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Nat Lipstadt Sep 2024
Feb 2014 (rev. Sept 2024)

you who dare to choose,
thus the risk incurring,
after calculating the oddities,
accepting the perfidies
that others will present
with deceptive smiles,


but
once done,
let it be your single solitary
chosen life, a bridge, and a red
badge of courage, and let us all
say life is the reward for being true,
and honorable
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2024
(trigger warning: my apologies to the long poem haters,
nah, not really)

<>

Dawg!

your last and latest test be driving me crazee-
the poem conception birth rate is out of control,
them titles intriguing, stinging,
falling like curling up and dying oak leaves crunchy neath my feet,

and this little town don’t allow no burning thereof,
inclusive of leaves, poem drafts or witches

it’s not only the skin-pores, inhaling,
but the braniac neurons
that are clogging up
(ex. where’s my coffee mug hiding
when it ain’t hiding in the microwave)
and there ain’t no legal Drano for the
upper cortex contextual,
and condoms on my ears looked upright atrifling,
small & unbecoming, 
so pse. put a lid on it,
without sacrificing my nice head of grayling fibers
you graciously let me inherit ~
(thanks mom!)

soooo,
need to provide a method of contraception, legal and100% poem~proof, to keep me in decent metal health, with a natural speed limit on steadily in~fluxing immigrants of
seditious inspirational insights,
and these insider’s outside sights/sighs that
my eyes catalogue, and remind/tell, as well,
my buddies, the animals and the elements,
who constantly are hinting ‘n suggesting themselves
for yet another scripture of praiseworthy adoration

(esp. the rabbits, the ospreys, &
the nighttime starry skies,
a living tableaux de peinture…)
to pretty please
cease and desist
before *I

seize (up) and de-exist,

overwhelmed by piles of dead leaves
and out of computer memory
for anymore inspiration retention

Your earliest attention to this
Matter of Urgency to me, and

What‘a that you said?

Start a petition?
You kidding?

Might as we try to buy indulgences,
in bulk at Costco,
though they are never in stock!

I get it.

Using Pandora as your voice never fails.

You just played Judy Collins singing
Pete Seeger’s Turn,Turn, Turn.

Unsubtle.

This is my seasonal hint too,
part of my timed descent towards the
shadowed valleys + visible peaks I’ve
occasionally reached

My finale’s approchment nigh,
yet, don’t turn my heart or my senses
just quite yet,
from the spark divine you have placed within us each,
don’t let it burn brightest before
it flames out of existence
into extinction.
Appreciate the heads up, really

Most don’t know ‘bout this method of our conversing,
and the hint, the seasonal changeover, taking place now,
is mourned by my utterance with every breath of
a Kaddish prayer
contained within
a larger message:
natty, it’s time to
turn, turn, turn

Which way when,
of courses,
you’ll musically clue me in…

but you impatient being,
drawn after all in the
shape of humans,
fast forwards, nay hurtles this human,
with chariots spun from a summer sun’s
fonts and hints,
accidents and incidents,
by spectacles through spectacles,
colors emboldened by  
in a glory, glory, glorious
sun-nation

****!

Vienna Teng sweetly invades singing
Homecoming (Walter,’s Song):

but things are good I've got a lot of followers of my faith
I've got a whole congregation living in my head these days
and I'm preaching from the pulpit
to cries of “Amen brother”
closing my eyes to feel the warmth come back
and I've come home
even though I swear I've never been so alone
I've come home
I just want to be living as I'm dying
just like everybody here
just want to know my little flicker of time is worthwhile
and I don't know where I'm driving to
but I know I'm getting old
and there's a blessing in every
moment every mile…

well I'll kneel down on the carpet here
though I never was sure of God
think tonight I'll give Him the benefit of the doubt
I switch off the lights and imagine that waitress outlined in the bed
her hair falling all around me
I smile and shake my head
well we all write our own endings
and we all have our own scars
but tonight I think I see what it's all about
because I've come home
I've come home.”*
(lyrics by Tom Hall)

Got it.

so many summarize better,
but even still a bit heavy handed when
you follow up with  Sting’s “Fields of Gold,”
and even, jeez, Louse,
“Danny Boy?!”

