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Aug 2024 · 407
YOU owe me!
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
you owe me
and yourself

to repost e v e r y poem
that gobsmacks, renders you prostate,
that brings forth the whimsical smile
and/or a guffaw and a  laugh-out-loud,
but especially those that
:

invoke/provoke/ evoke an involuntary s i g h,

that make you wince in recognition
(and breaks you)

but most of all those that make you utter
all of the above
and
make you think

****!  how  I  wish  I
had written that…


which is why I repost (costless)and bring forward (costly) so many
for the pleasure and pain you provide…

nml
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
A single lyric on a single song, sung, by one of my chosen ones, a brother and friend,
a brethren, whose hidden meanings are never hidden from me,
as we both, both gentle souls who, when lost, have been
lost
witnesses and also been witnessed:
weeping into the rags of remorse

this season is nearing conclusion, I know the sun rays penetrate, in a vain vanity of a last attempt to purify and make my soul stains,
a burnt offering, rising as smoke up to the wind,
my hearted words lifted,
letter by letter, to whence they came from

My senses are not cold, rhymes run, forgiving the sun for it’s inevitable disappearance, so it shall be displaced,
just lie us,
over then under, a nearby horizon,
with a sunset wave goodbye, a multi colored coat spectacle,
that reflects well off & on
my pallid skin

When it returns, it will be a different star, re-angled, in such a way that it can no longer do heavens work on my body and soul, both
kindred entities, each with each other,
a commemorative tree ring commonality,
a newly incised cain mark

sensitive locomotives ply between the sides of my head, knowing better than most the true meaning of fleeting, for although I am in my eighth decade now, and those words,
“there is nothing new under the sun,”
ring inherent inside like
they too newly born
 but,
running on a track well worn,
now nearly scrap iron

yet clothed in my sinner’s wet rags, the remorse ever lingers,
directed to mine own mark of Cain,
awaiting the day when the sun touches my
forehead, and those loco- motives ride higher,
for their denouement, their untying(2)

Aug 30 2024
fini 2:17 pm
by the Sound
(1) The Window Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

[Verse 1]

Why do you stand by the window?
Abandoned to beauty and pride
The thorn of the night in your *****
The spear of the age in your side
Lost in the rages of fragrance
Lost in the rags of remorse
Lost in the waves of a sickness
That loosens the high silver nerves
(2)literal translation of denouement is untying
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
the waters of the Sound, churning,
make my hands a five-in-hand knotted,
full of writhing wriggling writing poem
lines with an go<hesitant~go  slow, knowing that,inspiration is daring me, just as the  whitecaps are, troubled trolling so nearby,
gone can hear them mocking me with their
17knot  ‘breeze,’ your lyrics are but
blowing in the wind, soon enough will
shift to someone else, leavening your
deflation with a non~riser sour-dough mix
of unfinished sadness

in advance, knowings that every poem
more like a Monarch butterfly, here but
for a momentary traversal travesty,
gone faster than the eye blink, and this
infilling fleeing fleet urgency more
likely to die on the pyre of unfinished
rejected draftees, unselected for service

nonetheless ~ “follow” lyrics refuse me
to let~leave a poor tribute to vine~die, the
fingers speak in unison, urging me on,
not wanting to escape from this fantasizing
moment, urging me to tap tap tap
evermore!

“ Come taste and smell the waters of our time,”
Richie invites us all to find our own water,
let it work its magic upon our
nerve endings, but,
mine full of sendings, how?

can one sit seated in the Poet’s Nook,
same vista, no visa required ~
just to see it each time
differently, only the truly creative can love it
so much, that they tip into unexplored unexploited
veins of fresh blood and words
and eyes that discern and earn the ability
to write of the old with new inside insights

those! they are the ones you need to follow!
creators! with a small C, see them feel, see them divine with rod, their original water,
from which they emerged, and drink once more, for the water follows them like nutrients, raw materials that nourishes
and they in turn, return to their watery
birth site, their emotional placentae,
drawing from, returning to it new creations

for all of us to follow, fire our senses,
make us!
make art in all our hearts,
and don’t mind me, just

”close your eyes, child, and look at what I'll show you;
Let your mind go reeling out and let the breezes blow you,
And maybe when we meet then suddenly I will know you.
If all the things you see ain't
Quite what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream .
‘cos


We
ain’t nothing but a dream,
our disguised muses visiting,
pleading to be
usefully used…
A recurring line from “Follow” lyrics by Richard Merrick, sung most famously by Richie Havens, who made it his marquee signature song, and a standard, immediately ’ recognizable by anyone who listened to music in the Sixities (20th century)

