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Friday’s Fumble: writ/wrote (needs work)

the WR juggernaut
of wordy derivatives, vast
complex, the crossover
from notion to lively potion,
the ****** of completion,
a tricky *******, 1st an
enticement, inevitably a
first unsatisfactory shot,
the dispiriting recognition
that what you got ain’t good…

a dissolution of resolution,
the look back~try again,
picking off the fleshy morsels
from the valley of the bones
that demand a really funereal
and t swift sea burial,
thus energized by seawater
or the *****+ dirt,

comes re~energy burst of a covert
coverup, then comes a gleam,
the light of a gleam in the seams
of you fingertips, a repeating
secretion of ideas that refuse
to give in to a ceremony of
deletion, a prescrip for a sad~
glad emotive repast, a look back,
longing glance, but a new hope of
rejiggering, the sticky secretion ‘pon
enervating dancing fingertips,
spewing gobs so fast of wordy
batter, throwing in some Heath
bar crumble, and soon enuf the
oven baking, and the aroma of
over~heated sheets of paper
crisply deliver cookies extraordinaire,
but alas, ‘twas all in the mind and
the recipe, ashes of a burnt dream

and the tenses clench/de clench
when the writ is wrote, but never,
not ever, is it ever just rote…

*@nd that’s what ya get when you writty wrote
@

2:06am
7/26/2024
3d · 129
A Dyad of Love…
A Dyad of Love…

<>

for my friend, Poetoftheway,
whose love stories
chipped this one off the
stoneface of ancien memories..

<>

The dyad definition is the close relationship of two people over a long period with many interactions in different settings. The most basic requirement for dyad sociology is that there are two members of the group. The dyadic communication definition pertains to how the two group members interact with each other.

<>
What business is this!

Curmudgeon crusty old man,
go back to bed, it’s early morn,
and you’ve got no business, any more,
writing of trances of love dyads!


the vague recall of the vagaries
of complete surrender to a state
of captivity, a single star of devoted
adoration ‘of the lovers, by the lovers,
for the lovers,’ which ties us up
helpless, forming bonds that crazy
stretch in ways that cannot be but are,
these recollections bare~remembered,
of driving through the night, to capture
one more moment of love~light~night, before life’s
necessity imposed an unthinkable, a
separate conscious that made the
chest groan out loud with alternating
currents of elation and a loss, that
collapses and coalesces and grows
beyond unbearable…

no reason to step back to that dyad,
when the world was defined by sideways
glances that thrilled, oh my god, all
control lost, every sonnet, every song
on the radio was written

exclusively

for your telescopic universe of
microscopic mutual gravity

and you two misspell words with unconscious
rapport, soul and sole used side by side
easy
interchangeably, and no else can perceive
the lack of definition, where the amoeba
bodies merge into a single cell unity…
and seeings  new composition merge, a blending, exact,
the world is comme il faut,  as it must be,
properly…

not yet Seven AM, and you sputter and weep,
teary eyed of memory of seconds of a single days helping,
when you understood the
meaning of peaks, and nothing of valleys,
and the unthinkable did not exist, and the
one next to you sleeps soundly secured by
the knowledge, fervent belief, that you will
be there to welcome her back to life, with smilies
of smiles, fresh coffee, and fingers that soothe
the temples, erasing all that need not be
remembered, not now, not today, and the old
man whimpers with delight at these, his very
own words, that drifted from his consciousness,
unexpectedly, just because he stumbled on
that very old word, dyad, with its multiplicity
of shadings, but! a singular expression,
so all encompassing that he must cease to
compose for his eyes are too blurred to see…
7:13am
Jul Tue 23
two thousand and twenty four
All our senses concatenate, building on each other

<>

this interplay is truly interplanetary,
for each of us a unique solar system,
our brains,
intricacy literally personified,
and our five senses, working
in
concatenation
our long range sensors, busy bees compiling inputs
by the nanosecond second, distilling, integrating.
blending and then reconstructing…into a whole!

a gentle breeze ruffles the hair,
the tree swing rises and flows
of its own accord, no passported
passenger required, and a neighbor’s
American Flag, moves majestically &
impressively, whipping, dancing, yes, prancing
to a tune only it can hear,
the syncopated air currents providing
a rhythmic awesome inspiring beat…


and the brain takes this all in, a momentary
second of a vista that is constantly flexing,
yet remains unchanged, a muscular view
of a real world, living but yet immutable,
and I utter thanks to my motor functions,
that bless me with the eyes to perceive,
the nostrils to smell sea salt flavored air,
the hearing ears that the know the imperceptible
orchestrations of silences by their absence
and their intrusion, and I touch my fingertips
to my tongue, wetted, and hyper sensitized
to that gentle breeze that decorates the
landscapes external,

and the combinatory
addition of the all of it, into a single momentary
poem of recall, what I “knew” yesterday, & will
greet again this coming day, as an old unfamiliar
friend, who grasps me entire, and proclaims:
this is living…and the greatest satisfaction that
a speck of mortal can achieve, retain and
through impoverished words…share


4:14am
Mon Jul 22
2 0 2 4
a single moment recalled… forever
6d · 174
morning miracles
Relax, relief, Steve, a short one, I do believe,
is coming down the turnpike, a simple
thought kernel that occurs me to each
morning, and then gets swept out to
the sea, via the sound’s currents them,
a reality check on weather.com, an internet
a daily compilation of mispredictions,
guesses and disconnectedness to our
reality… that we yet must read first,
always & nonetheless…

so, here it is, a golden buttered kernel,
that flys past my poem seeking radar
so fast that, it has escaped for now
nearly sixteen years…

this spring chicken, lies besides his woman,
who wakes traditionally secondarily, and
she sleep best then, shedding the dreams that
come unwonted, the review and recap of life’s
tumult…and finally gets the deep sleep that
recharges our cells with restorative justice…

as she sleeps, her face sheds, a morning miracle,
deep at ease, she breathes soft, clean and clear,
silently and a m a z i n g l y, every line on her
face
eases,
disappears,
and her skin, smooth, tight,
and I’m face flushed, by guilt for never telling
her, and that guilt that has not been yet here
recorded, and yet…

a reminder that a first poem of the day (a FPOTD),
like morning ***, starts a human off right, clears
forehead, like smooth writing, fresh oven baked,
blue lines on paper, begging, asking for fufillment
and satisfaction, that has no competition, for it is,
unique, that the first deep breath of a day, when
you take in all that surrounds, and observe close
the minor miracles, all an addition, that gives our
body, the reasons to wake up, with wet eyes, and
just…
a thin, curly, half grin, hall (half+all✅) whimsy smile…

natty
6:34am
Sat Jul 20

(and this one flies out the window, past the oak trees,
to the water and the wind grabs by its lettered bones
and is sending it out to Iowa, Travese City Michigan,
Missouri, Oregon and the great  Northwest Pacific
over the Pacific, to the Philippines, India,  New Zealand, Israel, Europe, the UK as in You Know) and back past Lady Liberty in the New York Harbor, along the Long Island shoreline, to a little house on a little island, where it recenters my body, asking why oh why, no way, natty, have you not offered me
my first coffee of the day, (MFCOTD)
yet, all this traveling, loving and thinking is

so very tiring… java, por favor señor!)
Traditionally, Jews recite three blessings when they wake up:

Modeh Ani: A short prayer that expresses gratitude and thanks God for returning the soul to the body after sleep
Elohai Neshama: A blessing that thanks God for one's soul
Netilat Yadayim: A blessing that relates to washing hands, which is a symbolic way to remove spiritual impurity
is to be able to breathe.

this first & foremost activity,

is the very permit missionary

authorizing us to instigate & create

our very own self~definition, thus our

cognition is the product of our ignition!

