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Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
Crazy Guy Sends His Poems to a Dead Guy

~for Joel Frye,and yes it’s true~


ah another trivial pursuit of trivial nuggets
bout yours untruly, that is a truly truly,
poets that
I’ve known here, but who have moved on,
it’s my obligation to keep them posted on the
au courant,

so slip them a poem or two,
when you ain’t looking to

make one wonder even more,
what makes a man a nutty Natty.?

well if you don’t know the answer to that after
two t h o u s a n d plus poems, you are not getting me

but Joel Frye,
mutual enjoyed our scribblings,
yeah, he got me,
so via social media,
keep him posted of my latest écrits,
fancy french for scribbles,

of course he gets them
before me,
in so far I assume
my thots are known to rise
or more likely drop,
even before
they traverse that narrow passage between my ears…
but really, just in case,
in the peace and quiet
of the hubbub above, with all them comings and goings,
he, God forbid, (ha!), he may overlook my inane insanities,
and the weirdness
of my compositions,
real, ethereal and in between~al,

that’s a great whew~relief knowing,
at least
some one!
is reading my stuff…

natty
Joel Frye,
Poet on HP

Deceased 2023
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
DISINHIBITOR” By Ariana Reines






   <>
  

There’s a sadness I’m avoiding

It’s why I live like this

The truth is I know I can’t hide

From it. I know I can’t

But I can hide from you

Or I somehow still think I can

& what that really means is hide it

From you. It’s not that I don’t trust

You. I’m just scared to lose

It. I’m not avoiding

My sadness I’m trying

To protect it. What I lost

I already lost a really

Long time ago. Whatever

I tried to do apart

From what I lost had more

To do with covering it

With probably some kind

Of monument than “moving on”

But I’m the only one who needs

To know that it’s a monument

Or what it’s for. Anthills

Mountains out of molehills.

Growing a roughness into

A jewel: Aphrodite’s secret.

I am ignorant of my people’s

History but I have seen the scrolls

In their crowns and gowns.

The times I won I wasn’t able

To celebrate. So I learned equanimity

But equanimity’s as tricky

As any other state. These may

Not be words of wisdom

But they’ve got no other

Place to live
published in The New Yorker Dec 11, 2023
  Dec 2023 Nat Lipstadt
brandychanning
Retro Morn: Re-Reading Jenny (1.) and Her Purple Hat, (2.), Listening to Vonda Shepard

I am a beautiful woman, and reliably informed so,
by handsome. men, lustful fools, and one too many
sideward glances

in a difference place, musical needs call me out to retro smooth me
away from the waves of nausea of news repeats ingested, the lesser
qualities of human beings basic basest nature, I inhale subdued

Jenny’s defiance of life’s expectations and Vonda’s voice
smooth my discordant emotive candles that won’t stay lit,
add in a touch of melting Joni & Divine Ms. Bette,
gets me slow kickstarting

and I have not reached
the lofty plateau of
twenty five years of age

but my mom, the  Queen Regent, reminds me royalty possesses
very old souls, which Is why I’m caught out listening, dancing
awake to the music of
her youth* and hear her discreetly humming the tunes, even though the phone connection broken minutes earlier

she signed off with a practised Elizabethan airy disturbance royal wave of her hand, instructing this raining (no, not reigning)
Queen to  “darling go write a poem…”

don’t we all listen to our mothers?


my name is brandychanning

*music inhale subdued kickstarting a poem
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
some of us walk insistently,
instinctively, and instantly to
and upon the edged path,

this physical nexus & abstract mental locus,
a cliffside enticing rock strewn trail,
drawn of men, by men, for men

(yes, men are people too, still)

enthralling views,
down to the riverside,
where eyes intuit the
beauteous aroma of
precious precocious
precarious precipices
and the near-stench of
mortality

amidst
wafting scents of inane undesirable need,  
hints of destruction, or,
alternating eager relief,
like a ****** infused, instant attractiveness,
making weakness in the knees, all too real,
trembling with a delicious accented edge of
a fresh, familiar scent, fresh baked bread,
an all enveloping consumption need now!