<>
Let the river rock you like a cradle
Climb to the treetops, child, if you're able
Let your hands tie a knot across the table.
Come and touch the things you cannot feel.
And close your fingertips and fly where I can't hold you
Let the sun-rain fall and let the dewy clouds enfold you
And maybe you can sing to me the words I just told you,
If all the things you feel ain't what they seem.
And don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream.
The mocking bird sings each different song
Each song has wings - they won't stay long.
Do those who hear think he's doing wrong?
While the church bell tolls its one-note song
And the school bell is tinkling to the throng.
Come here where your ears cannot hear.
And close your eyes, child, and listen to what I'll tell you
Follow in the darkest night the sounds that may impel you
And the song that I am singing may disturb or serve to quell you
If all the sounds you hear ain't what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream
The rising smell of fresh-cut grass
Smothered cities choke and yell with fuming gas
I hold some grapes up to the sun
And their flavour breaks upon my tongue.
With eager tongues we taste our strife
And fill our lungs with seas of life.
Come taste and smell the waters of our time.
And close your lips, child, so softly I might kiss you,
Let your flower perfume out and let the winds caress you.
As I walk on through the garden, I am hoping I don't miss you
If all the things you taste ain't what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream .
The sun and moon both arise
And we'll see them soon through days and nights
But now silver leaves are mirrors, bring delights.
And the colours of your eyes are fiery bright,
While darkness blinds the skies with all its light.
Come see where your eyes cannot see.
And close your eyes, child, and look at what I'll show you;
Let your mind go reeling out and let the breezes blow you,
And maybe when we meet then suddenly I will know you.
If all the things you see ain't
Quite what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream .
And you can follow; And you can follow; follow...
Source: Musixmatch
Aug 2024 · 1.4k
YOU!
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
have a credit in your account at the
First NATional City Bank.

Some free advice:

Spend it unwisely, with reckless abandon!
If you do, the credit balance will irregularly and improbably be increased in recognition of
additions to the sadly diminishing stock of
beauty, kindness, and the essences of humanity or some other derivative
thereof,
but  by

Writing more poetry,
one of my first jobs after school was with a large , mega-corp.,
now know as Citicorp,
and prior to that as Citibank,
with thousands upon thousands employees,
and before that as
First National City Bank

imagine my surprise when a letter addressed to
First NATional Bsnk addressed that way to my
(actual, physicals inbox & yup they existed);
Someone in our huge mailroom
decided that it was meant for me!

I was rechristened with the
nicknamed
“City Nat”
(which is how I answered when picking up the phone in our
bond trading room:

Years later at Goldman Sachs,
with 20,000 employees (back then)
called the general operator,
asked for Nat?
and without hesi,
was transferred
to me

now  I ain’t saying if you had asked for Natty or
Lippy,
but we’ll never ever know..
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
~ for spygrandson ~

with deep affection


https://hellopoetry.com/spysgrandson/


<>

I am en~titled
by him,
commissioned by his exacting wording
of this poem’s titular naming,
all my previous attempts are failures,
over designed, too artistic
for his modest self~reckoning &
bearded demeanor,
they demanded
denial with
request for
simplicity of an unflowery
reckoning,
a clean shave,
so to speak…



a potholder of simple design,
a modest picture self-drawn,
but his stories are
sorties tall,
he draws you in, worthy draftsman sketches
of words, tales short, poems complete,
tales so sweet, of characters uniquely complete,
and you think,
can they not be fictional?

and you know they’re no such thing,
ok, maybe,
some taller and a few perhaps dreamed,
the big characters of those
giants of simple men,
whose deeds were not mythical,
ok, almost mythical…

but truth of the humans of the hammered and nailed tough skin,
who built homesteads in the
plain, in mountains, by rivers that snaked,
unmapped,
except on their hearts and feet

the humans,
that made up
the raw & naked bond holders of
these United States:
bonded by character to the soil and
its curvaceous dancing topography
from
& of the center of our country,
but with eyes keen enough
to stretch from
coast to coast,
to see to shining seas

yes, true,
the grandson be he
to/of an almost mythical man,
and so took thus
his penned name,
the grandfather, a real person
of whom stories are yet told,
for no one can be sure
that & of what deeds
this spy did,
on hostile, unfamiliar,
continents,
but the photographic proofs,
I have seen…

His blood thickened by many infusions,
a cross cultural experiment,
happily not unique,
just **** rare

but enough of this;
read him,
let his
tongue take you to
the unfamiliar,
a literary Ansel Adams,
who never saw the plain(s) men & women,
unworthy of being forgotten but
forever being
celebrated


ask him for a potpourri of his short stories
of war, the bonds that men forge in combat,
tween the dead that still live on and
the living,
who have unreadable dead spots within,
they carry their dying glances,
their dying wishes,
and who are honored by him
in his continuing recollections

with walking stick in hand,
even if going outside
to “just” measure the snowy depths,
he leave markers and trailers,
for us to recall how to weep,
from love and pain,
from following generations of his
beautiful blonde
children who are poster models for
the traditional all american imagery,
but thriving within,
with  his
wanderlust, his mixed fiery visions,
and acting, singing out dramas
befitting their inherited
visions…

