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  Aug 2020 Nat Lipstadt
a m a n d a
an artist
structures
their lives in
a certain way.
you construct a life
the best and most efficient
    ways of gathering information
processing thoughts
    thinking about thinking
looking for inspiration
connecting the beautiful
downloading
uploading
and deleting
and copying
basing
something
upon
something.

i think i see now that we are more different
than i thought
and it is not a pro or a con
we just have different information
to contribute that you
might have to stretch
your thinking
to understand.

and if you can't imagine
stretching your mind, you
definitely have never
stretched your mind.
it hurts.
it might make you cry.
it might make you confused.
it might make you angry.
you may shed old beliefs
and take on new perspectives
it is not something
one would forget,
and for me took years and years and years
  just to be able to begin to understand.

it's just something i have to offer.
i don't know how else to describe it.
a way that
can be
sustained  
a way to
      notice and to listen.
to recognize,
connect,
and destroy.
rebuild,
and
destroy once more.

you can never be born or die too many times in art.
each death allows you to see.
and each birth allows you to see.

if you want a challenge
  you must challenge yourself
in your own mind
in your own time.

all learning is based on
growth
and growth is based
on exposure and practice
there is no way around it

to believe to know
   is to be the worst thing.
unless, of course,
you are correct,
then it is ok.

teach and connect and learn
come together and create
    something bigger and better than both
if you can teach,
   then you know.
if you understand me,
   we may know the same something about something
or the same nothing about nothing.
  Aug 2020 Nat Lipstadt
Left Foot Poet
morning contradictories: mourning our poems, falling stars


awaken to a sunshiny Saturday,
the lazys, their coverlet of flowers,
inhibit our movements, now, as it nears
high noon, we have yet from our bed stir

August has be-come, the grass pockets
of gray and green, swaths of sunburn brown,
reveal how far along the North American
summer has poetry passed, irretrievable

reading your messages and notes from
world over, lazy licking you poems so many,
delighting, ponderous and oft heroic, as well,
weeping as too many become fallen stars

each grass blade, from earth born and returned,
the nutrients preserved in our sandy soil, intended
to nurture next summer’s poesy new birthrights,
green+browned, weep+smile, mutual contradictories

these poem best friends, passing by each other at lifecycle’s
multi-paths, metaphors for our too many morning stirrings,
most to be falling like stars that, though in motion, need not
come to rest ever, their movement attracts a one…lasting look

it nears noon, it nears this poem’s timely finishing touch,
straighten its tie, smooth its skirted pleats, a forehead
implant kiss goodbye, sent on its way to find its own weight,
no parent ere admit, it leaves, with tear-burst showers falling…

August 1
2020

noon
  Jul 2020 Nat Lipstadt
Meera
the town i was born in wasn't big enough
to contain the vastness of my dreams
so i moved out
i spent hours upon hours on the bank of river yamuna
looking for a sign
completely forgetting that a dead river can't speak
i misunderstood its silence for an invitation
so i moved in
i traded my inner peace for smoke filled air
and my innocence for the facade of a happy woman
delhi, i spent years of my life trying to fit in
to make sure that i belong
then why do the stares on the streets
tell me that i don't
delhi why have you been so cruel to me
like a failed mother forcing her expectations on her daughter
no matter what i did
i was never good enough
every time i tried to speak
you just didn't want to hear
you're a city trying to hide its deafness from its people
delhi why are you so unfair?
you throw stones at the workers that build you
and bow down at the feet of your destroyers
maybe you're just as confused and tired as me
people have taken more from you than you could give
so you stand exhausted, defeated and short of breath
and i do the same
for both of us have failed miserably
i could never be your daughter
and you could never be my home
i came looking for a home in a city which doesn't have space
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2020
we write now past anger,
but nearer to the closing



the period of our lives, here,
at the end of this poem

and with every day,
every word, every look,

i·so·la·tion
is now redefined as:

des·o·la·tion

(a state of complete emptiness or destruction barrenness bleakness starkness misery melancholy gloom bareness dismalness grimness aridity sterility wildness anguished misery loneliness despondency despair distress)

now, it too is redefined as:

we can no longer look at our children faces...
  Jul 2020 Nat Lipstadt
fearfulpoet
these hard words

are the only fruit my hard-rocked soiled-soul produces,
my alliterations secrete no beliefs, quench nothing,
the poems I don’t write are my most successful,
the songs that comforted, now find no-entry orifice

skin cold wet clammy sweating unsuitable for tilling,
my horizons natural, felled, underground swallowed,
replaced by the man-made barriers, guardrails of words
leaving body, utterances shoutout, exiting non-permissioned

lurch from one guilt-carrying, black leather-straps wrapped,
round my arm, to the ones strapped around my temple,
honorable acts owed, responsibilities fear foundering
unfulfilled lists, griefs, signs of cowardice, badges shameful

deep sighs, open groans, me mean asking questions of myself,
laughed off, city noises turned off, silences of colorless colden,
the sirens loudest inside reverb endlessly, still give nothing away,
a final exam, an all sided, annual checkup reveals nothing but


these hard words

7:48am 10/15/19
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