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Poetoftheway Jul 2020
brown skin farmer girl (this changeling poem)

~

we are I’ve decided

alike and unlike.

I know, an epiphany.

we are both brown skinned,

the sun has wrested my skin

buried it in dark loamy,

soiled brown side by side,

now alike.


your hair is long(er)

now, mine too.

a cascading mountain ranging,

edging south from your Columbia,

to my  Columbia

over my ears, down my neck,

which like yours, dreams knightly

of being loved by endless kisses,

a prince(ss) charmant

~

we could not be

more different,

than how god us designed.

but here’s the rub,

people change,

they dream of becoming,

reinventing the original design,

and this explains

not the why, but the how,

how this poet came to write

this changeling poem
.

~

and you think we could not be more different and
more alike, and you would be rightly correct.
  Jul 2020 Poetoftheway
brandychanning
Queens Loves Poets. (for Em MacKenzie)
———————————————————-

Kings love making war,
no wonder, the people,
remember well fond
their femi-mine
rulers with femi-fervor,
Queens, who loved poets.

You fear Jesus,
Adore Mary,
generosity of understanding.
because it is hard
for woman to do
cruelty,
till she has been abused
by men who thought
they were kingly by being
beknighted, unbeheaded
for now at least.

Men who invented Brandy,
in the be of night,
were stupid men,
they forgot alcohol, the
Brandy of Channing,
is not fit for manning,
for it is a

toxin, like me, like me.
  Jul 2020 Poetoftheway
brandychanning
that is what they come seeking.
yet, when I tell
them--pretending--Boy Scouts-to-be prepared!


for the burning,
they gulp saying ok,
but the higher heat of the
fear feted in their eyes, 
them instruments
that never lies,
so I send them home,
unscathed,
and
scathed
just enough that
they’ll never ask
twice.


I’m so easy to please.


brandychanning
  Jul 2020 Poetoftheway
Path Humble
~for Dante Rocio, who shares visions~

-from where does inspiration come from?

from
intimacy with the inanimate,
the population of objects,
coarse, beauteous that provoke,
the museums, the gutter, the worn,
the just unrealized, imagined,
from
learning to speak hearts
to speak the heart language

from
from animated blood, eyes, taste buds,
when you pass thru the molecules of me,
by contact real or imagined,
desperation, satisfaction organic,

from
where do these questions arise,
the answers as well,
they are tangible, yet intangible,
even

from,
a notion indistinct,
an untraceable path,
hidden routers,
deflecting reflecting,
even a current direct,
invisible to the naked

from where?

a fair question,
answers, unreliable,
for in the forming,
the froming
is always
transfigured,
distorted

June 2014
  Jul 2020 Poetoftheway
Nat Lipstadt
In Their Own Words:

“All I’ve ever learned from love is....”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So come, my friends, be not afraid.  We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made.  In love we disappear.  Tho’ all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door,  there’s no one who has told us yet what Boogie Street is for.                                     Leonard Cohen

All I've learned from love that it appears on its own timetable,
and, all I've learned from love is, it is the purpose. Harlon Rivers

“is crazy and this is infinite and ever so sobering wondrous possible"
Medusa

It is a paradox of two people - in debit to one another though each may never realise;
and neither one of whom would ever consider recalling the debt. Gideon

A headlong charge into a vast unknown that promises fufillment of every lacy, perfumed dream, but may instead deliver wrenching wounds that only another love can heal. Lori Jones McCaffery

every fantastic mistake I ever really made! Drunk in shallow bar light with a woman of my wicked dreams who laughed as loud as me at our shared ****** jokes we both got. We loved for awhile and then wandered and still loved forever as we found other dim bars with more wicked dreams.                                        gray dot (unknown)

All I have learned from love is to give more than one receives unconditionally.                                                ­K Balachandran


"love is the great equalizer: ignoring age, race, education, wealth, religion, disability, and sanity... simultaneously capable of lifting all to the highest highs and dragging all into the deepest depths. In love there is no pride or ego." forgotten

that just beyond is a hidden trail, where a magical river of the purest water flows free. Here and only here, my heart can be revived, and my mind is stilled by the silence I find. Love’s call is gentle. Joey

“that love is as love does.”
victoria

All I ever learned from love is the meaning of the word, "unconditional!”.           SE Reimer

Sometimes we fall in love, and sometimes love falls on us.
Stephen E. Yocum

it is gentle rage, come like sun through clouds, to feed parched earth....one word to set life a tingle, the first smile of a golden
boy's day.  The last caress before sleep, the letting go of a dying
friends hand and the gathering together of companions for food
and laughter, love comes in many guises, has many faces and is
lifeblood to the soul hiding within.                   betterdays

where the beginnings end and the ends begin.    Elizabeth J.