<>
here
I cease,
here
I weep,
at the impoverished words
scrivened in haste,
through tears of pleasure
intended to give honor
to this man,
who cedes me the pleasure of his existence,
and enhances my world
when he asks me,
unwittingly commissions!
a poem,
about
the human character,
who see himself unusually!
“as a potholder with a simple design”
and as usual,

I fail miserable…
maybe,
nick the outer edge of a bullseye target,
because the important words that he deserves,
I have not yet mentioned:

honor, loving kindness and friend.

perhaps he is correct,
but doesn’t grasp
that without simple men like him
to hold the *** upright and firm,
we all would be lesser or
even lost.


maybe,
now I am one
with
done
Nat Lipstadt my poetry is there. It just took a year to get my password reset to me. This should be the link:

Nat Lipstadt my poetry is there. It just took a year to get my password reset to me. This should be the link:
https://hellopoetry.com/spysgrandson/


sat 8/24/2024
5:20pm

written in a one fell swoop,,
hat in hand,
bowing low to reflect my deep respect,
listen to my grandchildren fuss, fight, whine and
laugh,
for that is the mixture of our
own individual humanity
Aug 2024 · 284
my soluble absolution
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
all evolutions,
revolutions
to absolution
by liquid?

can we drive always away away away
our sins that are burnt into our
skin?

Without the spillage of a
witness of wetness?

is my own sweat insufficient?

product of sunrise and rays
testing the body’s hydration,
my words beckon to reckon
to emerge,
purge my seditious  sins,
my owned dissolution,
with false, half hearted acts
of contrivance contrition?

Why are
my daily confessions,
halved by inability
to give myself up a
full~on
fullsomeness,
but words available,
censored by a stub of
unwillingness
to embarrass
what little honor
left in my shrinking
possession

I am guilty of ******.

this act of admission
is legally insufficient
to sustain even
sky painted clouds
to cease moving,
there, it’s sad said,
and i breathe no easier
only comfortable that my
shame is openly accounted
for by you, my jurors…
Aug 2024 · 153
Certainty is a delusion
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
“ When it comes to theology, philosophy
and the mystery of human relationships,
not knowing is a value I cherish.
But now, with so many lives at stake,
I’m finding it excruciating.
Jay Michaelson
February 23, 2024

<>
Certainty,
h a s
certainly transmogrified
into
delusion.

the irony is neither lost nor found,
but it is profound.

when  the delusional,
are certitudinal,
what is criminal
is
logical explicable,
because it's explainable.

I know
you know
what
I know,
and I
am certifiably
certain
you will
agree.

only the delusional
now
believe
certitude
is decipherable & deliverable,
ain’t that just
crazy
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
don’t believe in
divine intervention,
but all~so(uls)
don’t believe in the
accidents of coincidence

the Pandora Box gods eavesdrop on my mind,
looking to match the music to my mood,
(box to box, they cruelly smile)
Providentially Provisioning
me with inspirational food.
to collect and let
what’s brewing,
stop stewing,
and come out
in a you know what…

that old song,
500 Miles,
keeps
returning, unplanned,
auto play repeatedly
entirely accidentally,
(U believe that?)
my mind keeps on
knowing
I’m up~blowing,
there’s unfinished business
a-firing, a forest fire
of a 500 miles~s-acred blaze,
the firemen intuit ‘tis
of a kind,
it can’t be stoppered
until you and it,
self extinguish, (ex~sting-you~ish (1))
burn itself,
outside inwards,
reverse phoenix,
not sparks left,
until it’s dead

and the song,
and it’s power o’er me,
** ** **, is un~finished
busine business,
having fun with
my undoing

Lord, I’m Two,
both of us,
in words unspoken,
know that the/a fragmentation
grenade that is my brain,
dancing on the thinner
blackest
red line that asunders me,
twice, into two unequal halves,
is inflamed, infected, dejected

Both of us,
hear that dog whistle
loud blowing
one inch, a salty pinch,
or even
500 hundred miles,
makes no difference,
cause Lord, I’m two

reminding how far I am
from my owning
my very own
personal homeland security,
complete with self-sourced,
sovereign jagged glass pieces,
intended to jag, jog, tear, penetrate, break, annoy, till~this line……ends
,
the errata of this man’s
quasi, semi, repeating
mess-ups, that are
erratically invoking
benedictional confessionals,
of poems unwrit

those I dare not,
until and unlest,
you board a plane
to come to save me

Lord, I’m Disordered,
Lord, I’m Three,
a trinity of Myself & I & Me,
siblings who just
can’t along,
but can’t barely survive,
as separate human beings,
for one cord connects us,
keeps attached like on a bus,
though at a modest
moderating distance,
cause the fights are
frequent

