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kindness is never free!

it has to be learned to be earned,
it is not a natural choice but comes
to live in our genes after observing
it beneficial impacts, it munificence,
a two lane highway, divided by a
dotted line,
so that it can go across  fluidly,
a streaming with no unilateral
direction, reversing course as needed

nope, not free, it comes with callused
hands lifting up a fallen one, even better,
taking unasked another’s elbow for safe
guidance, kindness prevents, making its
value greater than pears and rubies, yes,
it is infectious…

because you cannot receive it,
or returned,
until you’ve taught its
beauteous character,
seeing is believing,
tasting is knowing,
it’s shocking power is astounding,
a special
sounding that requires
not words, but words
and actions, a total package,
for it completes
the human far beyond
mere existence…
Oct 2023
she casts her pencil like a wand as magic soaks into the page her flannel cascades around her work, shielding it from curious eyes she tilts her head to listen to the lecture, but her heart is elsewhere running through castles and stumbling through candle lit streets colors tangle to mirror the expanse of her dreams she shares her soul with every meticulous stroke each face blessed by her style but never the same when she designs she never aims for perfection for she knows perfect is just a fancy way of saying flawed she erases and redraws as if her art could never satisfy her desires it can always be better but it is never good enough if only she knew I meant it when I told her I loved her drawing her art speaks to me like Mona Lisa never could
  Jun 16 Path Humble
Nat Lipstadt
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”
~ For Mike~

an abundance of:

illogical reasons,
of hate,
of emboldened badness beyond inexplicable,
and nor is it
episodic, not periodic, but abundantly continuous,
so
no need for a fan, one of those upright six foot tall,
MF’er tornado sounding fans, for the hate free flies every where,
damning the consequences, full speed ahead, spreading
medieval plague style, and as we two talk of this world,
on this world,
electronically a thousand miles apart,
we, worn and wearied, being ******, and awaiting the
spill doors to unleash officially tidal waves of  
dammed up, still held back raging, hate
that is just edging over the top,
a nauseating goop (apologies to what’s her name),
I awake at 4:something

(to complete six hours later
whatever this is, this lamentation, of woe and sackcloth,
ashes on my tongue,
commenced the eve before,
but genetically ancient and familiar
in all
my cells),


to complete this heavy evensong,
commenced and begun seven hours earlier when one soul
states to another a simple,
“forgive me, my heart is heavyweight heavy tonight,
the world’s disheartened burdens beyond bearable,”

the quiet calm of a sleeping house pervades my soul,
and a lament is transmogrified into a
psalm of hope;

for having shared the pain,
when one asks the other for forgiveness,
for exposing the other to this sadness infectious,
then,
understanding and comprehension
overcome me,
realizing that hatred has failed
when two bleed into each other,
that
shared distress is
distress defeated,
by a large and grandeur
purer expression of connection
across state lines,
tween two souls
unlikely to meet,
ever,
and yet this cellular combination
is so powerful, so
a w e s o m e,
it is
indefatigable,
(incapable of being defeated)
and we are each others
Shepherd and lamb,
in a time of woe,
one more time,
but soon the dawn will come
to welcome us with
the embrace of a newborn,
uncontaminated,
and to finish this now psalm,
now, and forever
newly perfected.
a messenger exchange,
of a wail of despair,
creating words of repair
5:17AM April 1 2024
  Feb 19 Path Humble
Nat Lipstadt
I suppose I will never lead the ordered life my father led.
And I’ll never live in the kind of house he lived in, with its rituals,
its dignity, the smell of polish.

Leonard Cohen

<>
the orderly of an individual life,
guided by the guardrails of family life,
superimposed upon it by a calendar of religion,
that layers into you with a cyclicality of communal ritual,
that rules, guides, tides and hides you subliminally, the individual,
in ways that forever alters how one comprehends the meaning of
belonging

the oven~heated, banging smells of the kitchen,
the hubbub, frantic sounds of a Sabbath eve prepping,
vacuuming house cleansing, far more than just a cleaning,
the young boys in their jackets, white shirts, for Friday night
candle lighting, the girls in Sabbath frocks, assisting Mother,
but by
Saturday morning sermon time
those boy’s shirts
were always untucked, sweaty and always less white,
from running around outside synagogue from playing Ringolevio,
for which you were justly critiqued by a mother’s glare-stare

this play-within-a-play poem,
played out in homes nearby,
for community was very defined by geography,
and the candles of Sabbath oft visible in every home as
Fathers & sons returned home from Friday Night services
where the Sabbath’s peace was welcomed like
a new bride.

but the knowledge that this scenario was occurring in
homes around the world in almost identical custom,
lent a larger perspective to even the youngest, of a
belonging

As for me, I passed on that life,
not as well as it was given to me,
but as best I could, or honestly, desired,
but because I the individual inherited these
ways, words, knowledge and sensations and deemed
failing to transmit would be a grievous denial of a heritage
were I to not gift them this order,
the dignity of these rituals,
the pungent smell of a polished home,
a life of intuiting

belonging,
be longing.
some of you know that our paths nearly crossed
by virtue of the intersecting diagrams of the circle
of three degrees of separation, and our similarity of
upbringing  overlapped in ways that molded instant
recognition of our commonality and community…I
saw both the house and the factory, when visiting
Montreal in the 80’s

“Whenever I blow into Montreal, I manage to take a look at the old house. It’s that large Tudor-style at the bottom of Belmont Avenue, right beside the park. It looks the same. Maybe the elms on the front lawn are taller, but they were always monumental to me. I wouldn’t hold on to the place or the factory and properties that went with it.” Leonard Cohen
  Nov 2023 Path Humble
Nat Lipstadt
~ one more for patty m. ~

slept late after dancing with my devils, from,
from the wee, until a pealing pearl from the Earl of Dawn,
recovering from an intrusion~invasion~brain~regurgitation,
and it’s nearly 9am, sipping my first cuppa Hawaiian,
& woke to a repost of a ten year old wondering plea(1)

makes me think “This old thing,” poem, like a fav
frock/suit that still drapes perfectly, and yet draws the
***** admiration and drippy drawling yummy compliments,
gracefully, gratefully demurred with them three words,
& it’s 8:39am, Bruce pitching in with “Born in the USA”

recipe for a new thank u Gawd poem to make room for
a fast~break diet for an old man with a rebuilt ticker, this
very emission~transmission of a verbal politesse writ going
some where, cooked on a medium slow burner fueling dressed up seeds of heartfelt appreciation made of ancient oat grasses

birthing a poem~child of thanks to the Lawd for one more day,
opportunity, the five sense’s delivery gratitude and gratifications, and the desire to intertwine the sights, music, a crisp blue November Sky, the need to bleed brew these words into a fulfilling,
second moment mug, for the pearls and Earls

of poetic humans


10:01am
Thu Nov 2 2023
(1) Do You Know Why Men Cry in the Bathroom?
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