Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2020
when you accept the ‘I love you’ invite, coolly quietly
understanding this is but a summarizing way of saying,
let’s enter the gated fence to friendship, locking in & out,
the delving reveals to follow are truths more costly than
any fiction, you see only the too real, how much pain can
exist, survive, be survived, quietly thrive, just beneath the
skin’s preternatural strong thinness, holding us in, together
while yet a sieve, separating the granules of our composition,
the coarser fail to penetrate the finer cells, the molecular level
is where the sensory Alice in Wonderland world coexists with
the blunt exhaustion of so much agony, too much, and in the
early morn these words appear of their owned and freed volition,

do what you must do to repair yourself

...and you confess to understanding that to heal oneself,
you must heal others, and that separate and unequal
sorrows can somehow heal each other, praying for ex,
exfoliation, exhumation, excalibur, expelling all the ex’s
so new skin self repairs, a great miracle that, and that
human reparations are a thing you alone initiate, inhale,
fostering a belief that !we! is the solution, the only...

5:46am
11/28/20
for those who will understand instantly, willingly and gasp at the recognition...
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2020
This Voyage, This Resurrection

I cannot sleep, thinking:

I cannot give you short, bittersweet, sad, delighting, whimsical love poems.

I can give you short, bittersweet, sad, delighting, whimsical life poems.

In cold, rushing spring and river waters, ash and water-borne soil mix.

A voyage endless.
We too, voyage. Endlessly.

Examine the crevices and ravines that
are the map of your hands.

Your voyage's log, memory storage.

Indestructible.

In the clouds's moisture,
ever recycling, it is kept, stored.

Your hands well recall
the very first caress,
the softness of the skin,
the sweet of the lips,
thirty some long years after.

Dare to dispute?

The original animus,
the anima and the persona combination
the byproduct of blood and tissue,
some call spirit,
some call soul,
is matter that cannot be
destroyed,
nor created.

It only voyages on, the conservation of mass,
our body, our enlivement, our spark.

In cold, rushing spring and river waters,
ash and water-borne soil admix.

From this natural brew, renewal.

The voyage is the resurrection
Life ever after.
Life even before.
Life for ever lasting.

Our voyage is without destination.
Our voyage is our destination.
Our voyage is our resurrection.
Endless. Perpetual.
Eternal.

5:46 am
12/18/18
voyage resurrection lipstadt 2018
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2020
the entirety of my feeling is resting on my tongue,
asking for birth, release, freedom:

here at the border post, the guards have fled, and the memory dreamer refugees, previous detained, hesitantly, gingerly, step across a narrow invisibility, a legal fictionalization, courageously frightened, but words of “at last,” “if not now, when,” and “god bless” blend into a merging crescendo of “yes!”

the road chamfers, dusty gives way, all the traveller’s shoes, now wetted, stained and staining, make amusing sounds of connection and interaction - squishy, distinctive, known in every language, dialect -  unrealized but known, spoken, somehow comprehended.
 

why is this heaven wet?
is truth moist?

indeed, for this place is truthful, and sensory networks cross, senses are both heightened and bluntly realized- and this confusion delights in human land mines
exploding.

let me explain:
my tongue has eyes,
my tongue speaks the words we have in commonality,
my tongues hears your sounds,
my tongue penetrates parts of you
that no other-part touches in the
same way.  

though you might think this is simply ****** subterfuge, it is not.  

simply you need to understand how
deeply this human connects, in his way.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2020
<for my friends>

you may
write  me
as needed,

you may
wright me
as oft as you desire,

we may
right each other
as often
as
often
needs definition

! and know that I define

often

in milliseconds!
<>



p.s. ink and paper surrender to time, fire and water

these tiny bytes will likely live forever often somewhere.
the acorns tumble, the dried leaves slip slowly sideways,
each a slow motion death, almost balletic, or acrobatic,
the decedents, like bodies on the Field of Hastings, their
skeletons to be consumed by a history ******* earthy soil

this more than any thing, as much as covid deaths of known
older brothers more than the messages on the answering
machine from robotic nurses and truly concerned doctors,
impatiently waiting to discuss test results with still alive patients

four lines in each stanza was unplanned like sets of decades,
that the man’s life can be retrospectively be divisibly assayed,
each titled, consistent of games and sets, until the last match
not on center court, is finale tie-broken, the faults too numerous

he writes this unshaken, but stirred, for the hours spent observing,
of each trajectory of every fallen leaf is distinctly connected to losses,
oh! how the losses multiplied; loves, children, unspoken words of
affection and forgiveness, mounted, moats, barriers to fulfillment,

a lawn of dead shriveled things, mounting, dear mother of god, all

préludes that hasten(ed) the shedding of lives every August!
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2020
<for my friends>

Poets, let us examine this friendship thing, again.

This is a poem of humans, regardless of our natural multi- flavored striations, that tend to over-define us, thus separating, instead of celebrating commonalities.

Like most things we enjoy, our five senses are the gateway to pleasure, even the pleasure of friendships.  They act in concert, a symphonic interplay that reenforces and heightens so that in combination they create a whole greater than a single sense could provide singly.

This is on my mind this week, as I wrestle to understand the meaningful possibilities, the limits of friendship.

Poets form bonds without hearing each other’s voices.

Poets connect despite geographic distances that makes grasping each others sinewed arms, caressing the softness of hard cheekbones, without ever having been granted the unique, all encompassing satisfaction of embrace, hugging.

Poets sometimes can hear but not see each other’s words.

Poets sometimes can see/read each other’s words, but never hear them voiced aloud in the authors own, true voice.

Poets sometimes cannot smell or taste each other’s words, though it can take a poem to another, higher sensory level of coloration.

And yet, a bond so strong forms that defies the conventional limitations of the physical. Should we share such a bond, them you know it, no need to ask for confirmation.

Words, can be gifted, without teleportation, even when and if the bridge of a shared spoken language is not extant.

This is nothing short of miraculous.

Just like friendship.

All my wrestling to true comprehend this state, for naught, for the miracle of words is like the color of water. Universal, invisible, but so varied, that it too bridges and is shared by every ! human body regardless of any human shape, color, form of the billions conceivable
.

But wrestle I do nonetheless, for the pleasure of this (non?)soluble problem that both creates queries & quenches simultaneously, so I break off this thinnest wafer to share with you, offering this notional:

All humans are poems.

All poems are human.

Solve this poem for human.

(And ignore the wet spots of my watery, clear tears staining this poem).
Next page