Your DJ is a ham
(I know, not exactly kosher).

It’s my season of the muse,
extracting every remaining incantation,
knowing  there are hundreds, thousands,
of notional ideations
in my draft files,
some born even before HP!

But deny them not their use,
they cannot remain forever
unemployed,
but at their peril, double toil and trouble,
be them entrusted, encrusted, secreted
in someone else’s existence,
by your annoying divine persistence

Demanding Being,
have you no sense of
sufficiency? (1)

Eva so sweet Cassidy
ends this trip
with “Who knows where the time goes ?”

Gonna pack up this ditty,
containing a peace of deity,
drive back to the city
where all my sorrows
are streeted above ground,
inescapable resounded …

now down to  2% battery (ramming)
and this cracked -screen
whispers too gently,
“no mas”
my dearest companion,
you still don’t know
when to shut up,
or call it quits,
but I’m hearing a new crew
old familiar poets, awaiting,
who will take one up & in,
relieve you of you earthly sins,
and I hear up there,
you’ve got
unlimited
data storage
and no need for cords
and
batteries

Seeing the schooner drawing nigh,
must be the season of
‘at last, here is Shelter,’
repentance (2)


<>

n.m.l.
Weds. Sept 4,
2024
while sitting by
my dock on the sound,
who insists that it’s
soundless wavings of water
get the last silent
mention
published Friday Sept. 6,,
Sabbath Eve

p.s.
(and that’s how u put the playlist
in an Audio Visual poem,, kid)
(1) “Who by Fire
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1833523/for-leonard-cohen-who-by-fire/
(3)

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/462537/how-i-observed-the-day-of-atonement/
<>

Ecclesiastes

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to ****, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
  Sep 2024 Nat Lipstadt
Pax
Doesn't matter who
came first in your heart
as long as I was the one
who stayed
true to my love
for you.

you were never
alone...
.a quote.
first love only last as long as you stayed true to your love. sometimes the heart gets tired, it weathers as you stop nourishing its root - neglect and broken trust, a heart can die.

this one was on my draft since Jun 2018, i guess i was hesitant in sharing this because my one true love never came or appeared, its lonesome but it doesnt matter anymore. Like they say love will always arrive no matter how late.
  Sep 2024 Nat Lipstadt
Evan Stephens
I. You Will Make A Name For Yourself

She said my name - it stuck there -
a jot of air caught in space between us -
it hung there, it's still hanging there,
moss growing over the truth of it,
rain chipping away at the crags,
my name waiting to be claimed.

II. Success And Wealth Are In Your Fate

There is a hill where I go walking
that is covered in grave slants -
headstones effaced by scraping snows -
money and marble sliding green and down -
so many dead hands bidding to shape
their fate - they're shushed by vines.

III. You Will Receive A Surprising Prize

In an open window across the street -
creamy unlidded eye in beige brick face -
a woman has showered and is toweling off
slowly and deliberately - almost burlesque -
as the sun cuts morning's cusp
in bright-grown slices - coming for her.
And apparently my lucky numbers include 9, 15, 16, 36, 46

Thinking of Emily Dickinson
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2024
after Alexandra Leaving, a song by Leonard Cohen

<>

to go where?

to a city self-consuming in madness,
giving every excuse to stay, and yet,
it came to me just now when the poet
must be leaving his redoubt, with doubt,
and return to the concrete and anomie
of a different kind of splendid isolation

when the last leaf meanders slow down
to the battlefield, and the falling terminado,
and the tree branches are stick figures, each
finger pointing skyward in an j’accusing manner,
accussing & conceding defeat, begging for mercy,
their pleadings too much for me to bare and bury

when green has been wiped clean, and deleted
from the dictionary of colors, my moth eaten soul,
can no longer be granted a stay of execution by
merely looking at the landscape and seascape
to admire their friendly contrasting schemes,
their installation in me of the awe of a visual
quietude, that was an astonishing injection
not truly appreciated till now, too late and
still early, the awe colorations of nature’s vibrancy