Lord, I’m
(yeah yeah Four, say no more,
just rap it up son,
there’s work to be done!)


am I finished being,
an unfinished being,
will I ever make it to Five,
get home, even barely alive,
Lord, will I ever be One,
just like you,
put together,
a jigsaw complete,
a whiskey neat,
a whiskered gnat,
a graybeard bit
of fluff
with a wide smile of a
Cheshire Cat?

Lord,
give me sleep,
& poems born written
pre~complete,
so alls that required is to just hit
SEND,
a journey shelved,
ended before began,
a pieced together whole man,
give me rest,
eternal and blest,
make me an archaic kept,
in an archive slept,
and end this song,
with a fini
of
quietude & peace?


4:35AM
Sabbath Eve
- Av 12, 5784
- Aug. 16, 2024
predecessor:  https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4861638/lord-im-one/

(1) the proper pronunciation and,
ish is “man” in another tongue
(2) would I be less abnormal if I only wrote during daylight ?
Aug 2024 · 651
40
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
40
,000 drafts of poems proposed,
some but a bit, a title, a bob,
some wondering why are they kept
in suspended animation, the fire of exiting
from placenta to screaming baby, most,
patient waiting, over the undivided divide,
the Cumbersome Attention Gap to cross,
to the state of hallelujah completion

this race should be an Olympic one,
it is unwinnable, but only open to poets
who willing to go the unlimited distance,
every finished oeuvre, spawns bornes two
more, so you, fool, even a fifth grader,
intuits the higher math of you’ll never
catchup, but rise invigorated to meet,
greet the wonderous sunrise challenge…

and the promised ones, “next one for you,”
the unconditional incompleyedy poems
so overdue, the muses send an armored truck
to collect just the largesse of fine fines…
as my old West Village friend sang, you poet,
“might as well try and catch the wind”

this leads me to observe a new day’s first
birthday, even as Leonard sings Yom Kippur
hymns of mortality, and all the ways humans
can pass thru the gap in the morn clouds that
is the passageway to the Higher North…

you see, this is this poems day of naissance,
one day, one candle, now extant, but sooner
to be a not, one more poem sent heavenward
after a  brilliant brief coexistence with the
innards of my mind…
Aug 2024 · 121
68°F perspective
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
in my accustomed position
edge of deck, facing Northeast,
sun rises on my left, it’s  an
early barely warm,
a hopeful leading indicator of a
summer’s day coming resurrection

except? but! it is a windy 68°F
now redefined as effin’ freezing,
to an old navy man’s seasonal attire
well worn droopy and holey
t-shirt & shorts,
but overlaid, today in a wrapper-ed
of a wooly  blanket, purchased on
Amazon,
(whom neglected to advise,
that it will shed
like an eight year old
who has just
embraced the efficacy
the greatest of ease
of telling tiny
white lies frequently)

the ancien regime of erstwhile
(what is that exactly?)
better known as yesterday’s glory,
when pores poured forth streams
of coppertoned stories of
caramel vanities,
lead old fools to contemplate
perspective, something they do
with increasing frequency,
when
they remember
when
etc.

you dishonestly write of the vagaries of a 68°F perspective?  

a heaven for a mayday,
now a cursed starter, inhibiting,
predicting a wintery foretelling of
dreary dregs of a Great Lake
never-ending, graybeard
eternal winter’s sky
(sooo depressing)

and even though the
acorns of August(1)  are
plentiful. a surety that
back to school sales are
soon starting, i grasp my
summer vibes in a
tight forlorn of
yellowing old newspaper
wrapping of pleadings,
“stay, stay just a bit longer”

and though you would
think, believe, with aging
brings the perspective
to accept the changes
of seasons, body, technology,
and the wisdom not to write
foolish poems

but the Zombies defer,
making me deep recall,
the ones that got away
saying perspective is
a second cuz to perspicacity,

and even though,
“She’s Not There,”
reliving pain,
any many of the gone but
variety kind,
it is a necessary
to qualify if only
to be reminded
a necessity for we
old, only humans

no matter the degree
we live through our
perspectives
Aug 2024 · 300
Lord I’m One
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
~for old, recovered, & new
tunes ‘n friends~