The burial of fear and all we’ve ever known In hope for a new flourishment.    Dante Rocio

that life flows in abundance of peace, harmony and balance when I
surrender to live in love.                                                            ­    Cné

that love assuages hurt and heals the wounded...it rings with melody
and dances to the heavens.  It’s the divine giving over of body and mind;  it's mystic transcendence an overwhelming feeling of pure ecstasy.                                                         ­                              patty m


that love is a dunghill, and I'm a crow that stands on it and caws.
                                                           ­                           Thomas W Case

Acceptance.  Acceptance of myself and of the ones I love.
                                                           ­                                    Kelly Rose

It is easier to give love than to accept it.         Walter W Hoelbling

was what I learned from her...Love is above, beyond what we all wish, we had to touch the sun, the moon, the stars; everything we have.                                                                            Temporal Fugue

that it is unique; it makes the softest body, hard, and softens the hardest heart.                                                           ­     poetontheroof

Our hearts tied but I don't know how.                       Anonymous

Love has the ability to surpass life. Even though you are gone I still can’t stop loving you. “Love leaves more behind than death ever takes away. “ -unknown.                                        Love Storytelling

to never go searching for it. That's it, I guess.                      Aparna

has been gleamed through the sacrifice and service of a few extraordinary souls.  For true love is borne of sacrifice, and
it compels us to serve.  Without those elements, it cannot exist.
                                                                 J Klein and Sons Pen Parish

it requires curiosity to truly uncover; it is an emotion
that makes us uniquely human.                                        Angelique

that sometimes it hurts and sometimes it thrills, but
love that kills your pain is always worth the dying for.                 r

it is a gift from God, most precious and not to be abused or taken
for granted.                                                         ­ South by Southwest

how to hurt.                                                           Andrew Crawford

is that, it comes like lightning...it jolts, it makes, or breaks a future;
it hangs around, no matter what, if it's meant to be...yours...
all i've learned from love made me a tree, with fruits
with a blend of sour and honeyed truths, it is heaven...
when bared, shared... reciprocated.                            Sally A Bayan

that it is hard and it hurts but we cannot live without it... there is no storybook endings. You take the good and bad and make it what you need.                                                            ­                     Melissa S.

The burial of fear and all we’ve ever known
In hope for a new flourishment. Dante Rocio

that I can’t, won’t, don’t want to ever live life without Love! ♥️ Feeling Love Sparks everyday forever and always ♥️ Loving Love Glass Slipper Girl

to accept it when it is given, to share it when it is felt, to cherish it because it is a gift and that whether it hurts or it heals, it is far better to have experienced it than to not have.                                  BLT

that love is...forever studied; gravity, it is akin to the sense of gravity;
it can never be explained, felt, or experienced, but never grasped in ones hand.                                                            ­              wordvango

that if you have it, you should give it.                                  amanda

how to turn up my face and surrender to the rain.  
                                                         ­             Clementine Valerie Black

that God is love expressed by Jesus, and I'm my best when I imitate Christ.   Christos Victor

the most over analyzed, overwrought word that remains after thousands of years, completely
inexplicable.                                                   ­             onlylovepoetry                  

it's a strength and weakness, ecstasy and agony, a belief and fear (of losing), emotional contradictions yet so intrinsically precious to be worth living and dying for.                          Pradip Chattopadhyay

the emptiness of smothering empathy for all that lives, feels and needs.  It's to bear eternal suffering...                                   Traveler


red.                                                                                                     Fog


to give, far outweighs the take.                                        Mike Hauser


that it lifts open our minds' eyes, overturns our fears in this vast expanse of the unknown - it etherally reveals our connection
Melody

how deep is my ignorance.                                              Joel M Frye

that love has nothing to do with ***. It has everything to do with sick kids at 3am and holding back your friends hair when she pukes in the gutter crying over some ******* who just dumped her. It's selfless.
                                                       ­                                                 Acme

noth­ing compared to what I've learned from pain.                 v V v


the things I’ve never learned.                                               M-E

that is the cancer and the cure; the detour and the straight line; proof of reincarnation and death everlasting; the intersection where extreme selflessness and selfishness meet, becoming indistinguishable; it’s shapeless, nearly invisible, and yet known to everyone; a verb, a noun, a conjunction between and a preposition to a beginning and a dead end.
                                                            ­                               Nat Lipstadt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
thanks to all the participants, so far...(see the note below)
This is an open, living poem; anyone should feel free to message me to add, amend, or delete; just message me directly; won’t modify if you just comment.

