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I have seen the bliss
before the morning's dawn .
I have taken kiss from a woman
as she slept like a new born fawn .
I have seen the sun and moon set
together in a western sky .
I have seen all the reasons now
as we let our loving die .

I have seen the fog at times when
there was nothing one could see .
I have seen eternity from the mountains
all the way down to the sea .
I have seen love's kind embrace and
felt it's breath upon my skin .
But I don't even dare to dream
there will be another like you again .

Oh , I have seen paradise through
The yellow of the glass .
Tasted it upon my tongue
And it was so very nice .
I have smelled the rose's fumes
And it permanates the air
For evermore I assumed
But now face cold realities stare

I have seen the petals fall
one by one by one
I have seen the fingers slip away
until there were none .
I have this empty feeling
at the bottom of my pit
God it is so unwilling
I think I'm feeling sick

Our love has evaporated
After summer's rain  
Leaving steaming memories
Heat and searing pain
But I have not seen
Nor think I ever will
See a love again like this
Forever that's so real
  Jan 2024 Nat Lipstadt
irinia
the city looming deeper in its final rays of clarity, the yellow of an embrace enticing like an unknown skin, a flock of dark birds moving like a promise, the feeling of the ****** self, hundreds of years of desire. never stop asking the impossible questions to capture the paradox of life, how much trust we need to acclaim its splendour

something possesses this unseen something, it makes me shrill and tender, furious and ripe. how much disappointment can we bear. I want to be  engulfed by sunset like a fool, I stand with my eyes open for rain to fall into my dreams. love is something life invents to keep its honour, from the stones' point of view, love is mysterious, from the point of view of nothingness, it is everything that can fill the flesh, the empty space of atoms,  a sweet preserve. it teaches us to endure the hidden face of light

at last she no longer possesses me, at last I possess her briefly like a window posseses the clarity of morning  
I am humble, insatiable,  less blind, I am fierce and proud

We are, says everything that simply is
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
Lay My Body Down

Sunday sipping my Hawaiian java,
the world’s end is hallmarked this weekend,
like hash marks on a old fashioned
wood ruler,
and unrequested and unbequested,
heady voices demand a retelling,
even a tallied
recounting
of 2023
the year I almost blew it.

took some pics, even a video,
of my-internals, and pronounced me
nearer my god than thee,
I was precisely, scientifically,
97% almost dead,
said the occultist
said see you tomorrow
for a haircut and a nip and tuck
upon thy heart

strangely,
I was of good cheer,
not fully comprehending my walk on the edge,
and
strangely,
never gave it too much thought,
which for a poet,
is just plain weird.

But this Sunday,
as I lay my body down,
thinking about “deadlines,”
all missed,
and are all still, cursing me,
residuals of 2022 & 2023,
which are carry on baggage
for the next trip through the
door of
2024

and these words come jumbled and
we are out of time to sort
them better than this,
but
as I lay this body down,
one last time,
on the ruler’s edges edge,
the last hash mark nearly touched,
and almost
equidistant from this year and the
unmeasured blankness of a clean white sheet
of Next!

<>

a good ole saying, a good ole lyric,
“lay my body down”
invokes image of spring water
a brook wash~flowing
over the shell of man
clothed in white linen shroud,

water of clarity crystalline,
taking a tour~trip with an itinerary
of (must-see!) sights,
cracks and crevices,
slats, slots and slits,
apertures and orifices,
groans and worry lines
accumulated this nearby past,
my body’s own poem

<>

but I recall W.H. Auden’s words
about the revitalization quality of water,
and I decide to
baptize myself,
like recommissioning, retrofitting
an-old ship

(though I am a serious jew,
who knows nothing of this rite)

But fortunate seemed that

Day because of my dream, and enlightened,

And dearer,


water,

than ever your voice as if
Glad—though goodness knows why—to run with the human race,
Wishing, I thought, the least of men their
Figures of splendor, their holy places.


<>

in some places, you can follow the dotted lines,
on my physical container;
man-made marks from
exploration of my body,
now understanding these lines and holes
are a schoolboy’s
long division’s remainder,
(always annoying)
bits & pieces of him,
looking for a surety that one can
yet call it home,
one more year?

<>
my interstices,
tween the manmade decorations
of medical foreplay
and the cri de coeur
of my mental anguish,
are life reminders,
I am
alive and still hurting,
BUT

could be worse.


enough.
Aug 22 11:44pm/Dec.31, 9:50am
2023
  Dec 2023 Nat Lipstadt
Carlo C Gomez
~
Time is a dark feeling
—the spell of a vanishing loveliness;
in the present mist
the imperatives in the wind
move less and less.

Haul away the anchor,
this is not a safe place.

Between insufficient coasts
—a land of look behind—
science is dead,
pessimism in the remaining oar,
and flies in the eyes of the Queen.
Their graves decorate the spine
on the east bank
they call Euthanasia,
each crucifix made of plasticine.

There's a discursive quality to the sea,
I can see the pearl fishermen,
the empty dancehall,
victims of latitude and eclipse.

I can see the tattered sleeves
of Edmund Fitzgerald and the pockets
of emptiness inside,
hoping to quell the hunger
of the cruelest month.

I can see an underwater country,
colonized by the unborn children
of pregnant African women
thrown off of slave ships
during the Middle Passage.

I can see myself sinking;
farewell my sorrow,
keeping precarious time
against a backdrop
of silence less and less;
its final sound being
that of seagulls
flying away into the distance
—a force of nature that’s
both solemn and inspirational
in equal parts.