oxygen to breathe is the stuff of our

dreams
the most beautiful roses are not red,
but palest of yellow with pink
streaks,

violets reside in a giant Etruscan urn
before our modest home, a
reminder to the modesty
and brilliance of color spotting in a sea
of immense waves of ski-ed blue and
verdant green, a visual, floral,
peak,

the violent virtual of the week,
wrecks a soft creamy despair across
the nation’s cheek, another slap at
the notion of our greatness residing
in our above all, unifying and
basic simplistic notions of kindness,
and the violets turn out insufficient
to gladden our hearts in a sea of
bleak,

and I turn my eyes to the great scapes
that surround my soul, absent
only snow capped mountains
but memory works, serves up,
what resides a mere thousand miles away,
so now my visual vistas completed,
and a tea of c a l m, aroma soothing,
massages my temple and rests my
blood pointy fingertip composers,
and I am somehow, someone who is
tweaked,

upon my heart in the real of solid
dark of fog and cloud that is my
true tempered reality,  where I am
wrecked and wreaked,
a havoc of pain relief cream,
soothing, relieving the anguish
that rests within and periodically
calming, thus alive to survive,
and yet remind:

a-salve to inject,
to still,
and yet,
permit stll,
a streak of

shrieks
10:55pm
Fri Jul 19
2/0/2/4
<>
Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism):

The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

Dear One:
it is one of those days, when everything becomes a poem,
every mundane, brushing my hair  be/is a philo-treatise,
& the errands of the day, starting  at 6:45am with an assessment,
a weighing of oneself on a numerical scale of justice,
requiring one to rethink his moral behaviors of a prior day,
a kind of confessional I guess, for I have never been inside one,
(a confessional and actually confessing) but my hebraic genetics
require Veduei (1),
constant awareness of one’s
everything deeds, making confessing a ongoing process 24/7
process unceasing, onerous and relieving,
by reliving our each~very individual action,
which means that I am in a sensory paradise / hell and
sleep comes in bursts of exhaustion,
as I misplace my compass
daily, and the re-search required to obtain, nay, reGAIN,  
my footing, my true directionS,
and it is worse than never ending, more akin to the
regularity of irregular breathing…

Thank you for “Sonder;”
restoring the awe for not knowing it, and occasionally forgetting, that there are words, ready, willing, and able to become poems, as I exegesis, excise, and exercise their purpose
to better to remember the worth of everyone and every thing within in a too oft / clouded, self centered
“I exist , therefore I am”
very limited filtering device….
so sonder becomes a poem, an essay, un écrivez,
and I study your photograph, and fly away,
I am in a garden,
you may have (no, probably!) planted,
(like the sonder word in my brain)
and the colors, the soils, the colorex (2) variety
teaches me you better than words…
while I am sundering, sondering, you,

and so many others
who give me the great pauses
of my existence,
the purposed understanding
of the arrogance of pre-judgement…

Surrounded,
I am breathing salt air, luscious greens, a variegated
bluey (love that show)
sky,
and all my voices rise, in a choir of one,
fo forgive me, forgive myself,
for failing not to be bigger than
than the distances
my aging weakening senses
and my low powered sensibilities
physically provide,

I hear you,
I sonder you,
and so many others,
and I
bind and bound myself to you
and
thus emboldened!

to go forth and walk in unfamiliar gardens,
to read better  and be,
between the lines
y’all provide

here’s where a a modest thanksgiving
is due and herein provided,
and the inspirations keep coming and
coffee need re~reheating, so the brain can
start
all over again,
S’wondering
S’ondering
just like a (wink)
An American in Paris,
the next poem is aborning,
jealously
demanding
it’s very own
birthing;
an embryo,
asking to be
imagined.

so thank you,
dear one…
(1j Viduei, (our words of confession) has become our sacrifice. Atonement is as far away as your lips. Don't allow your silence condemn you to a prison of guilt
(2j. colorex ~ index of colors visible and even invisible .

09:50am
Fri Jul 19
two thousand and twenty four
Nat Lipstadt Jul 18
<>
it’s not even 6am, restless night, or wrestled night, ain’t much difference, see the **** geese on the water’s edge, I dutifully slip out of bed, awakening no one, dutifully slide in to my slip-on sneakers, grab the white umbrella next to the front door, dutifully, steadily, my first chore of the day, walk deliberately (and carefully) to make them get them get heck away, into the sound, and to cease polluting the grass where children may play…

standing at the waters edge, task finished, the sky commands examination, there is within the cumulus textured, multi-pastel, thick curdled pastiche cloud banks, overhanging the world as far as one can see, a substantive hole appearing in the sky revealing a blue heaven….what one believes, prefers should be, but what is, in fact,
not a…given and we are a but, partly cloudy day, a partly clouded observant person…

this reminds me that there are holes in all places, everywhere, in my disturbed sleep,  where I spend hours of triangulating in dreams, what I cannot pin down:

who I am, what I am, my purpose on earth, though I know where
I am, though not even, most critically, why I am…

is this a poem?

this thoughtful cursed query sits behind my eyes, frontally lobed, perpetually asking, judging me, these words, repetitiously heard,
one is not fooled,
it is a simple self-evaluation test, only an ask,
what are my justifications, ma raison d'être,
(reason for being) which is an amuse, for I discover

in French, ‘reason for being,’
is a feminine word,
(qui en Français,
c'est un mot féminin…)
and that makes me smile,
for I’m a woman-centric man

(I have no gender confusion,
this is not one of the holes
to which I refer)

perhaps it is, or, perhaps it is a rambunctious rambling of no worth, for no answers are obtained, given, deduced, and holes, skyward and inward are deep, none delimited by neither bottom or a top, just widening gaps and gapes in my existence…and answers are not
forthcoming…

<>

5:50am
Thursday July 18
Year Two Thousand and Twenty Four
Nat Lipstadt Jul 15
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 13
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 13
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 8
<>
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 5
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)
Nat Lipstadt Jul 5
(so many revolutions provoked, this is just the first cut)
<>
this rabbinic saying, is both disarming and yet awesome,
the interpretations are many, but I find them stained, strained,
and I welcome the “pshat,” the simple mystery of the
what YOU think
is plain meaning of the words,
that makes it so sensible to us,
individually,
formatted into our own personalized
understanding

for the nth time when the poetry won’t come,
or arrives warped, spoilt fruit,
incapable of being repaired
and walk away
with ease
though tinged by
being ill at ease,
but properly snap the padfolio shut…


<>
(but smile on, for the
revolutions are
unceasing)
(1j Rabbi Tarfon
“You are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.” This is from Pirke Aboth, or “The Ethics of the Fathers” (sometimes called “The Sayings of the Fathers”) a collection of wisdom from the Jewish Talmudic sages, in this case, Rabbi Tarfon, who lived and taught
2,000 years ago

first cut/ first version..simmered for awhile
Jun 29 · 133
grit on my face…damn!
Nat Lipstadt Jun 29
grit on my face…****!

<>

city boy,  progeny of the multi-cultures
any new yorker breathes, the grit fills in
the mini pores, but even better, the lines and
the deep furrowed creases of squinting worries,
inherent and inherited
from years of peering into
the future whose outcomes always fell
outside the range of ordinary misperceptions
and into the realms of extraordinarily ordinary…

even the grit and the grip of grief, cause and
consequence of my endless errored foreseeing,
equally crinkly when smiling and/or grimacing,
for I read what I have written smilingly, and grimace with
the unknown knowledge yet within, there is more to come,
but from who knows where or when, and the grit hardened
exterior groans with the thrill of pulling and
purging yet more words from the
Sea of Churn,
whose burning sensations brings cherried sundae
of mixed anxious trepidations and a groan of relief
when the work of words is done and done & delivered,

and yet:

(that fearsome worded curse)

sadly seeds the junkies need for the next fix…


and my lips issue a pleasured ****!

