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Nat Lipstadt Jan 24
not many of us try
trying to master tossing
***** rhythmically over and over
into the upper atmosphere
successfully

but life,
shoot, that’s another thing,
making juggling a life skill
that comes with the hard
crash of a ball dropped
and all the glue,
can’t return pristine
to what now is an
edgy
design
of a flawed life
cracked up to
be a mis~fortune telling
as
*a map of cracks run rampant
rampaging, ramp aging,

ominously
(1) I am in possession of a reservoir of 1000+ unpublished poems; the reservoir of drafts have matured, aged, to the point, or deteriorated to the point, that it’s time for them to move on, upward, downward, but definitely out…
Nat Lipstadt Jan 23
Do not stand
          By my grave, and weep.
     I am not there,
          I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
     Do not stand
          By my grave, and cry—
     I am not there,
          I did not die.
— Clare Harner, The Gypsy, December 1934
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Stand_at_My_Grave_and_Weep
It's the little things. Second hands in school
  clocks like hammers striking anvils too loud.
  Bored seconds are forever. Years later are now.
  We argue about everything. I'm always the fool.

  I fret over this old typewriter's ancient keys.
  I look for perfect words to write perfect rhymes
  that refuse to be born. I miss the simple times,
  young me at bedtime begging god on my knees.
  Jan 22 Nat Lipstadt
Poetoftheway
morning, Jan 21~22, 2025

*what I did for love:^
these conversations
in the dark, where
lies and smiles and
visual clues kept
hidden, so the sweet
and the sorrowful
never fully disclose-able,
or totally hid, half-sin,
half-kin to kindness

even the evening passing
pleasantries fall upon
non responsive interrogatories,
and soon wonder wanders
into the dark, hid neath
a cloaking coverlet
that frees suffocation
to cut off the freedoms
of oxygen intake to
restore and keep embers
of fine memories just
barely alive. glowing
brightest before extinguation

life’s lessons, tears pooling,
of never ending schooling
granting due to the
primary notion that
nothing is given,


nothing is granted
except that cycles
are recyclable
Recycled Conversations in the Dark: Sweetness and Sorrow poetoftheway
Nat Lipstadt Jan 22
Disclaimer:
an unintended very long poem
from a very long walk,
hoping it might come
to rest within your
heart
but feel free to go your own,
another direction

<•>

“Another writer told me a few weeks ago of his New England Yankee mother,
who believed there are no problems
that aren’t made at least slightly better
by a long walk, and
none that are made worse.“
<•>

a moderate walker am I,
on the Promenade,
hard by the wide & narrow strait,
a tidal estuary, that divides our urban island
from its suburban Longer cousin,

this my path, most oft traversed,
a time spent usually creating,
reciprocating verses from a
copulating mind

every walking expedition is
an-in-transit composition,
an enchantment by a song
anointed, appointed and a
derivation
of a song about
going home

the last of my family
to be buried, l,
to be interred,
finally grounded,
in a park of cedar trees,
next to my immediates,
for can’t think of any other place
that might, would willingly,
not resist mightily, taking me in

it will thy will that they bury me
there if they can get permission
from the heavenly authorities,
but told the betting odds
are 3 to 1
against,
the Lords of song not so happily
with the quantity and the quality
of my unseeded spilled,
of my un-indeeded actions,
they were not entirely
rainbow colored,
some very berry blackened,
urgently misdelivered
with no justifiable delicacy
warranting memorizing or
further discussion

most likely will continue
to remain a pedestrian,
though unlikely I’ll have to
look both waysides before
crossing over

I’ll carry copies of  my scriptures,
psalms and even my one and only
flawless poem in hand,
wrote here so long ago,
s small proof that my theorems
were not
always entirely wrong,
but my replica action figurines,
were posed and struck,
were sufficient evidences
that my overall demeanor
of demeaned marks,
were negative numbered,
irony, they were unlettered
and ungraded,
mostly average, only worthy
of a place in the sadeyed lowlands

So walk I shall,
hoping they give me decent
walking & wailing shoes,
a warm suit,
a fedora or a watch cap,
cause it is more than chilly
down by the uninhabited riversides

this thinning vision is not
tinged with
any tingling regret,
nor sorrow,
what I did, what I wrote,
every word mine alone,
the way I lived,
walking solitaire is
something grown quite accustomed,
and a pretty fair pre~text of a
judgement coming
down

on the morrow,
will walk with no
measurements needed,
not speed, nor distance,
not counting crows or any other
unenumerated birds of a feather,
those on a wire or a river railing
spying observers watching,
who will go unnumbered,
as will all my
steps of no value

so this poem’s title absolute right,
no needs for solving
for absolutions,
was never ever sorry for
taking a walk,
and there are no more vocabulary
modifiers,
unneeded words left, like,

but nonetheless

only
just don’t know how
this river poem got
so long
~
--third transmission--

time to be
less than alive
tube in, tube out

for madmen only
in struggles for utopia

semi-super friends
marching the hate machines
into the sun

the dehydrated sun

smashed into splinters of dead light

keep out of sight
keep behind the light
or it will hunt you down

make you one of
the thin pixelated crowd
washing their sins with stardust

the little hand is overhead...

--losing transmission--
~
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