~
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
But I know…

this blending of a warped (time) continuum,
the future resting on shaky table legs,
errors of habitual inconsistency,
one on top of a prior, on top of…

we pursue regrets, misdeeds, theorizing
that we can fix the wobbly mess we instigated,

that can we smooth the ruckus that
the unknown in surety is bonded to be
surly serve up buffet style,

we help ourselves to troubles so attractive,
like rice thrown at a wedding, dead seeds of
messes yet to come

old regrets freshly regretted, for we waste
not even
what we wanted then
even now!

for we do not proper value the passing of each momentary,
but weep and mourn the entirety of years corrupted by
wrong-headed mish-mash of longings,
swift stupid inexcusable acts of impulsive weaknesses permitted,
so that we dust
the dust encasing artificial flowers,
that are so faded that the dust mispermits one
to fool themselves
that they were once ,
burnt orange vibrant,

like the optimism of a sunny day gone and hoped for
just once more

yes, I know why…

<><> <>

*Burnt Norton by T.S.Eliot
*

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.
All time is eternally present 

All time is unredeemable.


What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility   

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.

My words echo
,
Thus, in your mind.
                                  

 But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

<><><><>>


postscript

the rushing to my ever nearer demise
the dust suffocates,
the regrettables
have no half life,
and I dust,
I know
if I do not,
I choke…
9:02am 12/14/23
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
sad fact and none truer,
despite my accumulation
of millions of trinkets,
and millions of lottery tickets,
useless word combines,
acres of scripted scripture
of scrumptious scarred
scribbles,
and dollars,

I boast not of my good fortune
for I am a waste not~want not
tykee type, no spendthrift me,
and my phone and writing tablet
date from the Paleo Age, technically,
and one’s batteries live in the
red and yellow light of the
dying lightening edge of the
OMGF,

1%

otherwise known as nearer to death experience.

carry chargers everywhere but my
batter usage habits have eroded my
charging life and happiness for us
a mere clean
green clean 20%

you see or maybe
you don’t,
my devices
have endured countless
drops and falls, just like
my body at this tender age,
and the male man ~~😵 female connectivity
of plug and plug hole are deformed,
bent so that charging is a struggle moderne,
a dance of avoidance of an earliest death

Living on the edge of 1%
changes a human, one thinks
constantly of the fragility of the
electric grid, and how the hell
we will charge all them unwanted
EV’s with insufficient charging stations,
not to mention all those spanking brand
new power plants we are rushing to build
NIMBY

(cmon, you can’t be unaware of this
contraction, for it is the guiding principle
of urban design, today)

anyway, my tablet is in the bathroom sink,
whose rigid porcelain angles allows for 
a conjoing  of the cord into that
flux capacitor hole to make tentative
kissy
kissy noises
and by the light of the
early morn,
said antique Generation 1 ipad
will be restored to usable status
for yet another brief moment
in time
and another
bad poem

this choring is a skill honed bendless endless
experimentation as to how
to insert a Peroni shaped
(beer bottle; no, not not a Pony Man plug shape)
into a lightening squarish O, and witness the
miracle of ******* of
Yes! Yes! YES!
(thank you Steven Spielberg))
a semi functioning de-vice,

vice being the exactly right adjective

my mind is weird, true,
but I draw on my experience
to share with you the specialness
of being in the  elite,
them
1%

so you can be less envious.
you satisfied boors,
awakening refreshed after
eight hours sleep and a green light indicator
smugly informing you are an overheated hoi peloi
member of the
100%ers

yes I’m done!
why does my software
keep asking me that?
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
sad fact and none truer,
despite my accumulation
of millions of trinkets,
and millions of lottery tickets,
useless word combines,
acres of scripted scripture
of scrumptious scarred
scribbles,
and dollars,

I boast not of my good fortune
for I am a waste not~want not
tykee type, no spendthrift me,
and my phone and writing tablet
date from the Paleo Age, technically,
and one’s batteries live in the
red and yellow light of the
dying lightening edge of the
OMGF,

1%

otherwise known as nearer to death experience.

carry chargers everywhere but my
batter usage habits have eroded my
charging life and happiness for us
a mere clean
green clean 20%

you see or maybe
you don’t,
my devices
have endured countless
drops and falls, just like
my body at this tender age,
and the male man ~~😵 female connectivity
of plug and plug hole are deformed,
bent so that charging is a struggle moderne,
a dance of avoidance of an earliest death

Living on the edge of 1%
changes a human, one thinks
constantly of the fragility of the
electric grid, and how the hell
we will charge all them unwanted
EV’s with insufficient charging stations,
not to mention all those spanking brand
new power plants we are rushing to build
NIMBY

(cmon, you can’t be unaware of this
contraction, for it is the guiding principle
of urban design, today)

anyway, my tablet is in the bathroom sink,
whose rigid porcelain angles allows for 
a conjoing  of the cord into that
flux capacitor hole to make tentative
kissy
kissy noises
and by the light of the
early morn,
said antique Generation 1 ipad
will be restored to usable status
for yet another brief moment
in time
and another
bad poem

this choring is a skill honed bendless endless
experimentation as to how
to insert a Peroni shaped (beer bottle,
(no,
not a Pony Man plug shape)
into a lightening squarish O, and witness the
miracle of ******* of
Yes! Yes! YES!
(thank you Steven Spielberg)
a semi functioning de-vice,

vice being the exactly right adjective

my mind is weird, true,
but I draw on my experience
to share with you the specialness
of being in the  elite,
them
1%

so you can be less envious.
you satisfied boors,
awakening refreshed after
eight hours sleep and a green light indicator
smugly informing you are a hoi peloi
member of the
100%ers

yes I’m done,
why does my software
keep asking me that?
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