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  Aug 2024 ogdiddynash
Nat Lipstadt
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
ogdiddynash Aug 2024
every day we make rules
for ourselves, gonna do this,
never eat that, drink less,
write shorter (ha!),
write
less, more, better, so as I edit
the preponderance and infiltration
of that word,
(that shall remain nameless),

it
plague my scripts, diminishes my
verbal acuity, curses my perpetuity,
inserts itself without asking, is a
rudeness to your host, an intolerable
sin that cannot be abided,
know now
that it shall be banished from speech,
daily conversation, a heretic, born to
die in The Void, spent superhero,
a place languages send there superfluous
constituents, to live, hopefully disappearing
via the Ark of Archaic…

weirdly, my writing pointer tips sudden
drained of blood, my composure and
composition disabled, when I hear a
sumptuous sobering voice declare:


Sit down and shut up

to which authoritative declarative
I reply:

“Yes, God, Roger that,”
adding,

“over and out”
ogdiddynash Aug 2024
ever since seven ate eight,
cannot expect much
too much return on
my in-vestments,
given the hole in
my accounting.

five, six, seven, nine
is most unsatisfying,
like brunch.

brunch?

neither breakfast or supper,
assuredly not lunch,
pointedly ridiculous
if you don’t know
what time it is
by the meal’s
nomenclature

nothing sensible rhymes
with supper
except for
crupper
and scupper,
both of which
like brunch,
leave me confused,
wholey unsatisfied,
as I’m clueless
as to what each means,
just like,
brunch.

by the way,
do have the time?
june 2020
ogdiddynash Aug 2024
when the kids were young,
invested in fancy luggage,
cause we needed vacations
to get away from them.

These luggages,
had them roll to the number combination numbers locks
which was where technology
was back in
the nineteen eighties,
when I was a
young husband and father,
using the year of their birth
as a four digit code

of course, I programmed
them both incorrectly,
and they, those kids,
now adults maybe,
who can’t remember anything good
I’ve ever done for them,
but remind every time
they come to see me,
which is pretty much never,
about ******* up the year
of their naissance,
which is a
fancy french word,
for
“kids are a pain in the ***“
june2020
ogdiddynash Aug 2024
we re-plant hydrangeas annually,
which our ravenous tick carrying,
**** deer,
munch contentedly,
under our window,
when we are sleeping.

In the last ten years,
today, I saw my first
solitary flowering accidental.
as I’m in poem mode,
it occurs to me that
the first line is incorrect;
for the sake of brevity,
it should read:

we retentives,

we re-plant hydrangeas
*analy
june 2020
ogdiddynash May 2024
THERE WIL BE BAGELS!

<>
New York style, very large,
with burnished, glazed-ed crust,
almost meaty, a meal nearly self~
sufficient, with grapes of creamed
cheese, Scottish salmon, a repast that
states, that the week begins well, that

thus nourished, we are stronger, fortified
to face the onslaughts of life moderne,
our enslavement to the endless news
recycled cycle that flourishes and face
whips us with shades of disaster in mirrors
that will never cease to query us if this is truly:

our appearance
our best selves
our self~doubts,
refuse scars of
prior battles

my cafe porcelain mug of 19 oz. washes
away my unshaven grimaced grime of
mine mind, and I sally forth renewed,
meaty, slightly burnished, with a glazed
protective patina  of a hardy New Yorker
who chews, spits out the chaff of noises
that serve  only to efface my native rights to
optimism
  Mar 2024 ogdiddynash
onlylovepoetry
Fifteen years going on sixteen,
well recall many pinprick
moments of our combinatory
existentialism

But an early moment reappeared,
in a period of contemplation as I
this morn, wove my way thru Manhattan
city streets, during my diurnal walk of
composition, a tradition Walt Whitman
passed on to me, in Leaves of Grass, so
over my Manhattan journey~obstacle course,
now a three times weekly endeavor, of
a two and one quarter miles duration,
this came unto me

Very early on, in our ro~dance
we attended some cocktail/
business function, properly attired,
a first for us, and thus a tad exciting,
and in the elevation machine at the
Waldorf Astoria Tower sky bounding,
she stun gunned me with the simplest
of positories…

How shall you introduce me?.

this nimble tounge, so rarely at a loss,
gave an intuitive and simple answer:
You are my girl friend, no pretense,
I proffered and she thoughtfully
replied,

While an absolute truth,
perhaps since I am a Nana,
over twice,
and you, a Grandfather
over thrice,
perhaps something less
juvenile is in order?


Mmm, perhaps you are right, then
let me suggest boldly to name you
as my lover, none other and let
their mouths fall agape so full
of their crackered
canapés?

She paused a moment on our ascent,
replying,

Undoubtedly true and such
a good lover are you, but the touch of ******
in many an impoverished mind, gives it a
tangy hint of the unseemly tho, b u t
if that’s your preference, lover will it be,
but perhaps wordsmith, you keep on trying?


Ah I knew a rejection letter when I got one,
so cruising higher, proffered a ‘my best friend?’
but her glance clearly indicated that suggestion,
wholly unworthy of my skilled verbosity and
more appropriate to a dodgy dog, if such I did
possess

The elevators of NYC, are sure and swift in
elevating its population, and a growling
desperado emotive was taking me hostage,
I had what is now a “3S look,” an abbreviation
for when I wear my Simply Stupefied Smile

Perhaps I may suggest that should the need
arise for you to introduce me in a phrase accurate
and simple, that might suffice?


Smilingly weakly, I, poet, awaited what surely
was to be an obvious solution to my wordy
and worldly failure,

Please introduce me as
Your Biggest Fan
and I shall, dear one,
if asked,
will offer you up as my
Only Love Poet


And to this day, when introduction~making,
I feel the sweet smile of an invisible and
silent kick in my humbled and egotistical
****
a mostly truish & lightly embellished story
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