7:59am
Sabbath Sat.
29 June 2024
Nat Lipstadt Jun 25
fewer words means no greater appreciation


well you know, I’m not one
famous for brevity, after all,

why not use three words for
every one sufficient, satisfying
the egotistical statistical curve
of the illnesses of literary illiteracy.

exactly.

but brevity in thanking,


the swift surety of a few
chosen, well aimed, words,
is the arrow in the bullseye,
that is taped to my chest,
directly over my heart,
that part, from which we
ship and receive
immense gratitude
countless kindnesses
and proofs positive,
that our two hearts yet beat,
marching in more than
unison,
nay,
marching in a

unification
greater than any
distanced separation!
Feb 6, 2024
nyc
Nat Lipstadt Jun 18
~ for Alyssa Holmes Underwood ~


Modigliani  (1)
deliberately unmasked his Jewish identity,
even introducing himself to new acquaintances
with the phrase “Je m'appelle Modigliani.
Je suis Juif”
(I am Modigliani, a Jew)

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

I separate the words above from mine;
not to divide,
rather, to combine
as a single tissued web.
<>
Designed, designated, distinguishable,
intended to honor them, for they’re
indeed honorable and
distinguished.
<>

Je suis Juif aussi.
I'm Jewish too.
<>

Perhaps,
you did not know?

Or do not care.
<>

There are marks upon my body,
residue of human installation,
bodies are a canvas tapestry,
of human and inhuman
three dimensional
physical actual
cerebral and
invisible
works
<>

forever available
for additions,
paint-overs,
that badly,
sadly
require periodic touch updating
every century,
tho some marks permanent,
some unhappily hate the mark, temporary, and the fade,
yet those are imprinted in thy mind’s eye,
indelible inked that cannot be unseen
therefore, are permanent upon me,
DNA encased, historical genetics,
alive within tissued corpuscles
discardation, erasure, dispersal
continual shedding
<>

W hen
G od created hate,
W e were not consulted.
S eparated by physical differentials,
b y languages, symbology, metaphysical,
for these are the
S paces created to be celebrated,
not hated,
alas,
we humans,
with our empowerments,
and our capacities to
free will,
fell & fail,
fall & feel,
everything
and nothing,
require constant
reminding, necessitating
our specific differentiation,
so I state by defining,
differentiating,
once more:

I am Lipstadt,
I am a Jew
.
4:56 AM
June 13 2024
7 Sivan 5784

(1).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani
Nat Lipstadt Jun 16
the propulsion of compulsion is indefatigable,
it cannot no more, be ignored, as if it is forming
a holy commandment, number 11, you must
write when so ordered, denial is temporary
i n s a n i t y, and the backlog of nuances be
comes longer and longer by the instant

the provocateurs, them eyes, those eyes,
even the ears and tongue join in to instigate,
the cabal of influencers who peddle no product,
demand no payment but total obeisance and
sometimes low-class instant fufillment, for here
I am in servitude,@ 4:33am, by dawn’s early light
(no **** for real), propelled and compelled by
the creative, the spilling urgency of the need
to expel notions of potions that flit between the

frontal lobe, parietal lobe, cingulate gyrus,
and prefrontal cortex: (I told  you, it’s a cabal!)
all  firing
up neurons like electron spark plugs, and only
I can see the sparks colliding inside as letters,
words, phrases, none lazy, all demand long life,

or the Perpetuity of the Momentary”

it grows lighter by the minute and the sporadic
lights across the bay wink morse code secrets
to the observant, and Noyac’s  tree line has
become a distinguishable and distinctive
land mass to which I crossed last nite via &
upon the South Ferry, when all these conflicting
concepts began a painful birthing delivery,
the coagulation of the flighty, merging and
transforming into my child, in my bed, through
the picture window that has so oft been complicit
in the ganging up on my very, very old and restless
brain

but, uh, this ecrivez, this motion that the momentum
of the momentary desiring & deserving of monuments
to the perpetual
won’t be stilled and hours later, with it’s invisible hands
around my throat, it yanks from within what did not
exist ten minutes prior, but always existed inside me
as a jumbled puzzle, gestating quietly till a swift kick
of birthing pains insufferable accompanied by her
raucous dreams, awoke me from ******* and rhyming
Rem Sleep, to now, this moment, named forever as
4:57am and this noisy newborn, covered in embryonic
fluid (wonderful but disgusting really) is all ready pealing and peeling
off suggestions for brothers and sisters, this arrogance
is untenable, but the babe laughs at me, for it knows that
there are hidden, voluminous files of titles awaiting their
turning time of final conception

no longer nighttime, an early forming day, it too,
covered in its own fluidity, awaits discovery, for
the lights from across the bay have gone to bed,
turned off but the greatest, more powerful
brighter discharges
of the Sun Gods

The Bay’s waters are still, though my woman is not,
muttering, still dreaming out loud, as if she wishes
to foment
turbulence, and desires a boat for safe conveyance
across the dark seas of the night to the searing bright
June summer day that the Greek seers have forecast,
and then that moment, like it’s older sibling, will demand,
it’s very moment of personalized perpetuity, its own
unique naming,
a full recording, a welcoming by the Preservation Band,
amidst the glory of its mother mornings colorings of
palest blues, puffery of cumulus whitiwhispers all tinged
in my favorite, flavored color, creamsicle orange,
and the calming power is self evident for the rustling
back and forth of raucous dreams have ceased, and I too
am no longer possessed by the moment, until soon
when the hands creep slow round my throat by a new
moment, and all is lost, all is gained and a newest poem
is brought from the womb of my ancient past, my currency
of the next minutes and the wealth of words that are
available to us all! demands one of us, perhaps you?
to commit its actualized existence into reality

I bid you a soft adieu, for the chores of existence
those demanding pests of drudged biblical
pestilence
can no longer be kept
waiting

nml
5:21am
Sun Jul 16
2024

writ at you know where…
writ in the “moment”
Nat Lipstadt Jun 14
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”
(Henry V, by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)

Morning into Mourning

<>

I speak it softly, for though battlefield is steeped in quietude
of the lively greenery, endless lawns of healing fields
surrounded by multitudinous shades of blue waters,
my eyes piercing , joining in
as sunrising separates the veil
dividing light from dark, new from prior,
a went-before and a
soon-to-be
and a familiar-what-to-be-hereafter,
but a skyed breech it is,
with sun ray stairs inviting my
upright ascension into this newness

Welcoming the exposure of my trembling, though it is not fear that causes my shaking, but the colored warmth barely warming, yet,
stoking, stroking the drape of chill
away, away! from my night-sealed pores

the majestic surfacing of the waters peinture impasto, with its roughened but genteel thick, dabs, dots, swirls, swishes belie the overall atmosphere of calm it conveys, and Shakespeare’s rallying cry of men rises to the mind forefront, for the bay is my battlefield,
the day’s new light the breeching of the sky’s
envelopment of our world, summons to rise and
step forward intimately into the tableau of morning

into the breech, into the unknown,
to lift one more poem from breast,
shed tears of welcome, and death fears banished,
a battle to the unknown from the foretold past,
and, but


you shout
no!
<>
tis a day like all others,
of rectitude sans gratitude
another quantity of known drudgery, another,
“Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup”

The breach is within me,
a splitting of the head,
laid flat out upon my desk,
writing down scrupulously
officiously,
the same figures inconsequentially,
letters deranged, daily merely rearranged,
prison vista,steel and glass appearing with
the same exactitude of every day ever prior,
the sun invisible, the unceasingly unchanging
dark deep of the shadowy of manmade canyons…

speak to us no more of views, vistas,
but the fistulae, the empty places
where interconnected dots and dash’s,
light and ombre blends of dark ochre  
gradations of bland de~gray~ding
are our time’s patchworks of familiarity,
cursed with annualized daily reciprocity,
a *** for a tat,
a woolen watch cap,
a  black Balaclava,
drawn over our heads
lest the drudgery be too readily apparent!


