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  Jul 2024 Nat Lipstadt
Carlo C Gomez
~
"Why is there only one chair in this room?"

"This once was an island." She replied.

"You favor this place then, I take it?"

"How can I not," said she. "The dawn here is quiet."

"Not on this floor, you are much mistaken! The stairs are like an avalanche."

Looking down at herself, she quickly changed the subject. "There are barcodes on each breast now."

"I see. Were you nervous?"

"Only when focusing on the morning break," She confessed. "Otherwise I was much like you--killing what keeps us alive."

"Is that so bad?"

"I wonder. Sometimes I still feel the bruises." She stated. "But I am told this is normal."

"What else did they tell you?"

"To quit worrying about not being built to scale," she stated in displeasure.

"...and?"

"For me to prepare to fall again for the apocalyptic things written in the sky," She admitted with a wicked smile.

"What's so funny?"

"I recognized your handwriting long ago," She uttered into the centrifuge.
~
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
June was a disastrous month, with no direction but home,
as if it, home, was magnetized, and every escape/avoidance
attempt was refuted, and the irrevocable demanded my time,
my presence, in the city, where all my troubles lay pus~festering
lesions,  yanking me from my refuge, my peace of mind tattered
with bacillus interruptus

She called June the month of clusterf—ck, accurate and uncharacteristically, unlike her, a violent, ***** epithet

but correct.

July, the month that the gods of Cesar jealously rule,
bring Les Surprises, and the pattern recommences and
the mind surgically thinks calm yet knows no peace,
and sleep is contaminated, the dreams violent and
repetitiously, ******… a sure sign of the tumult within…
the eerie and  the unstable interrupting my writing,
breathing and ever constant denial of the peace afforded by
successfully lying to myself…

a minor action bring flaming, flashing warning lights on
my human dashboard, seemingly unconnected, but perhaps
a single sensor has gone detective… for the uncorrelated
stability of this vehicle, my anti-skid system have been triggered and the dread check engine light is ominously continuously yellow…implying worse is yet to come, before the finality of…red

symbolism us everywhere; inescapable, unavoidable and
irrecoverable and perhaps, alas, the worst - irreconcilable!
all this is the slowest excoriation of excruciating…and it’s
everpresent, omnipresent, like an angered finger pointing
a constant thunderbolt of guilt, which points transfixedly
at me…with the sneers of thunder preceeding its electricity

last year, around this time, the heart was near to dare explode,
with no overt warning that was paid proper heed, now I pay
and pay but there is no specialist available to cure, let alone,
properly diagnose what’s ailing me…even though I know
exactly, I cannot openly confess the origins of My Malaise

I recover old poems, mine, that delve into the mysteries of
solace, and they should  offer comforting direction, but the
sticking place is strong within my chest and all topical
creams cannot penetrate sufficiently to offer relief, let
alone, let alone, let a l o n e, provide an effective curettage of
removal…

symbols come before my eyes in formulas I do not understand,
which renders them worse than useless, for if a formula cannot
begin or end with = sign, what good is it, what good am I,
and now post-reparation, my heart speaks to me volubly
with such troubled sadness, I am nearly and dangerous
close to being a being who is nearly *frightened unto death
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
roundabout poem (another poem, another day)

<>

the notion punches into my mouth when
chilling , deleting and wasting time *
pro=ductively
(professionally ducking responsibilities)
with no home to go to, but to write with purposeful
meandering, in a roundabout manner,
on a Saturday, luxury~leisurely in bed with runs
for asiago bagels and blue mountain coffee,
and wondering why you would read this, and
losing my debate internal & and infernal if
this is worth my time, nonetheless the urging
is only purging by clicking clacking on a keyboard,
inviting you to join me  under my cozy
floral coverlet, and to enjoy my pastoral view,
of water, women and why not, a trilogy of

factorials (or is it factorals? permutations or combinations) *another poem, another day
)

panoramic bleeding view unceasingly changing,
reflecting god’s mood swings or an atheist’s humbuggery)

and women lies beside me, guilty pleasure, mine or hers😉, becoming part, a parcel upon the land/waterscape/escape, with sun rays invisible yet blindingly make me glinting and squinting,
and wet grass, dripping trees,  and going round and round, so
stray thots evolving/revolving and thus
this roundabout poem deserves a decent burial,
so I thank it, thank you, thank her, and the sky
and the glisten of a wet drenched everything,
a Saturday~Sabbath on which a poem was delivered
from me within, in a cesarean eruption,
my child blessed, sent to you with gratitude,
a much underrated emotion, but which occupies
me frequently when your days go dimmer,
and the

mind is sharply focused/used on about
what is value,
valuable, and what shall be valued on this damp
rainfall rainfull wordfull wonderful momentary
escapery into being together with…you, silly!

writ  pre-noon,
Saturday~Sabbath,
(
on S.I., by the Sound’s calming waters
where the poems fall from trees on a glider
of wet leaves, or fly by on a modest mph breeze,
looking for human sense to grab aholt of for
canning and preservation…come see for yourself….*)
a nonsense prayer/diatribe/ pointedly purposeless
and yet, deeply satisfying…
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
From the Prayer of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (see notes)

<>

the phrase grabs my eyelids,
a forced opening,
nay,
a denial of closing,
our most human
and natural
escape hatch


and I wonder…
is it self~slander,
or is it the obverse,
that explores a desire
to enumerate honestly
for what is…is…
let the costs count us!

is that it?

merely
poetry
airy escapery,
what passes
for  t r u t h  in
these dark days?
<>
the damning costs count me
in their number!p
as ******!