Lord I’m one…
<>

the lovely old tune ease on in,
infiltrating, harmonizing, my soul with
just-the-ice
of another
glorious
sunrise,
inching over the North Fork

soon enough, the body~mind continuum,
will ask me to slide~glide,
move over, make room
for a new tune,
here, asking you to call me,
if you need a friend, find place,
a chair & navy cushion,
  to We observe as
one

mine own carnival of animals,
do their morning exercise,
jumping from here to crazy, squirrel~crazy,
the flitting flighty birds, back and frothy forthing,
pointless lyrically zooming from tree to tree,
their AM calisthenics

an ancient crooner sings of knowledge
of how lonely life can be, and I soft retort,
this morning forbids lonely, come to me,
you my dear ones,
who welcome me into your hearts…
kiss my words
with affection, stating
everything will bring a chained love,
linked by tears of pearl drop-down,
a necklace of joy,
& everything is and will be alright

yes there is something happening over here,
so when you ask,
what’s it  all about Natty,
my reply is easy,
how sweet it is
to be with
you,
my words unrehearsed,
and I brim with
anticipation of Us together,
sipping our coffees,
giving Our silence to be
part & parceled out to the
superior quietude of our surroundings, where
the sounds, well,
they infiltrate our conjoined beings,
I think~sing-enjoy deeply,
that old tune
“Lord I’m One”

800am
Mon Aug 12
2024

by the Sound…
and the drum  we march to,
synced,
and only
some supreme being
smiles knowingly
Aug 2024 · 927
Lord I’m One
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
~for old, recovered, & new
tunes ‘n friends~

Lord I’m one…
<>

the lovely old tune ease on in,
infiltrating, harmonizing, my soul with
just-the-ice
of another
glorious
sunrise,
inching over the North Fork

soon enough, the body~mind continuum,
will ask me to slide~glide,
move over, make room
for a new tune,
here, asking you to call me,
if you need a friend, find place,
a chair & navy cushion,
  to We observe as
one

mine own carnival of animals,
do their morning exercise,
jumping from here to crazy, squirrel~crazy,
the flitting flighty birds, back and frothy forthing,
pointless lyrically zooming from tree to tree,
their AM calisthenics

an ancient crooner sings of knowledge
of how lonely life can be, and I soft retort,
this morning forbids lonely, come to me,
you my dear ones,
who welcome me into your hearts…
kiss my words
with affection, stating
everything will bring a chain love,
a tear of joy,
& everything is and will be alright

yes there is something happening over here,
so when you ask,
what’s it  all about Natty,
my reply is easy,
how sweet it is
to be with
you,
my words unrehearsed,
and I brim with
anticipation of Us together,
sipping our coffees,
giving Our silence to be
part & parceled out to the
superior quietude of our surroundings, where
the sounds, well,
they infiltrate our conjoined beings,
I think~sing-enjoy deeply,
that old tune
“Lord I’m One”

800am
Mon Aug 12
2024

by the Sound…
and the drum  we march to,
synced,
and only
some supreme being
smiles knowingly
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
A dance lesson at 900AM,
she sets her alarm for Seven Am(?)
<>
restless. as you know too well,
a nite time house haunter, checking doors,
windows, rumbling noises from deep
inside the basement and his gut,
knowing in advance he has done
all this a few hours before…
what else should he do?

write your **** poetry!

ok

I will.

exhausted after diving into unplumbed
depths of love and death, friendship and
hatred, the angst of lost children, some dead,
some living but who have made him dead to them…

tired from debating god about the correct
way to spell hallelujah in English, as they
usually converse in the original Hebrew…

now you ask impatiently, what the hll does
this have to do with what time she sets her alarm?

growling, I reply, so glad you asked…

after a longest night of wrestling with angels,
reviewing the highs and the despondent lows,
of a life lived, mixed up, at best, he returns to
the bed stealthy~like, with much practice, she
does not even stir, when he steals back the half
of the coverlet and top sheet she stole in his
absence…rearranges the pillows, and thus
entirely exhausted, tumbles immédiatement,
into a sleep restful, a short battery charge,
to give himself a fighting chance, to recoup
the poetry they (Him and god,😉) composed
ensemble…

now, some addled add’l info you require:

the Apple offers multitudinous alarm sounds,
and she has chosen the aggravating ringing
of that old fashion alarm clock you bought in
Switzerland forty! years ago, and with great
bravery put out the back door for anyone who
was truly desperate for self-torture…anyway,

in throes, of a clasped embrace, a holy restful
cuddle of a dreamless sleep so desperately needed,
her A L A R M refunds at 7, for a trip to the studio
that is maybe , Google Map, has affirmed with
glee, is but a ******* NINE MINUTE drive away…

you think this is not  poem worthy?