The gods have come, my soul hoisted upon their
broad shoulders, the dead-appearing tree branches
can no longer keep their poet safe, hold him back from
meeting his fate; now, he too is a leaving but
floating upward, unlike like the fallen crowds that have
come to rest upon the soil that born them, now to be buried,
all saying: Goodbye Island Poet leaving,

Island Poet
has no poem, no good understanding, no vision,
had no plan, no foresight, only a hope against hope,
that safety was/is not seasonal, Van Morrison reminds,
“These are the days of endless summer,”are memories,
to be held onto tightly, until when if I pass muster, angels
will return to my island abode, where my natural friends
will greet me again, with a flowering and new births,
and The Island Poet can once again revel in ideas in words like
future, sanity, when boarding the ferry with a one way ticket smile.
From a Labor Day  funereal so long ago,
yet forever permanent…nml
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2024
this person, who reads somehow
almost every poem here deposited,
how he does it, a secret, well kept,
but hardly hidden, for he signals
his appreciation in so many ways,
and s p o t l i g h t s those who frequent
contribute, cheerleader and coach
with keen eye and sharpness of brain,
he affectively, affectionately, injects &
infects this little expanse,
this Kingdom of York,
where lovers meet,
speaking in their own
dialect of kindness…

writes himself with a uniqueness,
dare I say in his owned style?
there is never a doubt
who has authored his work,
so many superb scripts,
but his better good works,
present in his presence here,
bringing out the best of the
multiplicities of each of us

but of whom do I speak?

Why,

Carlo C. Gomez

of course!
repost his poems please
  Sep 2024 Nat Lipstadt
onlylovepoetry
~for Maya~

(8/12/24)
never put off the important stuff
till tomorrow, defined as 202five,
first tend to the existential jive,
after all there are harvests
that need bringing in,
bills that need to be paid,
or yet to arrive,
and them older ones, children demanding
an installment to keep them happy’n
currently hip

the weather vane ventures an opinion,
another option, hard to discern, for the
vane spins wildly as almost undecided
as a teenager dreaming ‘bout which girl
to prom-vite, or a seven year old confronting
30 plus favors in the tuck shop before picking
the craziest, the most colorful,
& worst tasting,
then dropping cone et al, on dad’s ****** brand,
new sneakers

putting off poetry till the next year’s almanac
agrees a day off you need,
to seed,
to cede
for yourself, a practical decision
that any farmer could at arrive,
tho probably better things need doing,
****, even sleeping as there is never
enuf  seconds even for that, cause something
always needs fixing,
and

I ain’t even mentioned the vagaries of the
full time occupancy of worrying bout
the witches in charge of discharging
crazy unpredictable Canadian weather

but there is something that needs tending,
use those soil stained fingernails to unburden
the weights that don’t go away, just because
the body too tired to talk to the soul, cheat
sleep, scribble down that single verse that
the chest can’t get rid off, that rhyme in
your puzzled mind, as to what comes next,
and then the rest will follow; which
one you ask, me smiling, the one that
already burnt a hole in your breast,
complaining bout their orphaned status,
and looking to be one of the kids who get
luckily adopted

but what do I know, probably all wrong, me
with no plan on how to survive beyond T+1,
the way markets taught ya how to think
about additive time, a day at a time,
but still find a poem for you
squeezing itself in between his very different
list of worries that never quit, making those
hailstones falling in his can’t-sleep-either brain,
rising with the Eastern sun to pen
crazy poems about humans he’ll likely never
meet…

postscript
————-
his favored Persian poet penned, (1)

We are often in battle,
So often defending every side of the fort,
It may seem, all alone.

Sit down my dear,
Ttake a few breaths,
Think about a loyal friend,
Where is *your
music,
Your pet, a brush?

Now pick up your life again,
Let whatever is out there
Come charging in

Laugh and spit into the air,
There could be holy fallout.* (1)
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