<>
mere mortal am I,
mortal wounded by our disparate
and desperate differing points
of view,
and we split ourselves in two,
hoping for a way forward of
reconciliations,
successful hostage negotiations,
pushing these contradictions,
back inside my heads,
until confronted
once again,
and find new words coming,
to bind me of the divisions between
or even,
to blind
me to the gaps between
my left and right
brain.

for I am both men,
one and the same,
forever
battling


until the morrow, then…
morning into mourning
June 14 2024
tween 3:30 AM ~ 10::00 AM
fitful sleep, fistfuls of vision's pieces
Nat Lipstadt Jun 12
Seeds could not prosper without the love of your fingers


what I know of soil and seeds,
is less than nothing, the dirt neath
my fingernails is only evidence of a
presence on this Earth, but no rapport
with the cold, damp earthy plains of  
what feeds, colors and gives forth
fruit

and yet,
you send this concretized city fella,
pictures of the seeds on your agenda,
the chosen ones that will in time, birth
healing to the world in natural mystical
ways, for what I see, what  I know is this:  

soil and rain, by themselves can bring forth
both hardy and hardluck weeds that eke out a
living home in a quarter inch of dirt in the
in~between of sidewalk cracks, trod upon,
but yet!
survivors to the
worst kind of human indifference


but when you plant, you fingers enwrap,
send coded message hid in the essential
oils of human love, for that is what only
certain hands can do…


Your hands much practiced in this messaging,
and peculiar kind of kind massaging
for I have seen your gardens, moreover I-know,
that hands such as yours overflow with both  
the take and give, inherent in only certain
specific humans, at a cellular level
not in my
possess


it takes a different kind of life experience, that
marries different kinds of cloth into a single weave,
that stores what is in your fingertips, nutrients of
your life, singular, homemade, that make
your botanicals
fully blossom




Jun 1 2024
12:50pm
in the sunroom
Jun 9 · 183
factual liberty
Nat Lipstadt Jun 9
we are all liars.


in the endless combat battle of our internal infernal eternal
wills,

we lie-kid-delude ourselves with futuristic promises,
false pretenses,
oaths and rosy predictions
in bold and bareface thoughts,
all lies, as they pass from the conscious
to the part of the brain where
guilt is stored and storied

our success leads to extensions,
the big white lies we tell others
from shame, or kindness,
and trip so easy off our moistened,
tongue licked lips, that we are continually
amazed
by our ease telling
lies.

I read the words *
factual liberty” in the “newspaper of record,”(1)

regarding some political figures who oft
do tell short and tall tales
with great frequency, are
feel free by taking
“factual liberty”
and so
my
heart

skips a beat:
hostages released,
lies well dressed
and redressed
in prom attire lies well
dressed poems birthed
for the arbiters of
worldwide
propriety,

have granted me
life and the
pursui of happiness,
and most importantly
liberty, from those terrorizing
the
factuals

Sun~Day
Jun9
2024
8:55AM
_in my hometown~
(1) New York Times
Nat Lipstadt Jun 8
~with thanks to T. Riddle for the inspiring photos~

there are color photos of budding nascent fruits,
an unexpected delivery to the eye’s inbox
exuding new youthfulness in
variegated shades of green
and

solitary ant traveler on a leafy space shuttle,
making its way, crossing galaxies
drinking from eye-drop seas
living off the land
and

life bursting out unreservedly asking for
no favors, nor recompense but to
breath, drink of soil nutrients,
to live to give back more
than it takes
and

to be chosen, plucked, torn from its environs,
to be the fruit of sustenance and a
delivery system to pass on its
****, tasty, enhanced flavors,
its seeded progeny the
chance to same
and

the ant travels on and about fearless,
its mini-size and sure footed body
leaping leaf to leaf to live and
to be fruitful and
multiply
and

multiple multipurposed prayers multiply,
of human origin, as humans blink at the
new-life miracles repetitious, wistfully
wishing every prayer, could be
answered thusly so lusciously
but

this it cannot be always, so we accept
as best we can, small proofs,
of regeneration, life eternal,
wetting browned, dark
soil with blotches of
salty damp-tears
encased within a
moment~eased
hopeful heart
7:52am
Sabbath Sat.
June 8
2024
Nat Lipstadt Jun 7
(an email titled, but no body, nor text,
a text, with no message, and followed
by a significant silence and I ask you,

Where does your mind go?

instantly or perniciously, slow  
de elevate to the lowest rung,
and the landing is hard, surface
rocky, disaster sooner to follow
for we rise to our lowest level
of equilibrium
when our
equipment
is needy for a fresh
oiling
Jun 6 · 586
East River Spring Morn
Nat Lipstadt Jun 6
raw April morn,
daffodils be looking
prematurely silly,

now a May morn,
daffodils no more,
irises blooming

though May itself
a hybrid of twixt
and cousin tween,
coldish morns,
summer afternoons,
evening gusts
winter reminders

yesterday, walked
50 blocks in 80+
Farenhot, sweaty much
and hypocrisy
now reigning,
oh my summer man
you your self,
selfishly forgot,
forgot the other side
of the coin, thinking
hot hot hot Not,
cranky old codger man,
yup, yup, yup.
Nat Lipstadt May 31
who thinks like this…
as my old guy body
creaks and groans
concerto moans of all
its ow own, ow-ing
a debt to oneself that’s
so overdue, the collateral
collectors, are disinterested,
but a passerby attentive,
sees on the street, my attention
riveted to dollar bills
that went to greet the street,
slipping from my overly full-
crooked fingers-bent, my sad
hesitation to bend and retrieve,
offering their lithe services, but
I pride~demure, internally
reflective, that I need as well,
pilates classes more for my
the cri of the heart & soul,
more than this body, ruefully
bending, remembering, reflecting
that it is powerful pride, the last,
that goeth before the fall…

Fri 5:10AM
May 31 2024
In the same sunroom
May 26 · 593
I under stand!
Nat Lipstadt May 26
I under stand!
_____

<>

perhaps I do
not fully,
understand,
but nonetheless,

I under stand!

Legs locked,
shoulders set,
eyes ahead straight,  
mouth firmly wavering,
range bound, between
a back n’ forth,
from grimace
to smile resolute,

my support promised,
here beneath,
is where I am,
you, set upon
my frame,
capable~able,
you, for,
to surmount,
overcome,
rise above,
see farther,
vision clearer,
any troubling
fray and say!
I am risen,
with help
of friends,
to place
my reach
never touched,
or exceeded…
until now!


2:34 pm

walking on the beach,
musing, scheming, always,
writing, grabbing words
from sea breezes,
and gusts that
order plain:
now, now,
now!
is the
time,
to share
that load
**

May 26 2024
you have my number
Nat Lipstadt May 25
The River ("Every artist was first an amateur…")

rank, rank, rank ~ a word of multivariate meanings,
too many with hints of degrading nefariousness,
know
this
then:

the river we write upon, invites from all shores, enter!
where and when you will, let the current carry, or with
intent serious, furious paddle along side the rest of us
permanent beginners,

because each time we start to compose, all that we we
have composed before, is just loam, soil from to sprout anew,
no prior ordering survives, we begin as fumbling rank
beginners, amateurs, starting first and then over and over again
for each start
is not a statistically significant event, difference, indeed, it is clarity of challenge, search, and the joy to destroy, in order to be of finding,
it is same for one and for all,
we all are ranked, the same, first time amateurs…

so I bid you: run, get wet, welcome disasters, crumple too many
first drafts, BUT be ready when the ah ha period!
a gasp confirms: competed, satisfaction guaranteed…

it doesn’t query qualifications for quality is
yours to discern, yours to differentiate, yours to  own,
to give away freely in abundance, nor does quality be an enquirer,
doesn’t ask what are your bona fides
your good sides,  
just
to
bring and borrow,
impart and deport,
take us by surprise,
comfort and comport,
leaving behind outside a
crumb trail to make us follow
you to the coveted inside of that mystery
inner tube within that brain of yours that
roundly supports all of us ever lusting
for
just one…more




12:32 PM
Sabbath
May 25
2024

S.I.
Nat Lipstadt May 25
in my private conversations, so many
emiploy this phrase, arms on chest folded,
a whispery plaint, and I too am folded into
too pieces, as well, my understanding fulsome,
for the struggling is well familiar, I under stand
beneath you, arms upraised, holding your shaking,
throbbing, wistful hearty sighs, constant tumbling,
floor~falling, see rose petals of sighs, all quiet screams,
and
my weak remedy is urging you to express
with the skill, known in you possess, to give
it forth, give it out and let us love your burdens
shared, and thus the be the firmament of our ties…

selfishly, I plead that you stun us with the
insight inside, hopeless hoping you surrender
and share in the only way I know that expiates some,
the grief, some of pained shame, and for a momentary
gasping, allows us grasping you, through you poetry,
the value you can bring forth to others humanity,
helping us to make us a better~both, with written creating
sums far, far greater than the to~us whole…
nml

