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Feb 2014
Wry is one of many things you do well....
~~~~~~
dedicated to, inspired by Paul Anthony Hutchinson, who wrote those words to me but two hours ago

Wry
- produced by a distortion or lopsidedness of the ****** features: a wry grin.
- abnormally bent or turned to one side; twisted; crooked: a wry mouth.
- devious in course or purpose; misdirected.
- contrary; perverse.
- distorted or perverted, as in meaning.
- bitterly or disdainfully ironic or amusing: a wry remark.


It is bitter,
It is amusing,
the distorting that gives a shape and thereby
meaning
to a misdirected life,
the ****** muscles perused,
all reversed, all per-versed

t'is not just the smile that is loopy,
or simplistically turned upside down,
twisted but not dubious, nor devious,
twisted but straight, I say,
wry is not a seething something I do well,
wry is in every nuclei I ever split,
every line etch-a-sketched in every poem
worn down,
physically inscribedΒ on my face.

so much to reveal,
but not here not now not,
ever on and ever in, explicit
but blurred, burred, and buried
within them is the ironic of a man
that laughed through the better part of his life,
for in that period, there was no
better,
just worse

I was born wry.
the last of three, I was nameless till I was twenty one,
they called me just
brother, or the brother.

at twenty five, I married the wrong woman,
though we both wanted not too,
thirty five years of wry, the lawyers rejoiced,
the judges celebrated, the poets went mad,
swear it true,
the family counselors said
beyond hopeless,

and with wry smiles at the spectacle of years wasted,
spent like there was no tomorrow,
for there was none
in the titanic disaster of more, new lives corrupted

I lived life wry.

now, in the final fourth quaternary,
see how he,
the master of the unceremonious,
in on bent knee, hands clasped, on bed, rested,
when he seeks comfort and guidance for the upcoming
finality following a two minute warning,
warning that even now,
the future wry, turned to one side, when all he wanted,
was to live quiet in the straight and narrow
and not write poems asking himself with trepidation,
from where will come the courage to make this
last passage....

oh yes, I do wry so well,
and all things that wryhme with hell,
you will be spared,
for wryly he exclaims
"Enough, enough"

wry why!
for in all the days of his disheveled life,
there have been but a few,
when it has been simply,
enough
Nat Lipstadt
Written by
Nat Lipstadt  120/M/nyc
(120/M/nyc)   
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