Nat Lipstadt

Dec 2023

brandychanning

Sol and Solitude, Bodies and Disembodiment

the sol and solitude
scalpel~dissect layers of tissue,
marrows of nuclei separate,
the warming is discomforting

dismayed and dissuaded,
cannot be in two places,
either/or/or simultaneous,
my centerpiece is a-kilter

wavering and waving,
my balance is mis-weighted,
teetering and tottering, in a land
lightly and thickly discriminating

between bodies and disembodiment
I am neither
I am both,
therefore,
I am invisible
to eyes that are shut by
obstructions of
willful
blindness

#sol #and #solitude #bodies #disembodiment #brandychanning

Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023

Axe Handles by Gary Snyder

Axe Handles
BY GARY SNYDER

One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with—"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"-—in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

Gary Snyder, "Axe Handles" from Axe Handles. Copyright © 1983 by Gary Snyder.

Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023

strong at the broken places, my whole blood

“If people bring so much courage
to this world the world has to ****
them to break them, so of course
it kills them. The world breaks every
one and afterward many are

strong at the broken places."

A Farewell to Arms,
Ernest Hemingway

<>
struggling with so much,
then this scripture of writing sent
by some unfamiliar, a providential
provider; and I am realized, this man
is broken in ways you have no idea,
can~not comp~re~hend

understanding floods, healing
required, for I too have been killed,
my trust and beliefs, trashed,
too many fools who think that
moral equivalence is a thing,
that the unspeakable is justified,
hatred makes me so broke so low,
how,
justification is not justice,
nor an excuse to do whatever

cross the street, and believe,
that drivers will honor a red,
a stop sign, but plenty think
this don’t apply to me, not me

getting on the back of a line
is for fools, people who cannot answer
the arrogant question of the insistent
“Do You Know Who I am?”

I know who I am, yet the ponderance
of evidence says that is not enough,
I
am insufficient,
I am less
than human,
I am
undeserving,
because of my
ancestry

And I will spare you the precise definitions of these statements,
for it should be unnecessary, you should be nodding in agreement, clear eyed understanding, intuitive, in your own broken bones felt!

But,
my bones are broken, and the healing needs a source, a “see here”
directive, explain me how my insane madness is not a proper
responsa to the
weight of hate
my eyes see, seen,
and that my own
eyes
are not lying,
but believed.

but intuitively understood
that my broken bones can be
healed, each in their own way,
so I will retire, perhaps return
when, even if not fully recovered,
sufficient to care enough,
ready to be rebroken, again,
for this! this! is my
true poetic ancestry

thousands of years have not broken us,
and never will, for it is not fear that will
prevent our resurrection, for we immunized,
for what unimaginable have we not known, and yet recovered,
this,
I believe,
my healing will be quiet, solitary, removed
from the distractive noises of invective infecting,

but I will be present,
for my children, and my children’s children will
look to this ancestor and learn that his blood
and bones deeds them the self-healing properties
that always has and always will defeat those
who seek to destroy your future

1) the DNA of your ancestry
inherited inherent in your bone marrow
and bone tissue is continuously remodeled
through the concerted actions of bone marrow cells

2) Stem cells in your red bone marrow
(hematopoietic stem cells) create red and
white blood cells and platelets, all of which
are components of your whole blood.

so here is our truth:
when,
The world breaks every
one and afterward many are
strong at the broken places!*
our whole blood will replenish us

Sabbath Eve
Fri Nov 17
10:00am
in the ***** of my birth

#strong #broken #places #whole #blood #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023

when the preternatural is ordinatty

preternatural ordinatty, beyond what is normal or natural,
when the ordinary is suspended, and my river me~wanders
between profound and mundane, tween hell and tomorrow

and miracles are shrines to make believe

the break-fast poem comes in threads of grayest cobwebs,
days are necklaces of obsidian stones, hanging heavily on neck,
head bowed, weighty matters, disasters unfolding and
sins of omission, commission block your throated gorge,
sallowing swallowing freedom waters can’t flow,
trickle~stuck in between a cascaded
motionless, collection of bouldered words

and why should
you care, it’s ok, no obligation and
depart at your own free will,

but I’ll still be here, introspecting, introspectating,
observing my hands and my lifelines that cross~twisted,
me~wondering like the river of rêves & reefs & thoughts
of all that I have done,
& not done,
and
both lists guilt-choke me, too many failures,

I recall writing
eight years and one half years ago,
all the sad words start with D
and still do, still so,
preternatural
ordinatty

(The preternatural that which appears outside or beside,“suspended between the mundane and the miraculous". In the early modern period, the term was used by scientists to refer to abnormalities and strange phenomena of various kinds that seemed to depart from the norms of nature.)

All Sad Words Start with D

deep in the pond of unhappy, swimming,
drowning the next contemporaneous
depression thought quickly swallowed,
desperation in quick glances everywhere,
dawn is no consolation but just another
daily drawing tighter of twine cutting
disillusionment

dear god, commences every thought,
delayed answers have yet to arrive,
**** the deity's non-responsivness,
dare not say out loud lest,
deserved fates be worse, be realized,
didn't know? how can that be?
disguiser par excellent, I am the original
deceiver

But I never think about

death or dying, for that would be
defeat finale, a statute to, a status of none, a
destiny some wick spark, still insists can be
deferred

differed always,
diffidently, but grasping yet at the
double entendre that is my
dark vision of a future already past

May 2015

#lipstadt #preternatural #ordinatty #dwords

Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023

“We were never lonely” by Ernest Hemingway

"we were never lonely
and never afraid
when we were together.

