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  Dec 2024 Nat Lipstadt
Carlo C Gomez
~
Hand and needle,
weapons of mass protection.
Mending day called solace,
bitterness in every stitch.
When all guides disappear
the hand begins to tremble,
that is the material point.
Listen to the water,
the sea is full of memories.
It knows everything,
it feels nothing.

A rage is building.
The sails unfurl,
the wind follows.
A hundred years of
traversing the deep
on a ship full of opiates
and other distant mermaids.
This blood vessel,
cresting the heart of the wave,
you will never completely cross
this body of water
until you learn to trust
the hands that hold back
death and it's squall.

Even now they drop anchor, singing
into the starry sky:

"Gather ye fishermen's wives
As thy men roll out to sea
Pray one and all
Thy sails hold strong this day..."

~
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2024
“Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my life
I'm here if you should call to me
You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say
It's only words and words are all I have
To take your heart away”


“Words” by the Bee Gees
<•>

words are orbs,
living in the airy space just
about above over my head

still plucking ‘em when the
spirits shake me awake,
speaking
“create, can’t wait,”
for if the instance slips by,
a
disparate disparaging displacement
though not fully lost,
the precise
conviction combination
precious precision decision
if not stepped upon with
a codifying immediacy urgency
can result in an
irreparably irreversible irresponsibly
l o s s,
feeling as if a piece of your
owned amazing
has been chipped off irretrievably,
flown away to a
never again
nether land

not lost on me that
the infinite symbol

is sometimes called the
lazy eights

a minute momentous moment,
all it takes, for the loss of
infinity permanence of going
gone gone gone

read of a man,
in a creative place,
songwriter on a crowded California
Santa Monica highway,
with no place to pull off,
sings over again the tune birthing
with no intermission
repeating for hours the tune
and the lyrics
of a new (now famous) song,
proceeds
directly to the recording studio
to lay that track down

been there, done exactly that,
“while doing 85 mph on the
Long Island Expressway,”
(L.I..E. )
and those
everlasting words
live on today
Dec. 2024
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2024
WHY are you reading and writing poetry today?

why not?
**** straight &
just be the cause
that's right,

even writing
just keep it
short/\ sweet (self mocking Ha)
there are actual family members
who might require
a shocking paddling
to the
heart
when conducting their
year end review

as for us
the shock, the awe,
of so many fine
new poens opening
is a sufficient charger to the
parts that need restarting when
we wake up, no matter
our diversification
our diversions
and divisions,
reading new words ancient
in the Reforming,
are dividends and
that keep on after the electrolytes, caffeine
& other stimulies

stimulants that keep us going
a golden charging,
Plenty good enough

Ps
and I delight in many new ones
discovering my prose, welcoming
them like my newborn children
all my own, and raising them
and the new-for all-new combinations
to see their Forthcoming with/\ by
bringing them to your attention,
and that is my Jewish own creche,
my own scene of all of god’s chosen
poets
nativities

and did not plan to go in & on
but nothing stirs the sparks,
like thinking that every minute
a birth is celebrated
and I am blessed to be among
the witnesses

nml
12/25/24~12/26/24
  Dec 2024 Nat Lipstadt
onlylovepoetry
somehow we all like, enjoy saying  
that word thrice, somehow nice,
when you follow the
rhythm of the tonguing of it:

time, time and add~pray-it
one more time again

seems eminently successfully sensible
in a trinity unity

so stop here and now
and give me a

love love love

permission granted to say it
as needed on this day
without embarrassment
and when they inquire
what?
just smile and say it one
mirror one more time
inexplicably explicable
  Dec 2024 Nat Lipstadt
Sharon Talbot
Now that we are on in years,
celebrations change and dwindle
to little remnants of tradition.
We are two stragglers
from life’s journey,
Left behind by the young,
No longer nurturing him,
yet tied to his well-being
even as we wait for his call.
I celebrate Yule not in our home,
but by imaging his joy beside a tree,
his exchange of gifts with her.
And I recall the first Christmas
with my husband, falling asleep together
under a mammoth tree filled with light.
We made ornaments for fun
and poverty didn’t matter.
I wrote a poem for him,
decorated with scenes of our life.
And now, we are too weary
to celebrate like that.
It is as if we pore through a box,
a ragged thing, dragged through time,
looking for souvenirs of joy
and memories of the life we had
when he was here.
I think this poem speaks for itself about our experience this year. Our son moved far away and cannot just pop by for Christmas or dinner from the next town. It is definitely a new stage of loss!
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2024
preface

yup

this is #99, & when it’s done,
another winking title will pop-up,
be

recorded, reordered, and reported
out to you,
and that old drinking song will~still
be justified with words adapted to
sing out of & about~no~doubt them
emotional rhythms traversing my
blood stream that inhabit my
thoughts and causes, visions and
curses


poem

a gray cloudy xmas day, and home alone
by my-choice, which is a potpourri of
caramel popcorn vinegar and vital vitamins,
a metronome of verbosity and to counter~~
attack these insidious moody blues, select my McIntosh mug with a Winslow Homer painting of East Hampton Beach


yup,

this is no. 99, in my file of
working scribbled potions, ,
which like my porcelain lipped mug,
is brimmm-ing filled too,
with phrases~tastes,
accompanied &harmonized,
with a mug up-to-the-top
of circularity spooned, steamy fine
Blue Mountain coffee,
colored beautifully creamy brown
by a quarter cup of
Fairlife skim milk
and damnable inspired
pseudo-dissatisfaction


apology

for rambling but it’s
a rambling day, and just going
with flow, and the east river
ocean bound current strings chains
of molecules, words, randomly
planned and planted, and lined
up to take  stolen sips of  coffee
breaks, indoors-inside my coffee cup
mind


****

got lost and now forget what
this poem was to be announced~about,

thus #99,
version b., will re-main on
the list, awaiting refurbishment, and
more, sigh,

                          *coffee
12-25-24
  Dec 2024 Nat Lipstadt
Poetoftheway
“you should watch for what’s good and say so, watch for what’s bad and say that,
and be afraid of neither observation.
If you lose your temper, lose it; if you find yourself unexpectedly moved, admit it.
Keep your tools, compass and gyroscope,
clean, dry and level.”
Peggy Noonan,
columnist, author
<•>

good
Christmas Eve advice
getting harder to find,
wheat from chaff, and all that,
what’s sensible,
what’s defensible,
and what actually feels
A~ok!
as in
perhaps, it actually could be,
pause to think,
correct?
and:or:heck,
even right

so if you read the above ,
take it from a couple of senior geezers,
you just got a holiday freebie!
yeah, yeah, keep your powder dry,
just ain’t the same, sorry…

we talking tools and fools here,
them that keep you
on a course
of your owned free choice,
with an assist,
to  know your position & to
never to lose your balance

when everybody is
instantly
telling you what to think,
take that long pause,
use your tools,
to pick the problem up,
Rubik’s cube it,
twist and shout,
when the
solution emerges

‘tis the season for
preaching and overreaching,
but use this quietime pause,
look internal,
and keep your instinct and
inside tools oiled,
and mind open, clarified

wish you then, clear eyes, open ears & love;
wisdom, that’s up to you,
but, you’re a billionaire for sure,
use the grey cells you were given
thoughtfully & well,
and keep on looking for
‘what’s a good way,’
which is always an
everlasting work


                             nat lipstadt
12/24/24
5:45 pm
NYC
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