one more thing don’t ask me to add an old poem that is only tangentially related: write a max of two or  three sentences that
clearly and directly responds to the title...

format is.deliberately sloppy, just like the subject    
matter.

and the original version (2017)

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2187204/all-ive-learned-from-love-for-leonard/
My Heart is Drenched in Why’s

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

climb to my listening post,
poet-on-the-roof, willing every step,
climb way up to the top of the stairs,
entrance marked POETRY, courtesy
of the bldg. super, an olden friend,
a concerned citizen, humorist, human,
somedays nurse to his corona haloed tenants.

the view of the ******, not laudatory, visible in a 360  degree perspective is of city grunched, scrunched,  covered in
in silent spoke poems, overused views, words that don’t change
a thing, for my heart sees only dimly, being that my disheartened
vision is drenched, diminished, disabled by and in why’s.

ask seer~super what rhymes with why, smiling, an instantaneous poetry helper, having created, an officiel expert, as in everything, reply’s  “why, why most famously rhymes with, why, everyone knows is try!

so I try, three times, try, try, try again to puzzle
why, my heart is drenched in magenta,
who has willed this, not I, my distilled voice,
wants, does roof shout, but try as I might,
the reverb of unanswered is the slap of more
drenching, quiet silencing, and the weightiness
of too many weightless words returned stamped
“no forwarding address, and we know not why.”
  Jul 2020 Poetoftheway
Nat Lipstadt
A reflection on birthdays, friends departing this world, and surveying ones life
~~~

this one poem is not lurking,(1)
turmoiled bursting,
shaking, quaking,
release aching

write it in droplets,
my chest speak squeaks,
each thought, a stanza,
each moment, a bonanza
of  the doled, muddled mix
of tremblings on this my extravaganza,
renaissance day of birth
upon this earth

sixty five calendars,
this space,
so gulf and so narrow, (2)
for what profit this man
for himself, others?

a Judgement Day of sorts,
where the man~poet is efficiently
prosecutor, defender,
judge and jury,
as is he not,
his one true
peer?

let his biases be betrayed,
his fault lines be paraded,
let his deeds be the unlawful legal coda
by which he is remanded

if found guilty of a ledger imbalanced,
more sins than glory,
only one sentence permitted,
life imprisonment

even the NYC weather
clued in and deity cooperative,
wakes me up to this advisory:

Overcast.
Slight chance of a rain shower.
High near 65F.

High near 65.

what portent this oracle,
a warning guide to this morass
of a contradictory, crevassed man
full of mea culpa poetic messes,
his old is his high...
or are these just winking,
birthday instructions from
an observer on high?

this space of years, this life,
so gulf and so narrow,
engulfed, yet so sparse is his barrow,
his first minutes of the day
a lean inventory taking,
for better or worse
as he overcasts a full review,
plus a bonus (!)
a forward progress prognosis

there is a fresh formed
Cain mileage marker upon his brow,
a check-mark scar,
resultant of his self-checkup
upon the tree rings of his tiring body

weeping only because a mistrial is declared
and no verdict returned
and he rises for coffee,
promising himself someday an honest resolution
before...

these the acts of
sixty five calendars,
of this, his-space,
so gulf and so narrow,
subjected to a now daily interrogatory:

for what profit this man,
his actions, his loved words,
for himself, to others,
to this world?


October 1, 2015
~~~
(1)
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1417203/there-is-a-poem-lurking/
~~~
(2)
but I can't stop
for each hour of the last 72
has witnessed a new poem
in-between
minute one and minute sixty five
written for you,
writing for life,
writing of this moment,

this space so gulf and so narrow
in and between
the unity of
us


http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1413760/for-ernesto-l-gonzales-aka-the-dedpoet-the-in-between/
~~~
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