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  Jun 2 Nat Lipstadt
rick
when you trim your ***** and your mustache with the same pair of scissors
when you hand over your entire paycheck to the bartender of doom and glee
when you write a bounced check at the grocery store
when you sleep with a girl who isn’t clean
when you’re young, lost, broken and poor
when your childhood runs hard and your luck runs out
when your best friend is dead and your other friend is ******* your girl
when your dog sleeps in the afternoon and dreams of the neighborhood *****
when your nutrients gets replaced with Xanax bars over the one who just left
when your tired eyes meet the brick & mortar of strenuous labor
when the smile is so fake that it appears genuine
when you go all in on someone you weren’t 100% sure of
when you wait on bleeding knees for the unreliable god
when you bet on the boxer that crashed to the canvas
when the interest is high and the banks are closed and the creditors don’t care about grace periods
when you understand very little and you expel a whole lot
when the cord of anxiety strangles your very essence
when you turn out to be just as everyone expected

don’t worry

it’ll all turn around

and find you again

someway

somehow.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2
I approach this subject with expertise,
for the economy of brevity
is not my forte,
indeed my natural tendency
is to never use
one
when three words seem
so more additional  expressive


but,
economy is to my taste
when delving into the emotional,
which as a poet poseur
seems incongruous

but the verbal deliciousness of
a well chosen phrase,
that one can roll on their tongue,
looking for subtle notes like a good wine,
is a sensory delight,
a provoking nugget of
an alliteration of the senses,
that seeps into your interior,
gladdens the soul,
worthy of jig, or even a
hot **** expletive,
demanding many more
sippings

it may require an ooh and an ah,
and the loosening of teary eyed
moisture,
the acceptance of
acceptance?

the  spreading of a satisfactory warmth in-the places that
welcome heat, allowing both
head smacking grinning,
or deep emotive gestures
to form upon your normally repressed status
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2
~for she who knows ~
<>
The word "likeability" is spelled L-I-K-E-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y., though the inhuman spelling master of this site, deems it a misspelling mistake, condemning it to live in red, and offering up no replacement

<>
it is that time of night, which is also
a time of early day, when dark silence prevails, except for the excessive rumbling of the our old little cottage's environmental devices gut rumbling while laboring to condition our atmosphere

our atmosphere;
is my brain on fire at 2:30am,
with new conceptuals, many contradictory, racing in and about my brain all begging to
write me first, while the mental fluids are juiced, and words are finger pecked into existence with a maddening slowness

but this one,
re likeabilty has risen to the fore,
because it is the last to be born,
and seems therefore claiming precocious precious preeminence

not a quality I deem much in my owned possess, but one easy discerned in others and delicious delighting to the human souls who
recognize it instantly by the smiling comfort of its parfume

what I like about like about likeability is it's a pleasing scent,
that aerosol invades a room and
spreads like a virus of happy,
quite contagious to we old curmudgeons,
who by nature feel put upon by
our aging equipment, and the daily struggle to maintain it, and the forces to countervail it ,
are endless and not cheery by nature

So
I am enlivened and enriched,
engaged and effervescent,
when youthful patois,
direct and with little boundary,
radiates the human existential,
and light shines upon my soul,
awakening in me
an optimistic countenance!

perhaps I exaggerate,
confusing youthful energetic optimism
for a condition,
and not merely a demeanor,
but I rethink upon it,
snd decidedly decide
this for real, this is genuine,
and by its very natural nature
(a lotta nats in nature)
its openness, unguarded,
refreshes and moisturizes
our skins,
internal and external

this special quality is not universal,
or else there would be peace on earth (ain't happening),
but those who have it,
who think beyond privilege and
privacy,
but intuitively,
offer up to all
a pleasantness
rich and original,
will write an indelible script
upon the world
for the better

I like it.
3:05M
June 2
2025
Nat Lipstadt May 31
~Primus inter pares~
(first among equals)
<>
the risks
the aspirations
the trial and erroring of
outrageous under appreciation

the silence,
the unabashed frustration
of our inability to right express
the exact precision needed to redress the pile of self~unsatisfying drafts
that need the evermore honing, whittling
curettage of accumulated filing
repeated nip and tucking

T his!
makes us all
first amongst equals,
we,
who throw ourselves again and
again, at Henry's urging
"once more into the breach"
we foot soldiers who but toil alone in grande silence until we satisfy our innermost creativity
are all so alike
all of
^firsts^
among
equals
in this grande society of
poetry addiction!
5-31-25
•###•

•the•message•is•so•phantom•

•strangled•
•during•the•thir­d•act•

•illuminated•
•letters•are•the•ciphertext•

•and•they•glo­w•
•in•your•eyes•
•Bletchley•Park•

•Turing•
•worked•it•out•with•­
•Delilah•

•they•killed•for•less•
•died•for•even•more•

•###•
Incompossible

<>

  not mutually possible:
INCONSISTENT, INCOMPATIBLE

<>

inconsistent, yes,
incompatible, never

we have lived and loved
each other since
a singular moment
in grade school

profound!
(what a perfect compositional word!)
friendship, intuitively embraced,
circumstances dictated an
on/off interspersed
coexistence decades in length,
a hit or miss geographical
distancing,
thst technology overcame
with no evaporative loss
of 
sensational connectivity
across great times and
greater distances

we trialed and
errored our landlines,
for a time,
we lived together,
then nearby,
with other spouses, who knew
and tolerated, our exceptional
to the rules of coexistences,
we were closer than close,
the space between us was of wafer size, nearly invisible to the naked eyes of others, but unchanging
as much as it was unique and
uncharted
periods of absence of years measurable
and the first conversation
began exactly where the long ago prior had ceased

never fully accepted,
surely not ever
fully
tolerated + understood,
we stumbled upon a word,

incompossible

that captured the
drama, the hopefulness,
the hopelessness of
our separated conjoining
as a summary perfect
of us

a true tale,
a novel of pro-found
loss and gain
that cannot be be told
or totaled,
a sum of summary,
an unavowed marriage of
souls with no legality,

and yet

by its very in-completed nature,
it was perfected by it's very unending undefinable defiance
of definition:
we made the
incompossible,
possible,
the incompatible,
patible,
unfounded by circumstances,
unbounded in our intuition,
we yet live in a hopeful
state of unfulfilled totality of


almost fufillment
advis any typos pleade
  May 30 Nat Lipstadt
Anais Vionet
Ok, there’s no jailbreak.
Make room for my innocent alter ego,
because there’s nothing to rebel against.

There are zero classes in my nascent,
year-long, Harvard master’s degree.
They call it ‘self directed study’
and like rockets have stages,
I’ll have ‘self paced modules.’

Am I suddenly at Oxford University?
They’re quite famous for that (no formal classes).
Or am I suddenly grown up and trusted?
I obviously don’t have it all figured out yet,
so I’ll just trust the process.

When I started that other school
(that shall not be named), my advisor
handed me a computer printout - a list
with something like 40 courses on it.
I thought, “Oh, my God,” but one by one,
year over year, I checked-off those courses
and voila! They handed me a diploma.
It was a process.

I understand, if you’re disappointed about the jailbreak, but there’ll
be coffee breaks, lunch breaks, study breaks, bathroom breaks
and more than a few self-directed dance breaks. So stick around.

“You know,” my therapist said, so very seriously, a few years ago,
“you keep laughing.”
.
.
I've Got the World on a String by Robin McKelle
****** Soul Picnic by Ledisi & Billy Childs
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 05/29/25:
Nascent: something that is just beginning.
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