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Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
“I will always remember you”

raise you hand if honesty
yet lives inside your muscle
memory of brain, of heart,
there is no one here who hasn’t
uttered them fool lying words

with difficulty we struggle to up
raise faces and places, moments
and images no longer mirrored
within the frontmost places of
our recollection, that searing then,
itself scorched, lichen+moss covered,
our greatest pains, pleasures sworn
allegiances to these razored inflection
points, now scoured by rusty hazes,
and we wonder what has become
of us, what we valued so to savor
as forever memories, their names
gray lady shrouded, and there is
no internet site to aid in self-recovery,
for our selfish selves have been altered,
time, new loves, guilt and other stuff
intersect with mind’s eyes and no mas-
more synapses paths instant linkages

I know you will vociferously argue but
it is almost physical, our shame at losing
them and ourselves, in the morass that
time digs daily deeper for what grieves
us is that losing as the end rushes to close
our story, makes us pick up pen and finger
scratch as best we can inside the lines on
our faces that are/had proofs, witnesses,
that once, we were there at the places,
whose names are no longer mapped any

where, so deep, no archivist’s submersible dare
fathom those fathom’s darkest we would need
to explore without the possibility that we
might implode if we sunk so far to rip apart sea
forests we knowingly, secret-planted to coverup
her memory, the words spoken, the oaths
and promises, we swore, for instance, simply
by saying, “I will always remember you”

p.s. and my self-shaming so great, that my
asking for forgiveness is buried so fast, it
may, not ever been real, just another fiction


Jul  6th, 8:36 AM,
inspired by one of those poems by r.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
<In Memoriam: Joel M Frye>


we spoke perhaps twice by antiquated conveyance,
actually exchanging voices, real words, not ionized,
we knew so little, so much of other, in modern ways,
where you can feel without touch, see with eyes closed,
scenting tthrough a wire, hearing the voices whenever
inhaling each’s poems, tonguing, tasting the words aloud

nonetheless, ‘tis nonsensical, that his earthly disappearance
should defect my affectations, with the chested sensational
of loss, deprivation,, that I am missing a poet, his insights,
his way of saying the same thing yet so differently which is
exactly what we do here daily, reheating upon rehearing

each others verbal notions of rue, worry, love lost,
abandoned faith, momentarily reignited, wondering instantly
and perpetually do words matter, just before we, with excited sighs
we pick up the unique utensil fluidity that allows this communication
of spirit; now it strikes me hard, it is his spirited humorous man-n’ere,in everything, that became has attached to me, consciously and consciencely, humanizing me by his good graces that cannot
now be refreshed
until I
reread
him
one
time
more
Every moment is a poem
Now or was or will never be
So much it says that among
Them all you have chosen me
I am not that special; plain as
Plain could be,  almost generic
I would say of all that is special.

An old man; a penny candy store
That is no more yet I remember He
Saw me and I saw him.  In my eyes
He saw his youth of days gone bye
And I saw in him the times long ago.

All is poetry as many poems as stars
In the sky- as there moments that can
Be remembered.  Now or Will Be...
Each is special the more so that you
Chose me and I chose you with me
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
Acts of Kindness

<>

let this be
my first rule,
and my last,
in ~ deed,
my only

begin, end,
and populate
my daily life
with the courtesy
of sharing my
abundance
with you

July 4th
2023
7:53AM
Does the setting sun look back upon the
Day and blame those who upon its rising
Were filled with hope; and at its zenith in
The sky did cheer the glory of it's throne
Welcomed it and gradually forsook it for
The coming night think that it is a betrayal,
A fickle love that lasted for so short a time.
Are these the thought of the sun at twilight?
To seek revenge is that its mood in the azure
Rose at the day's end.  Would be a foolish sun
That rues the past or would **** the time to
Come.  Know all it seeks to share with us it's
Peace-Proclaim to all all who have faith to rest
Believing that it will rise again on it' s forever
Journey toward the Kingdom to come till all be
On earth as it is in heaven-Father make us know
Make us know the way is love.  Bring us home.

In memory of my old friend Jimmy Birdsong who
took me from Bend to visit his family and on to the
Orchards of Washington state and back to Bend...
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
~for my dear, dear friend, T.R.
who tills the soil of Jordan’s Garden,
from which life springs eternal

<>

see your words, sent direct to my ears and all our mutuality of senses,
fingertips tasting the soil, the moisture, the granularity,
the chemical composition and the color, always the colors…

our gardens are our children, each similar but always,
unique, altogether different, altogether similar

how I love the how-work of it;  how the soil, you, suckle each other
with nutrients of tears, Georgia heat, outcomes of
the summer produce(s),
a refresher course of memories, of frustrated endlessness

we see heaven only by looking down, you, me, on our hand and knee,
touching each plant by hand as if soft stroking a cheek of our children

in some spots, the ground unyielding, keeping its riches
stored for another day, only then, when it wills, offer up
its specialty - a surprise, a wind-blown in, seed sprouting

it so many different ways, the work gets harder, and yet,
more tender, more desirable and we do not wonder on it

for this the way, of planting, and planning human desires,
tempered by elements over which we relinquish a
sense of control, yet forever knowing, happily, renewal~marked by

the forever and ever on seasonality
of a rebirthing garden
that sustains
us






6/25/23
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