7:45AM
Sabbath
May 25
2024

Silver Beach, Shelter Island
Nat Lipstadt May 24
the lovely picture window (always the same, always different)

There are painters who must,
having found the place, must,
repaint it, compelled to repeat it,
each a variant, yet always the same,
always different

I awake to a perspective that is wide,
always differentiated from the prior,
always almost similar, but never with
the same exactitude, differing attitude,
same longitude, identical latitude,
always different

horizon distanced, in all ways a view
encompassing, duality near, far distant,
harmoniously, eyes open, magnetized
to wake before 6am by the suns modesty,
first light, first clarity, a curtain risen, yet,
always different

am I so blessed or thus cursed, for the urge
to disclaim and ode, compose and thus self-
decompose, analyze, reflect, slice apart, needing
the comprehensive understanding this me/place
scripts the raw appreciation, daily differentiated
always the same

this peaceful venue seizures, chest calmly
pounding at the insistence it commands,
the price I must pay for the prize to praise,
to sing, weep, reward restful sleep with lyrics
eked out, pouring, unsustainable yet finished,
always different

a single May Iris, returns, born from a torrential,
thunder, lightning, sky mayhem, rises by a sundial
greets midst a planted clump, upright rises, lavender,
in a majestic solitary, absent but a day prior, yet mine eyes
failed to witness its discernible emerging birthing creation,
always different,
always the same

here, I am Iris too, always the same, a day aged,
but the differences minute but stolid actualized,
this overnight sensation, my body’s restoration,
what I visualize, indivisible, now visible, realized,
miracle of continuity, unchanging chained change,
always different ,
always the same

wonder, am I more blessed, or a s~lightly cursed being,
my breath restored, wet eyes full brimming, changed,
revived but always modified, a newer old man, whose
sum total always a different number, but in sequential,
compelled to confess, no understanding of this miracle,
always the same,
always different,
this daily visionary miracle


6:36 AM
Fri May 24
2024

Silver Beach,
Shelter Island
May 23 · 311
mewing, mooing & mewling
Nat Lipstadt May 23
mewing, mooing & mewling*
(~ for Steve Reimer ~)

legged up and in three, 1, 2, 3, +++
count-’em, poems, the third be this,
as the Northwest Pacific reviews a
recent scribble to which I made reference
to a maternity ward of newbie p~babies,
all mine (!) howling write me, write me!

god, what an awful orchestral, tempting
me to pull the covers up as the National
Weather Service 15 minutes too late,
advises of severe weather, lighting and
thunder, thunder, thunder (imagine Dragons)

between the accursed meteorology, and
the heterology of my babies, all so unlike,
born from different mothers and implanted,
by you my brothers and sisters, the cacophonous
phrase “mewing, mooing & mewling” bellows
and bullies it’s way to the forefront of the list

cause its freshest, ‘jess like my 18 oz. of porcelain
encased Blue Mountain Java and Fat Free Fairlife  
cow’s milk, and sadly bullies get away with it far,
far, too many times…

and with that introduction I bid you a fond good day / bye,
as I wimped, whine and woebetide y’all if you’re fool
enough to think multiple births is a piece of cake,
most likely you’ll be howling, not just, you know,

mewing, mooing & mewling
10:03AM

5/23/2024
S.i.
Nat Lipstadt May 22
~for R.A~

I cannot inform you if the verb
make
in the observation above is
transitive or intransitive,
what I can say is this, however:

the idea of people as poems,
the idea of people making poetry and
both
becoming, creating, and being poems

is transformative.

it begs and boggles my mind as the lattice of
these intersecting notions boils over in brain,
the avenues and the little dirt paths
all
request and require exploration & explication
and
and the crossover possibilities astound
and my head aches from the flush of
a maternity ward of mewing poems,
related but yet disconnected birthings,
individual but all at once,
all siblings related,
the greatest challenge yet
<>
perhaps
you are thinking
naive Natalino
perhaps
you are perspicacious
and correct,
but meantime
my heart is pounding
5/22/2024 early morning
Nat Lipstadt May 20
a quicksands *******, a trap for sure,
but the cozy warmth of the feeling,
is muy attractive, and the first step
is a ****** sweet curlicue slide into
oblivion

the more you sink, the sweeter the meat,
but when you can’t breathe no more,
and the lungs burst, neath the sea of
reeee~greeted re|greet, and the pinpoint
***** of light bidding you adieu with
a wink, is thinking out aloud
“ah those human fools, they drown themselves
so willingly…”
Nat Lipstadt May 12
The sun~poem also rises every evening…

A.P.U (as per usual):
this testimony~phrase tilts me sideways,
to relieve the condition, needy to be righted
one must expel the belly kicking seedling,
looking to be outed as a full fledged tree,
a poem planted, a gatherer of insects,
giving shade, perhaps shedding fruit

the sun bids adieu, self~same~centrifuge
of our solar system, is indeed alway rising
somewhere, though the light of our naked
eyes weak, incapable of trajectory bending,
to follow its course’s curvature, nonetheless,
we know it but struggle to believe just as we
struggle to complete, compare, and compose

replanted words in your heart, words that trigger,
are the notions inherent, of a center, rarely eclipsed,
that never ceases to offer up nouveau hope in each
of the days, a placenta to fret you blood and oxygen,
once purposed, discarded into darkness,

b u t
the words rise again, offering what you seek,
diurnally, need, to find within them, for my child,
is now
our child

7:47AM
Sun May 12
Avenue of York
Nat Lipstadt May 10
happened upon an extravaganza of spring’s hallmark,
the cherry blossoms outing their munificence of color,
I happened to position myself direct below a tree,
the thicket
of blossoms so, well, thick, that sky was obliterated ‘cept
for pointillistic spots of blue sun, yellow sky that poked
through the
few de minimus interstitial spaces permitted, and was
struck silent, by-for-before shimmering eyes that uttered the
requisite oohs and ahhs,

and

words came to me weeks later,
when the memory, now fully decanted,
reappears
courtesy of a giant tech company’s code tinkering,
merging and splurging the combined images in the
photographic memory
of my devices,
as if to say:
your life is
points of light and color and scent
as you write now
amidst the hubbub of jackhammers, raucous horns a blaring,
the homeless screaming on the street at god,
the fatalistic headlines of hate and
the pallor of a low level haze of perp~gray
between you and your true elfin self,
and you are not surprised,
but sadly, but not entirely,
bemused
that the photo’s true utility was to
remind weeks later
that all that my eyes utter
is not just
woe, double trouble and toil, toil,
but to Hey Jude and George,
step out and see the park on a Sunday
in its entirety and to glory in
your being
by being
a point in that tapestry spectacular
of ingestion, digestion and final comprehension and
a happy

exhalation
across the course of
May 2024
Nat Lipstadt May 7
Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)

”And you, dear poet, friend of many years,
have given me so many inspirations, birthed within
us words,so oft, and so well, that your pithy observations,
manufacture time, add minutes to lifetimes

<>

wrote these words without thinking,
they’re sweet and neat, trivial but incomplete

but upon rear mirror review, Mr Poet
re-thinks, perhaps deserved of another serving,
curvy white, soft-to-the-lips, a moist vanilla kiss,
excellent ice cream in a sugar cone, words irresistible

for the sweetest poem sparks multi-coloration-explosion
of sprinkles ‘pon  a skin’s surface,
uprisings of what lurks in the centrum of your
embodied universe and disembodied soul,
shockingly uprising from an internal fulcrum,
sea~tossed flotsam of a jagged life, now, all recovered
words sprinkling, beach treasures, and yet,
*
adding minutes to a lifetime…

reliving old reels, is time recaptured, creating a
certain robust additive to thine cranking and
cranky engine, that’s logged much more than
a picayune hundred thousand miles on a voyage
of e i g h t decades, you employ ten fingers to
calculate your fugue of multi-voiced numerations!


