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  Apr 2021 Nat Lipstadt
Path Humble
”against your will were you created,
against your will were you born,
against your will do you live,
against your will will you die, and
against your will will you stand in judgment before the
King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”

Rabbi Elazar HaKappar (C.170 - C.200 CE)
(Ha Kappar: the one who made and gave atonement)

<§>

in these, the years of my erosive declination,
when the noble prize, time for introspection,
once was a chore of delaying, now no longer can be off-put,
the certainties of Elazar, offer guidable satisfactions


the nighttime review, resurrecting my life, the gaps,
the untaken actions, those dream-schemes speak loudest,
memories of what should have been, are a litany of what ifs,
prosecutorial accusations of crass wastage


against my will, the charges brought,
against my will, plead guiltily my innocence,
against my will, knowingly, time’s erasure judgment,
secures my fate, all the granular cells causal dissipation


my warped willingness to be a coward,
it was my meditative, to natural be the lesser man,
choosing the safety premise, the road most oft trod,
the addition of my meager totality, willing given


Even if all these land mine/roadblocks
and summary judgements are against my will,
willingly do I confess, in all innocence, my guilt,
“if it be my will”
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2021
10,000 steps to a poem

<~>
walk to save my visions, my subterfuge-self, trying to
encapsulate the moments, seconds of nano-instances of a
tableau of histories, of actions becoming interactions,
a physical mitosis, ground into one human paste of word-cells
by a singular mortar and pestle that more than blends, but condenses

walk in Whitman’s footsteps, prowl old cobbled
streets seeing them anew, listening to the patois
of each skyward pathway, a commingling of
catechisms, Tefilot, Salah, Stuti Karana, into a stampede becoming a tornado funnel of a multivariate alphabets singularity - a prayer|poem returning to birth-mother

rush homeward desperate to retain the holy mess of verbal music,
before aged eyes release the visions, into a heavenly lost but found
depot of single lefty gloves, snatches and refrains, hymnals, phrases,
10,000 preservation band steps keeping but scraps, weeping
for the so much lost, yet blessing-uttering thankful for this one,
to a one


who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to
this moment, to this season.


4/4/21
1:50pm
~writ by night, daylight born~
Passover/ Easter Sunday
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2021
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3983306/who-by-fire-after-leonard-cohen/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1844090/for-leonard-a-man-cleaning-up-after-himself/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3319252/never-lament-casually-leonard-cohen/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2714710/for-leonard-cohen-two-and-a-half-years-on-11716/

Aug 29 2020

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2187204/all-ive-learned-from-love-for-leonard/

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1833538/for-leonard-cohen-the-musicians-minyan/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3932910/when-leonard-cohen-met-charlie-daniels-the-devil-went-down-to-geo­rgia/

!!the links repeat below, so no cut and paste required!!
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2021
I’ll be brief (about poetry writing)

giving up:

expelling of textual agitation in my breast,
expulsing supplies no more the longest relief,
its medicinal efficacy, worn down, placebo equal,
run its course, a good grief, displacing tired belief,
loss of poetry, boon companion, not too late, nor
too soon, conceding, everything due a finalization


woman prevented me from walking in the
tropical storms frothiness, opining to my whining
“that’s no way to cleanse a soul, you’ll lose your life,
not that weight that’s moved up inside, up from the gut
into hearts blocked chambers and clogged spokes.”


thinking the vocabulary, needs a thrift store trip,
to give it all away, besides, prove it, a good taxing,
donating  might be quite righteous undertaking, like
flushing of the ewes, needs some new nutrients for the ole
two handed sleight legerdemain.


promised brevity w/o levity, no floating, keeping my feet’s grounded, my animal kingdom, my editorial staff, says a good quitting time is hard to find, addiction, a rolling stone, needs a coldstone fence immovable.


grabbed rucksack, inside Hafiz, Ogden and Walt Whitman, all very good company men, head to the poetry nook, to get my soul brown deep tanned, and enjoy excellent conversations with the Lord,
‘bout childless women, why cancer, and if there be a decent chance we could work out a real substantive cooperative truce between
deity & humans,

one that could hold for longer than a day, a good working relationship ‘tween sky, sun, water and wind, ok, fractious occasional, but on the whole works ok, gotta makes some more notes to keep my new boon above, my new oh lordy buddy well-contented, non-grumpy.


p.s. being an admirer~reader is almost as good as being a writer

9:00 AM
Mon Jul 13
2020
as noted this was written in July of 2020, but never published till Feb. of 2021.
  Jan 2021 Nat Lipstadt
Thomas W Case
Tired and twisted
broken and listless
another day in prison ****** me off.
Last night was Christmas, and I
miss my kids so much,
it feels like I've been shanked.
I sell my desserts for coffee;
my one luxury in the joint.
The complexion of my day is
gray, and lonely as a
tea bag in the ocean.
Everything is gray:
The sky
the weights
the walls
the blood
the food
the fence
The mood, the soul, the yard, the heart
and the beat of the false dawn.
It's all tombstone gray.
Hate thickens the air.
And the light on the
horizon is a lie--razor wire sharp.
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