I know that the night
is not the same
as the day:
that all things are different,
that the things of the night
cannot be explained in the day,
because they do not then exist,
and the night can be a dreadful time
for lonely people once their
loneliness has started.

But with Catherine there was
almost no difference in the night
except that it was an even better time.

If people bring so much courage
to this world the world has to ****
them to break them, so of course
it kills them. The world breaks every
one and afterward many are
strong at the broken places."

A Farewell to Arms,
Ernest Hemingway

#hemingway #broken #places #never #lonely

Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023

Write like you have already Run out of time…. (what do you want for breakfast?)

Write like you have already Run out of time…
(what do you want for breakfast?)

the despair heats my wearied blood to near a freezing temp,
and the Hamilton song lyric, fresh on my mind,
haunts my soul, with a modified tense-ion,
running becomes also~ran, already now, is a past tense,
gonna get me a weapon, other than words
cause I want the
satisfaction of taking some murderer~haters down

anyway, future is now past tense revisiting,
and you think can still make a difference, but
optimism ain’t my forte, could be a
genetic POV curse,
a refresher course

BUT it’s past time,

used to worry, still do, that my grandkids
in a decade or less, would not have running,
potable water, electricity for a couple
hours a day, as we transition to a
new world the visionary~isms haven’t
prepared a **** for

and words are cheaper now
than they have ever been,

and the freedom to hate gonna be
added to the new constitution with a
new Bill of Rights revised, approved list,
got no illusions that ‘no preservation’ of
my kind will be a top ten item item

now I worry about the useful idiots, believers in
“extermination of the vermin”
are revisiting  this world, and laugh at the ‘evidence’
that it can’t happen here, and/or anywhere, because
those who call for my destruction are celebrating in
rallies from sea to shining sea, yeah, not that sea,
not the one they chanting ‘bout, no doubt, they’ll
extend the boundless vision
to get us all,
once and for all,
and  please don’t tell me I’m
overreaching
cause war and organized ****** is ONLY
just the same as
politics by another name,
and. your view, let’s **** a jew,
is protected speech,
and land of the free will soon have a whole
new meaning for political,
as on free of people like me…

so let’s go about our day, intensely discussing the NFL,
and it’s never to early to talk about summer plans and
air plane tickets just so hard to get, forget about getting a plumber,
and a now memory resurfaces
of visiting a synagogue in Rome
in the 1980’s and seeing the machine gun toting carabinieri
standing guard outside and swastikas on Parisian bustops
and what an idiot I’ve been thinking the future will be like
the recent past, but weight of ancient Idée Fixe
of  five thousands years duration
and when asked
what do I want for breakfast,
and other
newly pointless questions,
my response
is on point:

don’t give a ***

8:54am
Mon Nov 13 2023
moving on

#lipstadt #write #already #out #time #breakfast #***

Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023

“raggedy^ around the edges” (jew hatred, pointless poetry)

an all purpose cleaner response to the

how-ya-doing-question,

as my vibe unmistakable;
the hatred in the world directed at
MY PEOPLE,
is inexplicable, beyond reason,
a hatred raw and pure in the
tiny places we humans hide it, lest
our ancient linkage to an unreasoned,
embarrassing emotion, be revealed

but now revealed it is reveled,
as the freedom to despise is a
valued thing

is an ancient scar, now freshly wounded
and the two thousand year old accumulated, callused,
surrounding wafer thin, layered upon layer of
tissue,
wiped away
in utter disbelief
cleansed,
a different kind of impure clean,
“like” an ethnic cleansing,
traceless, whisked away in a wink of moment,
a goner.

like hope, prior sentient optimism
sentenced to life imprisonment and
this sentence, and this very sentence!
written finally understanding that it is
a punishment
far worse than the quick relief of death.

c’mon, how about a few “fukk you jew”
cri de coeur, heartfelt, genuine, pointless
hate

no, not I, no, not me,
spare me the pithy comments,
the pointless sympathy, glistening
like evaporating water droplets
before disappearing, I ask myself,
not
why they hate, why it persists,
for this I understand and accept
the foulness of what we are capable of is,

beloved,

as a secret pleasure, now secreted in torrents.

no, I ask myself,

why do I write poetry,

for it is as pointless as
the hatred directed at me,
from birth, till death,
and ever after,
the humanity of poetry
just another fraud

another reason
why this man cries in the bathroom,^
not from any shape of shame,

because poetry is pointless
in times of hatred, and now we
know, recognize, it is always
somewhere, nearby, always
present and prescient,
pointless hatred,
itching to be pointed at me,
makes for
pointless poetry.

To whom shall I point my poetry?

1:57am
Sun Nov 12
2023
where and when
jew hatred is everywhere
———————————-

^. https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1724180/with-raggedy-old-words-this-is-how-i-write/

^ https://hellopoetry.com/poem/399294/do-you-know-why-men-cry-in-the-bathroom/

#lipstadt #raggedy #around #edges #jew #hatred #pointless #poetry