can it be? it cannot be! millions upon millions of
minutes, possess and passed, yet highlight feature
films, enabling reliving so real that by watching,
seeing, believing, re-reading it is as if one is earning
life extensions…adding minutes to a lifetime…


‘tis true, rereading every small scrip, every poem,
returns one to prior-places, each a datum,
a particular spot, a point upon a schema of integrity & integration,
that rule the visions, a message of individualism
in the largest context of a true vision(arie)


“chacun un point dans une peinture pointilliste…”
“each a point within a pointillistic painting…”

in a few years, a stumbling upon shall here return me here,
and I will smile with great gratitude for the life extended,
accepting with gratitude,

these few seconds, a last lasting chance,**
to say some magic words
with a great vanilla whispering
adding minutes to you life as well


nml
may 5~6
2024
Nat Lipstadt May 5
Dear Carlos: Poet & One Man Band,

have heard these words so many times,
always bemused, trace~smile appearing,
but this time, it hit me like a Blue Mountain
extra hot, micro~window-waving cup of java Jamaican,
that is me, this was me, always, even before
I knew how to poem to music that I had always
head-heard, before I understood that these,
my songs were soul~pieces escapees, my…legatees

I leave them them in puzzle form, surely a piece,
or three missing, but no matter, each piece an
individual composition, standing alone, but the
big picture no one will ever see, understand but
that is the poet’s audience, his own one man band,
no bandwagon attached, a solitary figure quiet
contented with his disconnected discontentment,
a lifetime spent in refining, defining…refinishing

2 poem themes crisscrossed cross in my head,
interweaving themselves instead of becoming
two cells, one split apart, I call this process ruefully
reverse me~mitosis, blending that coffee with
a quarter cup of white milky, leaving me a caramel
colored confection, perfect in unity of trinity, that
combined cuppa plus my insides warmed, cozied,
the heat combined with the fire inside to write…one more

on the “two-to-write list,” in the “draft”y attic chamber,
were two titles, twins, now conjoined; the first, an
expose of why I choose to write these poems, and
the other, why I have a life of few friends, the few
chosen ones; the inherent conceptualizations differ but
cross the same forests and deserts, hid in my own Northwest Territory, rugged and inhospitable, where to survive, it required 
accepting lonely solitude, with a ragged welcome, & an honest mirror

an unequivocal, no equivocation permit, that telling yourself grand lies was pointless because you were a criminal on trial, prosecutor, defense lawyer, judge  and jury of your, ha ha, peers all rolled into one, there will never be a higher court wanting to grant an appeal, what is…well, is; a sad bliss but after decades of trial and many errors, wonderful and awful partnerships; it was modestly
perfected, dis-satisfyingly…satisfying

this goes on too long, like an intolerable avoidance of
answering, there, a phony confessional declarative; the whys un~provided, so fall back on that all encompassing
defense of temporary insanity that was locked in those
self-same sealed cells, carriers of my tainted DNA,
looking like bagels~donuts with holes, no, voids,
a central, air pocket of emptiness, with no surface to fill full,
or to adhere to, a drifter, an observer, never, a full participant

these empty holes, were just fried dough, sugar coated,
a fleeting life~lies of no substance, that I’ve spent
a lifetime trying to fill with worth, and I’ve written a few
moments of kindness, unqualified unreserved loving, but
too few to justify my existence to myself! That’s what
happens when you judge yourself, no defense strategy
can succeed, the fight is fixed, but I write on vaingloriously
hoping that there is yet, a flawless poem waiting within,
that a one man band, can both play and enjoy…

fav poets: Whitman, Hafez, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Pradip and so many countless others on this site…
Sun May 5th, a birthday lipstadt
Nat Lipstadt May 4
“Every moment waking or sleeping/dreaming is a poem.
Sadly there aren't enough moments to write them all.”