WELL, YOU ARE WRONG, DING ****!

for what you do not know, that I am kicked &
injured awake from my last chance saloon of
sleep, with a shocking stillness of heart and
mind, by that jingle jangle *gringging,
and then,
she stirs & confirms the time is indeed 700AM,

AND GOES BACK TO SLEEP AGAIN…


WHILST(always wanted to try that word out),
I am groggy~angry, highly dangerous for having
been cheated on, of and by a sound that was invented
by masochists who overslept for Noah’s Ark’s departure,
and have never for~given those creatures, like me,
who made a timely aboard…

And so the day begins and if you are angry at me, for having decomposed my hissy fit into your so very important existence,
well, too bad!

so, awake, I return to unlock every window and all the
doors aplenty, for they who built this home fifty years ago,
insisted that no one should be no more than ten steps
from entry and egress, in case the Puritans come to
burn we witches alive…

so now you are aware, fully informed, why the
adjectives of choix, in describing moi in the morning,
are whiny, growly, and grumbly and any another word
ending in “ly” that you should feel free to add to the
equation..

You are too? ** ** **! welcome to the club chump!
feel free to post nasty, natty notes below,which will
be accepted with roaring laughter and good graces
at having made your & you
coffee, by now, icy cold😉😫😜😛



p.s. good morning

9:01AM
S U N D A Y(grrrr)
Aug 2024 · 166
a note from Eliot…
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
“hey.. yes, trying to get some things updated around here… now... so sorry for the outage! but things should be tip top now.. still ironing out a few kinks though
Regards”
Aug 2024 · 247
The Trees of the Cemetery
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
unbeknownst
to the human race,
every year the free trees,
those of the forest, the great gardens,
have an annual convocation, a solemn communion and a
delicate conversation

the gathering is attended by insects and avians,
for theirs is the heavy responsibility,
that which the trees cannot do,
they must do, i.e. move, be agents
of pollination

Trees gather, the sequoias officiate,
for they the elders, are wise in the
rings of history that tells of ritual,
sacred sayings, the reasoning,
the young ones don’t full  comprehend

“Who shall give aid and comfort to the human dead?”

Who shall give of their seed
that will be carried by our friends,
they may be scattered planted,
in the graveyards where
those that tended and
sheltered us,  
lie buried,
and the living
who tend to
their ancestral,
will adjoin, all
in need of shade and
comforting song?

there is great rustling of the wind,
the most honored,
query those attendees,
why must we choose?

let each of us contribute
according to their needs,
let the randomized
scattering by our winded
and flighted avian friends
best express our gratitude…

thus forests, parks, great gardens,
and yes, the cemeteries of mankind,
ALL
were seeded, deeded and refreshed,
and the world was cleansed,
commended, interdependented,
defended and extended…

Wed Aug 7 2024
even I write nonsense when no sense
is available
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
~a unconscious commissioned poem~

<>

La Lumière est une Dame d'honneur

advantage Frenchies,
everything sounds
better in their language,
we readily concede

we make do
with those tongues
whose fluidity
clothes & coats,
those,  we are
best at
confessing in

first light this morning
was emasculated, in thickened
first fog, eerie, discomforting,
but yet, mine alone to utilize,
and make discomfiture into
a poem of coffee and cream,
stirring within, colored dreams

Lady Light finally arrives,
descending on a staircase
from heaven, radiating all
with patience, the animals
all, proclaiming in a thousand
tongues, their thanks, their
love, for everything breathing
understand best she is the source
of creation, reanimation, and a
sharing, unsparing, birth mother
to animate and inanimate, and
the death father to all we & us,
guide to our ultimate end

the waiting is most interesting,
for indeed, there is honor within,
as I compose, the sunrises to the
precise angle to bar my vision,
power to blind and enlighten,
how can this be, but it is so,
my bones warmed, suggest I
do not complain, accepting with
no exception for this is the power
source to us all, and humility is
the key to acceptance & understanding

is this poem, is this the missive,
me~my, intended, to write,
know not,
for the words leech from my skin,
in format uncolored, uncontrolled
by mine minuscule impoverished
compost of senses, morals and my
compote of cells that are products
of a thousand prior generations

morphed into a mess of me,
as of yet, purpose hidden,
undisclosed, perhaps my
reasoning is unseasoned,
my presumption of purpose,
is just a fool’s ridiculousness

Lady Light smiles kindly on my
rambunctious ilreasoning,
for I just one of billions come,
gone, and rebirthed in chains
of endless possibilities, two
words permanently paired,
conjoined, and though the
light has now risen to heights
to totally absolve my sight,
can no longer track what
is being written, accepting my
temporally blindness with grace,
even with solace, and-bid you
adieu, adieu, (bye~bye)
so musically,
until relief will
honor me with its presents…

and I can contemplate my
foolishness once more…
and the letting…
of the
Lady’s light
of
honor illuminating
(even me)


