a fresh pack of cellophane encased cigarettes,
poems just begging ‘smoke me, **** me, broke me yoke,
the one that enchains, my soul-me,”

the nurse
pronounces a new born weighing 7lbs., 6 ounces,
pouncing, bouncing; first cries a-writing, the title
in the fluid, on the floor, don’t slip, the heavy poundage
and the body a first poem, a flighty aerie of a few ounces
that floats groundward like flavored colored leaves
in the fall, a bird’s feathers summer molting, swapping
old notions for new poem~potions, tips and sips of
Whitman, after Billy. Collins, **** the spillage and...

don’t be jealous, it’s a curse, when they silent labor
breach birth, even pre-named, falling from brain to
mouth, mouth to fingertips, Ipad to ethernet cable,
through brick walls they fly,
cause you can’t hold them and,
type them down fast enough...
  Jul 2020 Nat Lipstadt
onlylovepoetry
this silence of love is flawless
no interfering words necessary deemed,
sound without sound, no entry crack visible,
a great plain, a continental ocean, no horizon given,
this then the perfect diamond of humankind,
the glance cross a room, the grazing ******* upon a cheek,
the succinct serenity of perfect, this I grant you
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2020
poetry with two spoons and a salt shaker

~for poet, writer, Lora Lee, unexpectedly~

my symphonic orchestral accompaniment today, musically
unlimited, except by lack of disowning skill, a voice unkempt,
spoons and salt shaker, there in-nate rhythmic opinions off key,
worse, my manly word-smithy, out o’town in June, July, August too?

He, having an affair with my she-muses, left me bereft & berated,
helplessly hoping, the timpani of my words clashing, overrated,
woeful under-something, betraying my need for spicy sriracha,
poetry, sans hamburger helper, no-tasty, even less-than-average

everyone comes rushing in to the kitchen, hearing my to-sky-voices
howling, thinking something wrong, the four instruments rack up a cacophony of rhythmic-less noises, words emerging, to-a-person, they announce, “you’re no Allen Ginsburg, ppp-please not so early next time”

alas, they don’t know the poems are coming hot and heavy, guess I’ll
go outside, serenade them birdies in the trees, the striped bass in the bay, the rabbits procreating/sleeping/eating under their (our) dock

the squirrels know better, have skedaddled to the next-door-neighbor who feeds them classical stuff with a dollop of jazz creme mixed in, but I don’t care, cause I got all day, the rest of my life, to amuse me & you too

to refine the qualitative, to improve my creative, I’ve gone “native” and the rush is the best, the wind beneath my spectacles (haha) drives my rhyming to lowlight heights of prosody, besides seems

everybody has gone to a different beach, so it’s just me and the giant blackbirds cawing holy hell noises, and I’m thinking seriously about baking pie, but they just don’t get the hint, how annoying is that!

harrumph!

BESIDES GOTTA WRITE SOME SERIOUS STUFF...
  Jul 2020 Nat Lipstadt
Lillian May
Be gentle with us.
please.
or not
it's your call
but keep in mind that we as poets
we feel too strong
which is not to say that that is wrong
we don't ease into love, we quickly fall
we love like we're dying
we live like we're small
but in our minds.
in our minds we are flying

we feel everything at once
you wouldn't think it by looking
looking at our normal fronts
a disguise, a charade
but prey don't believe a masquerade
a poet can be but anyone
existing silently
a poet can be but everyone
existing violently
we all make up stories
we're all acting to a degree
so things aren't so different
no not so different you and me

we notice the quirks
we notice the nothings
if you meet a poet then you should believe
you should know that we
we love what we see
and appreciate all forms of beauty
for to us imperfect is lovely
perfect doesn't exist
we have those markings on our wrist
of all the awful places we've been to we kissed
we've kissed the devil when we went
to hell and back again

so now that you have been informed
that a poets heart is easily scorned
knowing we feel deeply
knowing we feel more
more than we really should I've warned
we don't just love a person when we fall
we love their whole world
we love it all
and when we're hurt it is hard to trust
and thus
please.
Be gentle with us.
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