back in the day,
(like 5 minutes ago)
I awoke,
and that miracle is

poem enough!
~~~~
the house is overflowing
with floral gifts,
orange roses, scented lilacs,
pink peonies,
and that friend, is

poem enough!

Sunday brings Birthdays,
One is 11, the other 7,
and I must change ~
my passwords will
require-updating,
and that friend, is

poem enough!

And you, dear poet,
friend of many years,
have given me so many
inspirations, birthed within
us words,
so oft, and so well,
that your pithy observations,
manufacture time,
add minutes to lifetimes,
and dearth
not a word,
to be associated with us!

Us,
as in always,
that my friend, is
just
ever a

poem enough!
Sabbath Sat. May 4, 2024
Nat Lipstadt May 3
It’s good to be hated!  But I know my name…


hate, blackened, misshapen, ugly, unnatural,
yet
how it clarifies the mind, like a cupped hand
carrying clear, cold, brook water to dry mouth,
to shock, enliven, resets resets, all your priorities
with alacrity, a word I prefer cause it is an intuitive
combo of eagerness + alarm, suddenly much of the

trivial is no longer worthy of your  ‘to do’ list,
you, without thinking, DNA filter your filters,
those screens that digest, then reject & reflect
the inputs ongoings around you, and you are now
reclassified! by the hate surrounding, it declassifies
the time wastrels, reinterpreting most everything 
on a bipolar scale of  1  or  10, there are no shades,
the middle ground of gray be fully eliminated,
just like those who wish to
eliminate
                                                                ­                   me.


in a palette of black or white, your
e +e,
(essence and existence) cannot be ever
a gray area, yes, of course, the sunshine
is yellow bright, and the grass is spring
flushed green, the multicolored daffodils
newly define colors varietal, and the waves
of the Sound, roll relentlessly, but hate can be
coated, camouflaged and subtle disguised, but
we  know, oh how we know, and how we wanted
to
forget, our “sins”, our original liabilities of
our multi colored skins, our religion, our race & ethnicity,


but NOT our names!

the Rabbis tell us that God nearly did not keep
his promise to Abraham, to rescue his progeny
from slavery in Egypt but saved them only because:

‘On account of four things Israel was redeemed
from Egypt: they did not change their names, they
did not change their language,  they did not speak
slander and not even one of them was found to be
promiscuous.’^

I know my name; and though you cannot distinguish
me by dress, know not my moral life, but now you
know my name,
given to me by my parents, in the language of my ancestors:

Mordecai Netanel ben (son of) Eliyahu Chaim**

Per my family lore, as told to me by my parents, our
family fled from Spain because of the Inquisition (1478),
settled in a small town in Germany on the banks
of the river Lippe; and from the shtetls of Poland,
and those who survived or avoided the Holocaust
ultimately left Europe, came here, to the land of
the free, the United States of America with names,
in their language, with memories intact.

I will not flee this country,
for I know my true name,
inscribed in my pores, in my
DNA

<>
(but should I have to…there is a sanctuary.)
May 2 2024
^ https://jewishaction.com/religion/jewish-law/whats-the-truth-about-the-jewish-in-egypt-keeping-their-jewish-names-language-and-dress/
Nat Lipstadt Apr 26
~dedicated to the heart fixers~

sometimes I smack my head,
when a poem commission is lying on
the ground before me, and I just don’t
hear it, believe it, in order to retrieve it…

many months of physical rehabilitation,
sessions always ended with a certain cutesy
Gen Z~Millenial crossover phraseology:

remember to tell someone you love them

the instructors mostly youngish,
so we senior~smile
a tad dismissively, give them a reward~grin, and
head for the locker room,
where we gossip and compare notes,
on the Part II of our in-process-future-realization,
living a grueling new life of self-preservation, 24/7

the PTs & EPs pound you on the machina, go faster, work harder,
eat better, sleep more, take those meds, motion is lotion,
walk the talk, never be still, but race to live longer and
prosper, this hard work is your new job, and resignation
is non~optional

now, it hits me, via a figurative sharp slap on the side of the head,
triggering an actual physical manifestation that reverbs to the toes,
that the most important lesson went under the radar,
evading the former trader’s dimming vision,
flunking himself on the rehab test paper,
a purple F for fool,
a grade, earned and deserved, and herein poetically preserved

the hardest heart work, begins only after you co-
commence the longest road back to where you once
belonged, but where you can’t walk alone, for therein
a recipe for failure; and the work that needs doing,
is on you; take that tear-repaired heart, and give it away, it,
one can be healed, but not if sealed, for the hard-hearted
walls thicken, and “over  time, the thickened heart muscle
can become too stiff to fill the heart with blood; the heart
can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs.


so break off pieces of your heart, give them away with
relentless abandon, for this is the heart that self-repairs,
new tissue, new fiber, and most important, regeneration,
the one single reparation that can successfully
accomplish the true miracle of getting by giving,
no forgiving, if you don’t exercise the heart by

remembering to tell someone you love them




dedicated to the hard working staff of the
Cardio Rehabilitation  Unit
of Nyulangonge, Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation
who started  me
with a mighty push on the long road to utilizing my heart properly

<•>
Nat Lipstadt Apr 24
I believe in poetry tho most do no not.

that it is a special social way of
communicating that kidnaps the heart,
seduces the soul, best when whispered,
tho the cadence is the key, lesser is the
volume

we do not teach our children well enough,
the hows of it, for if we did, the whys would
surely follow; no one can be a bully, or give
in to overwhelming sadness entire, if a line
of the spoken can yet bring forth a tear to
the most hardened of hearts

the high heat of the first sip of the day
asks for encapsulation, rememberance,
insignificant as it may be, it dislodges
the stale of sleep, stimulates the muscle
fibers of the tongue. snaps open our now
wide eyed eyelids, and lets us appreciate
a poem of our existence by its poking us
from homeostasis to, by the slightest touch,
the slow running of the tongue upon the
lower lip. the eyes filled to the brimming
by your beloved deep dreaming … and so,
we break our day into sequences of fragments,
though sometimes fractured and divisible,
if not even divisive, yet each a stand alone
momentary affirmation that though our
natural state is still homeostasis, it is the
highs and lows of our minuta of minucia,
that mark our minute minutes of never
ending poetical composition…
4/24/24
Apr 23 · 838
A Flawless Poem
Nat Lipstadt Apr 23
<>>
Jan. 13, 2014
<>

a  flawless poem

if such there were,
will always be,
the next one

my poor soul,
my rag tag heart
has no censor,
so careless, reckless,
as if words were but
frivolous treasures,
easy spent, easy get

if only, how I wish I
could harvest my best,
with golden cutlery excise
the single flawless poem,
that I know is in my possess

lay down this hand so weary
from cupping tears,
be satisfied at long last,
so much so,
that when my casket lowered,
hands in repose companioned,
clutching his best, easing his rest,
a paper record to join his dust
with ash,
his flawless poem,

at longest last
Nat Lipstadt Apr 22
the inherent harmony of the Arthurian phrase,
always charmed me, and by it, herein employed,
to wrestle/rassle it to the ground, like two preteen boys,
in a do or die, which prohibits ****** harm but releases
the testosterone that helps them moves them to the next,

Once and Future

stage, more a platform, to leg up further, to the next step,
that will be the once and future reforming, for are we not
always wrestling with our Once, this imprecise but prescient
point when we have arrived, knowing intuitively, it is not
a terminus, but just another way station to I-do not-know,
but knowing with genetic certainty that
when you get there,
that you have reached and met the requirements of what it means
to be, to exist as, to be so noted on the continuum of a

Once and Future

existence.
4/22/24

Tonight is Passover Eve,
Jews have and always will celebrate their exodus from tyranny to peoplehood, and their journey to a land and covenant with their God, knowing the journey
is perpetual, the covenant renewable, as they are instructed to say at the Passover supper service (the Seder)to tell the story of their Exodus,
“as if they were there!”
nml
Apr 21 · 278
the THEY (a FPOTD)
Nat Lipstadt Apr 21
~for all the old poets,
especially one so denominated, my old faithful friend…~
<>

the
THEY,
emboldened and italicized,

are whispering and whimpering,
even
whining
that I’ve gone
wimpy,
lost possess of mine
facilities and faculties,
no longer able and capable
to command, demand, in hand,
import
a decent poem
from & in the English language(s) to
purport,

lost my edges,
hide behind the hedges
of inconsequential ancestral
and incestual rhymes,

these
THEY
do oft appear as voices in my
now emptied and unemployed head,
but familiarity breeds contemporary
contretemps of contempt,
for they are remiss,
in dismiss when the eyelids
flutter,
the noble temporal lobes
mutter,
’tis thy~thyme ole man,
for spillage of your

FPOTD
(first poem of the day)
thus kneecapping the cancer
of a restless dark hour period
where failures and faults,
of lines
crossed and uncrossed,
bear you to pieces,
bare your lifetime
laundry list
of pulsing, palpable,
fulminating and always ruminating faults
of which penance cannot be bought
by the bags of pennies and sordid assorted coins
that THEY
will find in the back bottom of thine closets,
along with the manuscripts
of the discarded and forlorn,
unloved and unpublished poems that you chose
to have buried with you,

lest you think that
eternal rest
will best
them voices,
they will accompany you
to permafrost of forever dark,
their once and future demise,
a travesty of
justice…

enough.

lists of to do’s;
the exercise of delaying death
for one more day,
by trodding on the treadmill
that postpones the inevitable
that can
always tun longer and faster
and cannot be outdone, outrun,
but
this poem
disgorged and disbanded,
it’s bytes,
will not bite mark me
in the forever future
their bytes are alive now,
free to be chomped and well chewed,
and once fully digested,
be return to our Mother
Earth

where some disclaimed poems
go to be buried
within it’s eternity
Nat Lipstadt Apr 19
Ah, Mesdames et Messieurs!
you 99% who number themselves
in the know-it-all category, the
largest subspecies of human animal,
fail to appreciate the vast eternal plan
that flexes & fluxes with gravitational
pulls and pushes, sunspots unpredictable,
can you ever predict the AM headlines?
have you checked your bank balance today?
always look both ways when crossing a one
way street, twice, just to be somewhat sure?