<>
commissioned by Pradip

7:35 am
in the sunroom where
the intersection of all light
illuminates all kinds

<>

music:
To Try for the Sun, Song by Donovan
Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by Fifth Dimesion
8/5/2024
Aug 2024 · 950
My First Anniversary…
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
My First Anniversary…
(August 3, 2024)

This title, this poem, a wholly unexpected,
never thinking this path,  
this particular tango existential
would/was needed,
to be added to
my dance card

an early exit, a poem unplanned,
second chance was not a poem in my long
list of titles awaiting a turn to be written

a year ago,
they sent me to the surgeon,
who had prepared, with no hesitancy declared,
informed that we needed to start
all over again,
my poor heart
was waxing and waning,
and I was currently stuck on
the dark side of the moon,
with no jitney making stops theron

by the way,
the accumulation of damage had attained
a level where heart was
nearly exhausted,
( I believe he mentioned 98%)
that attention must be made,
how about
tomorrow we asked,
he laughed no can do,
but the day after would be ok,
and was I an earlier riser,
a coveted 600am slot available,
my name could be penciled in…

One tear ago, 
 wheeled me in, cracking jokes,
thinking what’s the big deal,
laughing hardest
was me,
for my motto was always leave them
(oops, poor choice of words) laughing…
fear was not in my lexicon, nor in my heart,
nor was
a ferry cross the
Rubicon

so many changes, so many poems 365 days later,
the life marked by many a Cain scar,
the big one, a pencil thin ****  hesty reminder,
plus assorted scars scattershot all over, where the “borrowed” veins and arteries, like pieces of twine, mighty fine,
(no, I never slashed a wrist, though it looks like it)
moved to different places,
repurposed, for I was now a used car
but with an extended warranty…

do not think on it much, but as markers come and go,
you think:

oh! I’ll never forget this trip, event, celebration,
and a week later your mind has nearly deleted it from the
critical events memory synapses, just another
day in the blah blah blasphemy
of a insignificant man’s unremarkable life…

but when I shower, the scars rise to the surface,
all over my body’s map, they come out shouting,
“look what I did for you,” from places weird,
they tingle, insuring my never ending surprise,
at that Olympic trial,
they raced, earning a piece & place
on my gold, overall medley team medaling,
or meddling
(when I tease them…)

so, let us bring this to a close, one man’s life,
ain’t making much a difference to most everybody else,
but the question that needyfor asking,
have you changed, how have you changed?

Less than you think, still write you poems with head and heart,
with humor and wit, sweet revelations, reverent with feeling, somehow a
bit original, leaving you laughing,
or maybe even better, smiling…

my mistakes all shared, and my burdens, some shared,
some too dark to be ever revealed, and I’m guessing I’m pretty
((much😉))
the same as I was before, older, not much wiser,

but these days, I surprise myself, for I sit outside
overlooking the wide waters surrounding,
embrace the sun at its earliest morn appearance,
love me the whipping snap of the
sound of great continuous wind gusts,
all the while surveying the world,
while winds are flowing all over me
like vibrant caresses, excavating my creases,
the ancient and recent
lineage
upon my face,
and sit in utter peace
thinking about everything,
and never tire,
staying for longer than a man has a right to do nothing
but to
reassess,
evaluate,
judge,
convey…
and
always
refresh
and confront
today’s

tally…
music
“Blue” by Joni Mitchell
“Older” sung by Ben Platt
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
~dedicated and gifted to Alyssa Homes Underwood,
in perpetuity
~
<>
this one, like so many others, is
for my inestimable~faithful friend
who asks, listens and never sings
out of tune,
always lending me his ears…

<>
the 7:42 am train is pulling in…
the tracks run by the soundless waters,
directly through the spaces
called my mind

<>


sun begging come out & play,
“c’mon baby, you know need warmth,”

(even if mine ain’t the kind that realizes
real dreams, the kind that exhale healing,
but come out anyway, take what you can get,
put off the pains of haunting curses, sins that cannot be erased, random emerging like jacks-in-the-box that were cranked, but just waiting for the right moment to fk you up…try putting them bastids, back in the can with  aplomb & composure but you know it’s way too late..)