<!>

hapless victim of living,
pondering ponderous
divination of saintly
defiant definitions
of ‘greater good’

’tis the difficile,
entre the pill and the
bitter, oh so bitter the herbs,
for it is
so plainly & so hard
to differentiate, et
distinguer mais être distingué(1)
distinguish tween but not to be distinguished

memories that are costs disguised,
reverting as dreams, in the true~alone
hours of the twenty four, when it’s
just you, & fighter and worthy opponent
them costs,
who needs no definition
tolling the steeple bells
of utter anguish,

as you're thre greatest living expert
in these matters,
(le plus personnel)
the sins of action and transaction,
And the worst, those  truly heinous
inactions,
face off in opposition in the boxing ring
<>
and the costs paid, a savage skilled
opponent, intimate of your every trickery,
the bare knuckled brawler, whose knows,
knows! the true tally, the bodies you’ve
buried, the children witnesses to your
creative abominations, lies you tell no
one else, but yourself- every single day!


the urge to cease here
grows stronger by the second,
minutes past and les défenses have risen,
what disclosures revelations bring forgiveness?

this my spotlight,
caught in the headlights,
where fessing up is in reverse,
fessing down to the black bottom,
where ugliness is the normative and
vain attempts at denial offers no escapes
from glutinous disgusting mess of gelled of
nothing but the truth

nah,
you don’t want to know,
what a human can accomplish
in a short seven decades of decadence
and recount constantly the costs of consternation
<>
so I‘ll let you
retreat to the gray masses
all your own where your very
owned
wonderings
are intercepted
for where I go now
willingly, unfailingly,
failing
needing not, requiring not
no company
Teach me to serve as you deserve,
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To labor and not to seek to rest,
To give of my self and not ask for a reward,
Except the reward of knowing that I am doing your will.
http://www.stignatiussacschool.org › ...PDF
St. Ignatius Prayer

SB- threw in some french for you to learn

(1) to distinguish between but to be distinguished
<>
writ, second week
of July 2024
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
<>
self~explanatory, too many 100 mile+ trips,
taking a toll on a sleep deprived human,
the pattern unch’d, dabbing mine eyes,
to stay awake, precious cargo inherent,
and the poem dabbling yield little, giving
up writs from a priori, sans review, sans
an electric transference, age showing,
in too many ways..,
this is not an apology, ‘cept to the fifty or
so read my name with a loyalty that is
beyond appreciated - the summer of running back and forth, ferrying visitors,
the hum of the dishwasher a daily demur *******,
a timing event, and nobody touches the machine but me…(1)

a weak explanatory, but this my  sorry storied explain ~away,
flatter myself the
out put will return to prior quality,
nonetheless, I feel keenly,  my subpar,
performance and I will do better,
as I bend over the freshly cleaned
dishes of past poems
**a promise to myself
7/8/Do Better
not neglecting my shopping, ,restaurant’s planning, pool buoy,
all around schlepper,  etc
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
wake up to an overcast clouded day,
streaks of palest of sad multi nefarious
blues and white singes, but the effect
is negatory, for its prior predecessor
was glorious in its sunny, grandiose
perfection; perfect in every  respect,
and today arrives with a 500am
greeting of peace but overcast with
sadness, but humility, this is a childlike
an in between day, a reminder tomorrow’s
unfeted fate could always be worse…

yet every day is perfect in its uniqueness,
and in silence but but firmly loud within,
I utter the prayer taught to every Jewish
child, as soon as they learn to speak with
comprehension, these, their daily first words…

”I gratefully thank You, O living
and eternal King, for You have returned
my soul within me with compassion—
abundant is Your faithfulness!
(2)

But in so many things, the Hebrew words
are multi-purposed, shades of complexity
even in though the simplest, plainest opening
word (Modeh)  is intuitive simple…
”I thank you”

Within
a simple direct word of thankfulness ,
lies shadings, just like today’s weather,
in its relativity, in compare of its
less-than-perfect predecessor, are
shades of admission & surrender…

though not obligated, never free to abandon
the unending reworking of the definition of me,
and all the draft versions
as yet, unpublished



Notes
———
(2) the prayer spoken upon awakening Modeh Ani

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modeh_Ani#:~:text=Text,-Gender%20of%20speaker&text=Modeh%20ani%20lefanekha%20melekh%20c%E1%B8%A5ai,compassion%3­B%20abundant%20is%20Your%20faithfulness.
this, the second cut…

(1)
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