have you told you loved ones dryly and
routinely of your affections after every text,
emai, and even the most dreaded phone call
(tyou borrowed the car and left the tank on E)?

you’re an A+ student, prom queen, a cheerleader,
a high school football star, till you wrench that
knee because you were too busy admiring yourself
in the reflection of your selfie and didn’t notice
the open grate, the potholes or the orange cones
that appeared overnight, a cause for fright delight,

thank you so much for providing he fodder for this
pink sapphire of a poem, and please continue to
forget to utter your morn prayer to whatever God,
you entrusted your soul while sleeping, cause G. is
smirking at all the fun mishaps planned on today’s
agenda!

Is
you zipper open?
your blouse on inside out?
your metro card in the wallet
of your best friend who forgot
to return it?
What! you forgot bout the cheshire
grin on the Biology Prof’s face, when
he said “Anytime, Anyplace, surprise quizzes
are graded at 0, if you should  fail to appear at
your 8:00am class…

ah well, check your sneaker laces, try to recall
why that string is tied to your index finger or
take you chances of random probability that
having read this missile missive you’ve already
messed up and be careful our there, there are
very dangerous natalino poet~prognosticators
out there ready, william and able to take advantage
of  idiots who fail to be properly superstitious!!!

Salt, anyone?
tapping the well
Nat Lipstadt Apr 18
Dig deep poet;
You too reader;

Commandment One:

Both must obsess to possess,
Air the curvature of each line
shape with two hands, creasing and
no ceasing not till the air waves have filled
your flushed face with compressed comprehensions

You weep as you compose!
Good!
The well of tears where hid
the pool of emotions
in cavernous reservoirs
in the center of your
gravity,
needs a daily tapping,
a draining, a purification,
a quenching sweet and
raucous

where you dig, salted water will come

in the soiled, imperial but imperfect body/mind cappuccino,
there are swirls of treasures, sins and histrionics
that need discovery, expiation, expulsion,
when~then, object is surgically removed,
accept surging water will desoil,
and you can revel
in the revelation
of honest effort

Debate Commencement:

reveal, which, what and how
much, how much? how much?
(this reverbs)
what must be shared,
what must be reburied,
what must be refuted,
what must be reconstructed,
refurbished,
and what must be
demolished & deconstructed

ah, but as soul judge,
you hold yourself to a higher standard,
but in all of this but two constraints rule:

the quality of the recalled data,
the quantity of storage space delimitation

do not tease us with rivulets, nor bury
us under thunderous rushes of memories
spilling and cresting with a reek of abandon,
unless, you’re abandoning the memory en tout,
giving us your newly orphaned all innermost,
then, we must accept the product of your labor,
whether it be spoiled fruit or glorious
                            truth

Tuesday Apr 16
8:32AM
(the year of pollard, a/k/a 2024)
inspired by dancers and choreographers speaking about the sources of creativity @Guggenheim New York
Nat Lipstadt Apr 17
the good old nights^

roam the recesses and the abscess of
our too small apartment in the the very
large, very long, very inescapable wee wee
hours of the dark session of the day, lifting
my tablet to inscribe/ reorder/ recorder her/
this one more in my personal history, with
rant, word elixir, a note to our plural selves,
thinking of English gardens drinking up my
water freshly flowing and flying to you, via
nighty nite storm clouds, or your rural falls

and white clouds cumulus do  not return, and I too,
as my mind ***** and slugs but all attempts to
pierce the walled in somber slumber FAIL.

The creative comes besty beast like when I am driven from my dreams to wakealate (dream+speculate with eyes open)
dream of our realities and the tv (she never
remembers to program to shut down), drones
on about some product with XL in the name
that will make the unsleeping walkers feel
so much-better.

but not, not us, for we turn exploratory and
listen to the humming, beeping, tiny little diodes
of Joseph’s colored coat, all the mini stimuli,
the lights that mark the modern blacker hours
of rhythm, even those who can’t dance, can sleep,
‘cept for me, for I am a tune disturbed, needful of
minding, all these a rhythm busters ghosting me,
as a prelude to a poem vision now freshly etched
on my mind and now upon your flesh, an animation,
of reanimated images of ancient statues, ancient
advertisements for fertility, the dream continuum
of our lives, beyond our clearly demarcated time
line, the human, gene based need to outlive our
bodies in-the bodies of our progeny are a recurring
motif…female fecundity,  statues, many cracked or
missing limbs, come to life and move around, wailing
with grief and anger and hope and desire

alas, alas, another ole good time night ramble,
amidst familiar places and new abscesses,
and I wonder, how am I writing this when both
hands cover my face, and yet I still envision?

Tuesday Apr 16
3:08am
(the year escapes me,
for notions of big times
are measured in multiples
of I can’t remember)
^ there was a time in my life that many years I woke in the middle of the night and wrote furiously. Less often these days, but nonetheless, the Devil *** angel ***  Genie comes, to remind me, who is the boss of me
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/arts/design/israel-pavilion-venice-biennale.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Nat Lipstadt Apr 14
East River: The Many Calories in Water and Words**

this weighty obsession, counting the energy
consumed and disbursed,
to be lean but not mean,
traverses into its third year

a late start does not forgive
over Forty years of transgressions, that damage,
sustained and in part irreversible,
yet I awake this Sunday morn,
all quiet on the East Side front, observing the East River flows
on the surface, contented and uncontested,
strongly bound for faraway Oceans unknown, and it tickles my
imagination that the rain from the nearby Adirondack and Catskills mountains might soon be quenching thy flora, fauna and your parched throats, confirming and conforming our connection and threading our interwoven tapestries, our unified aqueduct, carrying
with more than poetic words, but poetic water!

this notion sustains in multiple manners, and I deep drink the calm and the power as if it were,
for it is,
a daily vitamin,
calorie free,
God  delivers

Delivering
us with
its contained and contentented potency,
to all
in equal dosage

and now the script finished,
the water imbibed,
this baptized, scripture loving
mind and body
as/is
wholly holy
refreshed,
as are we,
my friend

8:38AM
April 14, 2024
by the East River
Mar 31 · 664
mine own psalm musings
Nat Lipstadt Mar 31
mine own psalm musings

living between two broad, sea-emptying rivers,
a Majesty’s sentries to mark the differentiation~
division tween divine and a moderate human’s
moderating steps, as his stride shortens as the y/tears
lengthen, and it is accepted as an inevitable musky must,
no matter how the sweet spring day refreshes, the newly
planted trumpeting shards of bright yellows daffodils
pinch his yellowing eyes, few notice the tiny tears of
discrepancies of an annualized emboldening, a grand
heavenly rebirth and a slow man’s body self~editing,
shedding of a life’s~ending~of~story psalm musings


the man looks for the terrible swift sword, but its
failure to grace us with an appearance, is but a
modest disappointment, for a deferred delay is but
a causation to eke out a few mordant, pungent, caustic
reminders of all that is yet to be, to be accomplished,
though the smirking lips of the necessity of yet, one
more unloved poem extant, tilting the Earth’s axis
benevolently toward the open palms of his beneficiaries who
,

you,

are among them numbered, is but, a green shoot in a city’s
hopeful earth planted, by summer, will shed seeds to come
thy way, as an evocation, a good consternation, a joyous
provocation, an asking kingly~gentle, a royal polite inquiry,
would you care to add a a verse to this eternal verse?
before time shreds it too into a yellowed crumpling,
and to the earth it is returned, for the mine of this
psalms is only generic, genetic,  and what is mine is well,


and truly yours too.


nml
<>
March 31, 2024
NYC
9:16am
Sunday Mourning Service
Mar 27 · 117
What were you expecting?
Nat Lipstadt Mar 27
“ The reality is that no medication or vaccine
is 100% effective, and everything has risks and benefits,”
(Bloomberg article on the efficacy of vaccines)

<<>
this the larger/largest query,
if not the largesr grandee
of all questions and querying,
is it has no equal!

hopefully
you place expectant parenthood
off to one side
for soon enough the daily double trouble
of learned birth defects
yours, theirs, ours
collectively,
of the most ordinary human variety
will be self-disclosed,
no needed writ of disclaimer,
just a legal
exclaim,
of a suitable profanity curse…



better than who what when where
and it’s a first cousin to
why?,

and begins the conversation
intimating the process,
goal setting,
mostly failing,
cursing your self oft out-loudly
while think-walking,
and the nearby know it all’s are thinking,

what was I expecting?

you don’t understand?
99.9% of us doomed,
doomed I tell you,
to fail…

What were you expecting?
Sabbath Saturday Mach 2 2024
9:35am
Nat Lipstadt Mar 23
Tessellation & Interstices


”A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface,
often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes,
called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps…In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries.”


the insistent need to be distinguished
means many are not,  
indeed,
this hunger
to be an influencer
and never just an influencé.

creeply creates a linear surface,
a flooring to be trod upon,
a tessellated plane,
were we each fit in
right-tight juxtaposition
and we are noticeable for our
uniformity and

the scuff marks of having been trod upon,
well used.

it is in the chips of irregularities,
the overlaps and the gaps
where we touch and connect
with our individual Ah Ha’s,
where our Venn Diagram Lives
intersect, infect, interfere, inject,
in the tiny
interstices
tween us,
the jagged, irritatingly edgy
rubbings
that the friction of creativity
is comedically inseminated.

I love a good tense sweat,
that invasive, deep boring burring,
that demands
instant creative solutions lest the angst of
an unwritten-in-the-moment-poem
is even more annoying,
before it is annoyingly,
befogged, lost forever.

that is why with old age,
fearsome fast
short term memory loss,
some turn to the speedy freedom of
free verse,
unconstrained by socks
and well fitting shoes,
and the slip on sneakers
of rhyming,
so insistent on perfection,
that the
burr is absorbed,
the irritant rubbing is creamed away,
and that loss of
a pouring of the soul’s ******* of
Done!
is
our exclamatory mutual curse
saturday sabbath
march 2
2034
9:50am
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