to
crave what we fear,
to fear what we crave
our cravings are craven,

this twisted sense, annuls
our common sensibility, yet,
titillates our pleasured imagined relief,
releases, our unsated, even better,
our insatiable curiosity to tremble,
an entire body enjoined by vibrato~
enticing tremulations, shaken and stirred,
this danger choice releases something primordial,
escape? a reckless wrecking so deeply designed,
it has its very own designation…death wish

multitudes of easy choices afforded my senses,
and by accident, all mine chosen, all nearby,
I travel the esplanade près de the East River,
where even if calm is the sole visiblilty,
undercurrents and the unpredictable passage
of container wakes and the larger freighters
will hand you down, so easy, to become parcel
to a littered river bottom of centuries’ artifacts

but even more tempting, the balcony,
a hop, skip and a jump unlocked,
mere ten steps, no need for a running start
why it’s the “height of convenience,”
he ruefully winces, and not even any
TSA lines or inconveniencing “conveniences”

Why this calamity seems so desperately desirable,
Why this unabrogated feat so featured, nay, even
feted in our hot? cold? bloodstream

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.

Do You Know Why Men Cry in the Bathroom?
Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath

Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
inspired by a short story from the man from Snake River


<>


no alarm clocks heard expiring,
unrequired and unrequited,
we,
those, self-employed by the
nocturnal repetitive recounting
of sins of omission and worse,
those commissioned in
anger and haste, that breed only
more anger and lay further waste
from humans to 
humans,
awaken with an
irregular precision
and bad disorder,
demanding chances,
expiation, restitution, amendment,
but time erodes
possibilities for the
impossible,
foreign forgiveness

knock-you-down rushing currents
of water erodes Snake River boulders,
them oldsters just like the litany of our
malfeasances, indestructible in nature
geologic,
and in
human nature
illogic,
terms, such as time measurements,
irreverent and irredeemable,
for our sins
live far longer than
our owned memories,
in those harmed, who
cannot in the unlimited timeless quantity of
ever ever,
understand

your wry smile,
your why cries,
audibles you’ve
play called, go
unheard, unseen,
even and odd
Bach Orchestral Suites,
Beethoven Sonatas
more mock than soothe

trapped between industrial carpet
and flat unpainted Armstrong ceiling tiles,
you
in a hell of your own creation, forgot to include,
a Sabbath day extant, of rest for weary creators,
ever ever,

or planned in a world you’ve  designed,
so the best you
can do
is write
another and another
confession ever ever

watching and listening to
the alarm clock that neither
requires setting, for
it’s audible ticking is
alarm-ing curse
enough ever ever
that always never
rings
see “4:30 Am in the City” by Jim Cunningham from his book of short stories,
“Reel Stories”

writ at 7:00am
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
~inspired by Lar Lubovitch,
gifted to Glenn Currier  
who made my eyes water-dance this
morning ~
<>

raise the arms in preparation
for an articulated genteel waving
to keyboard,
an elegant slow descent,
fingers extending, splaying,
but in fine coordinated curvature

for they are 24 carat gold filled fingertips,
word & dance-art~infused
i king and expelling sounds of dancing words,
all over my body

some body part of me,
grasps that the cylinder of ink,
becomes a baton,
single instrument director,
an attaché,
an additive~lubricant,
for all my orifices,
firing rocket-in-the-air bomb bursts
while body in its entirety
motions,
shuckin’ and jivin’
in the prayer~poem first position,
a rock n’ roll motion,
back and forth,
to fro,
holy mesmerized

words run down my arms,
letters drop encased in salt drop capsules,
from the intuition in my eyes,
we see them forming words,
pooling,
without volition,
upon,

all my surfaces, but they
a mere conveyance,
bringing these expulsive explosive verbs
in an ordered fashion,
to your eyes,

intuitively,
asking you
to dance with me,
begging you
to envision me,
hearing the piano maintaining rhythm,
while a violin crys out in a overly long held notes,
concertinas  bellowing,
all together quavering,
oscillating, emoting,

and you!
you are reading me perfectly

so we dance in unity
cheek to cheek,
to the song of
our poem,
our words, our tongues,
our entire entities,
rogue kissing
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