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  Nov 2017 Nathan Porter
Nat Lipstadt
The Night King Ego died...

The time, the place, the setting:

T'is some hour for sleep, prescribed,
For me, the reality of sleep, proscribed.

The strains of Bach's
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major
Haunt.
Richard II's words
Give pause, precision refinement of my cause courant.

“No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the ***** of the earth”


Two am in New York, sleep,
As advertised,
Literally, a passing acquaintance,
Doesn't make it to
The side of the bed occupied by
100% of me.
Seems he went
From chimney to chimney
This past Sunday morn.
Not having a chimney,
He flue right over me.

No matter.
Company aplenty,
Ego and moi,
We, had a long talkie.
A bit of a wrestle, a staring contest
In a mirror, we watched ourselves,
In the pitch black
where clarity is perfect,
For nothing else exists,
But ego and me,
To distract us.

“I'll read enough
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that's myself.
Give me that glass and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds?
O flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity
Thou dost beguile me!”


Called my lawyer just now,
ordered her to commence
the divorce papers, serve them ASAP,
I need to rid myself of
My oldest nemesis, my oldest friend,
Mine vanity, my ego.

Let me explain
myself to myself.
You may tag along for the ride.

Writing is more important
than any of the individual
Five senses
That feed this addiction.
Without sound, sight, touch, smell and taste,
I can live quite well,
Thankee.

But ****** boy mind needs to write
Simple survival.
No write, no life.

But ****** bad boy ego is a curse,
A contaminate of each and every
Line, stanza,word and verse.

"Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin”


At first, for an audience of three
I performed,
Me, myself and I.

But the suckiness creepeth in,
and etches my distorted face,
Salutations and gradations,
demanding confirmation
Of Shakespearen magnification.

Do you like me?
Do you love me?
****** all.

Curse ye King Ego and your vainglorious occupations,
Divorce me, from the sad isle of
Self
Self worth,
Pride, vanity insurance,
The most deadly of the seven
Deadly sins.

Ego desperate in kind responds:

"I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?”


Slime and slippery, want is what you feel,
Taste grief, need friends,
Sly devil, you twist thy cunning tongue,
The reverse, your plain meaning!
You need nothing but subjects,
In earnest and forever praise,
Absent them, you mood and whine,
A pretender, a poseur, a drug addict cursed!

Let us purpose to dispose of thy spirit earthly,
Slow starvation too good for you,
Poison, arrows, the hilt of my blade,
The neck, thine bowel,
Let me embrace,
Prefer your steel hot or cold?

If we both must expire, then it be so, for
My honor taken, my life forsaken,
My poetry in disrepute,
Until that day when I write for me alone,
And ally my scripts, in coffin, with me interred.

"My dear, dear Lord,
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation; that away
Men are but gilded loan or painted clay...
Mine honor is my life; both grow in one;
Take honor from me, and my life is done.
"
PostScript:
Number me thus, in the company of
The good but the forgot,
Still will be of cheer goodly,
For tho ***** could not be saved,
Not one good man found in the ****** lot,,
Except for one, the truest audience of one,
Thus I will be saved, thus, call me, Lot.

-----------------------
My battle to destroy my ego is minute to minute hand to hand combat.  That is me, and my truth.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Fully expect a few reads and even fewer "likes."
Which if the poem you comprehend, that would be,
Validation.
Life is a melody
      You can listen to only once.

    The first thirty seconds, you find the groove,
         it's appealing
    A harmonious rhythm hereto unwritten
                    
       This could be your favorite.


 
             It is.
       For the next three minutes, you settle in.
               The chorus comes around.

          *You'll be here again.

                  It's fresh, it's catchy
You're enraptured by these certain pitches and the words rhyme perfectly.
   One line flowing into the next, the ends justifying the means.
       Another verse, another chorus. This one feels more weathered
          Routine, maybe. You still feel that groove but your perspective of it has been altered by the change in tempo and direction during the last verse.
               

           You realize you have fifteen seconds left.
         This was your song. What did you do with it?


       *As you think back, a gentle blanket of white noise embraces everything that ever was, and your song fades
Let me know how you feel.
  Nov 2017 Nathan Porter
oni
a network of scars
mapping out a painful past
like remembering a hometown

a place i wanted to leave
a place i never wanted to be
a reminder that ive finally left
  Nov 2017 Nathan Porter
Nat Lipstadt
~for RK, for now~

Until you have bent your ear to Shakespeare's sonnets,
Till you have laughed with Ogden Nash,
Wept with Frost, visited Byron's ghost,
Read the songs of King Solomon,
And once you
Despair of being their equal,
Shed your winter coat of worry,
***** your courage to the sticking point,
Begin to write then with reckless fearlessness,
Unfettered abandon, make a fool of yourself!

Scout the competition.
Weep, for you and I will never surpass
The giants who preceeded us, and yet,
Laugh, cause they thought the same thing as well...
  Nov 2017 Nathan Porter
Keara Marie
Ink
I'm the author of my life,
but, unfortunately,
I'm writing in ink and can't erase my mistakes.
One morning I held a funeral for no one else to see;
Laying in my full sized coffin I mourned the loss of me.

When I left my body and I scrubbed away my sin;
Took one last look down at my shell- now tired, worn, and thin.

I'm lost now in an empty hall of a haunting memory;
An in between, my own little hell, of his smile following me.
this ones new- rhymes?
Nathan Porter Oct 2017
I typed at the speed of my sprinting mind
Trying to explain what lives in my head
But after a while, come morning time
I have slight hope that he is dead.

But every evening
Brings to me more suffering
As I realize nothing can ****
The demon that calls itself part of me.

When my mind is groggy
He wakes and speaks for me
Treating all my friends shoddily
And ruining what love remains for me

The man that speaks from inside
Is like a cancer growing within
As constantly he will deride
My attempts to change away from sin

I have no name for this monster
And I cannot claim that he is an excuse
But I know I'm not this awful other
And a decent explanation is impossible to produce.

An explanation
Remember when?
An explanation
Drove me to no end?

Insanity caused by the simplest of statements.
That's not me.
And yet this monster can escape any containments
And he is always angry.

It's my turn to give an explanation
A truth that brings small satisfaction
But you of all deserve to know
This monster coming when it rains on my brow

I cannot call him my delusion
For surely he is no illusion
I cannot call him my depression
For surely that was fixed with confession.

WHO ARE YOU?
why do you live within me so?
Tearing into me, making me blue
I just wanted to watch the **** show.

Are you done now?
Can you please
Leave ME ALONE NOW
let me have peace

Breaking my heart and the hearts of my friends
I send you away as fast as I can
I'm leaving now
I"m taking a stand
And so I exit
Stage up to heaven
And you can leave
Stage straight down to hell.
I've decided to write about something we all struggle with, temptation and aggression, I hope you enjoy.
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