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Aug 2019
for you, of you: you’ve been between my ears

close enough to being on my mind,
almost the same thing,
though that’s unfairly inequitable, we both agree,
for when in an ear one opines, too oft it escapes
out the other side, only a tree ring mark left,
someone was here, present

as for the Confucius confusion in

ok, who’s writing this poem to whom,

cause it’s never clear between us
who is
asking the questions,
since the answers come
demanded and undemanding,
fomenting newer questions and follow through,
before, as well as,
‘please sir, may I have some more?’

the mutualizing game tasking begin-began-begun,
for this, our lovely crazy teasing of our-thing, ago began,
don’t recall who or how intimated-initiated
this oil drilling exploration,
who is the annointer and who is the annointed,
who seeds the plants, picks the fruit, and who
gets paid with cloves of poems, by the bushel

you say I’ve been on your mind,
which we now have both pointed out
is somewhat extraordinary since,
the sight lines are drawn through
long distance cloudscapes that travel
through underground cables,
making everything said,
fallow and rich-ending, deeply frustrating,
impossible to see the outcome

clouds usually imaginary, (not like now),
making visibility normative poor,
unlike the real ones I’m flying at the moment through,
ensconced in front row seat 1F, heading northwest passage,
passing by so ridiculously close to where
you are minding the soil,
as I am
mining your soul’s soil, tilling it between the ears,
of you, by me, for us, and the excited sadness
makes me happy and yes, inequitably, again,
hopping-mad

because your breadcrumbs and dark Swiss chocolate bars are
scattered and defaced, bitten and chewed, lovingly licked melting,
we who cover our tracks too well;
but what I do have, makes me ravenous,
having read all your poems,
in random order and then one more time,
sequentially

I see your history, near escapes and resurrections,
in fine grained moody minutiae punctuated by huge gaps in between,
that we must cream fill with clouds of wondrous loving curiosity,
a torture so exquisite, only the gods could have invented it like
Sunday Night Football,
and crazy sayings,
like I love you too...

been on my mind and I imagine you
hot and sweaty,
bent over, aching tired, from
picking weeds (gotcha),
when sudden one of us stands up straight, back aching,
screaming out loud
this is crazy, and follows up with
a *** Darius type proclamation,
who’s writing this poem to whom
issued to the upwards-skywards,
but addressed to ourselves,
the poets

as we search clouds by the thousands,
is that you in that cloud, in that poem,
I look down thinking that, that must be,
the plot of green and dusted light brown ground
where she has gone into hidey-hole hiding,
disappearing for months at a time,
before arising for the sticking of me
in the sticking place,
wounding me fresh with brand new poems
scandalous and imaginous,
and our imaginations are both
too skilled

so here I close, overwritten, overridden, too long,
overshot my imaginary bounds, so one
pulls down the shade over the oval window
through which too many great stories have commenced,
and ended

the thick cumulus shouting
as we look up
as we look down,
saying “enough, you crazy people,
your poems tell too much,”

perhaps, find me in that
next bite of herbs buttered,
and then ask (of course)

who’s writing this poem to whom?

then breathe out, exhaling me a
breath-poem up above, to where I’m hiding
just as I, am sending one to you,
earth falling from thirty thousand feet,
coming to rest on your mind,
in between your ears,
friend

<>

8-6-19
somewhere in the sky, clueless, heading north by northwest
Nat Lipstadt
Written by
Nat Lipstadt  120/M/nyc
(120/M/nyc)   
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