Van Morrison serenades
“These are the days
(of the endless summer),”
it is a hymnal
in / of the church of blue sky,
birch  white pews, voices choral…
the caucus of birds who are crazy flitting, cawing, cracking,
making an unholiness mess unsuitable to the moment’s serenity,

the rabbits, seeing if this idiot threw out some
baby carrots (he did), Van singing of love of the one magician, who would turn my blood into wine…

the whistle blows, a one-minute-warning, train
a-leaving,  so is this poem, and the randomness herein is not a poem, but a cry of the mind,

”un cri de l’esprit,”
may it, it may resonant or fall, face~flat to the ground, the sound of the mind,
the train whistle, the symphony of mother morning nature, the quiet lapping waves,
all acknowledge their “failure to soothe,” them, relentless, will return later, on the morrow, same station, them, who
will never concede that they can be beaten,
to superimpose, a mental purity in the recesses
of where the screams crawl out of the mind’s
cemetery, them unmarked graves, of babies that
did not survive to be named, and yes, that’s a
real thing…shhhhhh, them say the triumvirate of the natural forces state with equanimity
”write, let it out, let it go,”
you
hope no one reads this…but it’s far too late
it is
for~formed, created,
on this the seventh day of the week,
when the Maker rested from his
creation~work, and you think maybe a day of rest, not a bad idea, smiling cause, someone is playing Joe Cocker singing,
“Have a Little Faith in Me”
and then,
“(Try) With a Little Help From My Friends”
confirming, in the governing firmament of this world there are no coincidences…*

<>

8:10 by the sky, and
checking out the sky holes and the holy,
seeing the sight lines to souls gone but always,
well remembered…they too shushing me with
loving kindness…and the next stop is
Nazareth
Jul 2024 · 436
what is a soundless Sound?
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
it is the place each day, before it,
I morning sit,
but technically:

A sound is
“valley that has been filled with sea water sound
is usually formed by the flooding of a river valley…
This means that the topography
is usually less narrow
and more gently sloping than a fjord, but it is no less spectacular.”

it is my vista blessing, that a quiet Sound,
my Sound, asks daily,
this reborn morn body & soul for their
exchange of blessings
in a give and take of
purity of greatness of
restoration gratitude…

the days is early maturing,
the day but a
toddler growing up too fast,
the heated warmth of the
not yet adult noon sun is exactly
that, a teen warmth that penetrates the
cell’s nuclei, with the casual breeze
perfect offset cooling, waving the branches,
with a gentility genuine, even
the tree  swing swinging
is of a mind, moved to a gentle rocking
in preparation for neighbors children to
later come and make it raucous rocking!

the shore opposite is a deep forest green
population of thick trees, that
thankfully
masks most
of the human pollution, the mega mansions
and their trending markings of grown-up toys…

This is my morning ~

Vista and I
recreate the earth’s rough edged birth,
but celebrate with a flooding quietude that only
that word,
Sound,
could so capture and continue to captivate
and
re~
form me
anew,
not blameless or innocent,
but cleanly reopened

and willingly, desirous,
of being better, doing better,
and shed betterment,
to any all that understand that
this momentous but momentary
miracle of a soundless Sound
roars with clean, white glowing,
of a thirst slaking
hope

<>

oh i wish u were beside me…
the neighbors flag majestically dances to the breeze, as if it was solely purposed for its non-to our history, and the sound is perfectly quiet Nerd boat in sight in the distance. I see a small sailing craft, but it makes no noise to disturb to disturb the waves melodious crash
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
Friday’s Fumble Crumble:
writ/wrote /needs/work

the WR juggernaut,
of write/writ/ wrote
and associated WoRdy derivatives,
a 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 Bones,
that demands a really funereal
and t. swift
sea burial,
thus energized by seawater ,
or the slapping (s)hit from *****+ dirt

comes re~energy, a burst of a covert  coverup,
then comes a gleam,
the light of a beam in the seams
of your 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 with a new hope of
rejiggering, that sticky secretion ‘pon
dying, yet enervating,
dancing fingertips,
spewing gobs so fast of wordy worthy
battered batter,
throwing in some Heath bar crumble,
soon enuf the oven is cooking!
baking and the smoking aroma of
over~heated sheets of paper
of soon to be crisply delivering cookies extraordinaire,
but alas,
‘twas all in the mind and is unjustly
a recipe, for ashes of a burnt dreams

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 witty-gritty-wrote
@

2:06am
7/26/2024
Jul 2024 · 285
A Dyad of Love…
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
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
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
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
Jul 2024 · 634
morning miracles
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
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
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
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
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
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
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2024
<>
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 2024
<>
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 2024
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 2024
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 2024
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 2024
<>
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 2024
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 2024
(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 2024 · 352
grit on my face…damn!
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
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 2024
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 2024
~ 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 2024
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 2024
“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 2024
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 2024 · 306
factual liberty
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
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 2024
~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 2024
(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 2024 · 701
East River Spring Morn
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
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 2024
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 2024 · 754
I under stand!
Nat Lipstadt May 2024
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 2024
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 2024
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 2024
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 2024 · 655
mewing, mooing & mewling
Nat Lipstadt May 2024
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.
May 2024 · 197
people make excellent poems
Nat Lipstadt May 2024
~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
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