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September 2024

few love to sing our Anthem,
almost demanding an operatic
persona, a skilled voice, capable
of great range, but it is a story,
about one man’s imprisonment,
and that phrase:

”Through the perilous fight”

always reminds,
even in peace,
we are forever,
engaged in battle
to be a light among the
nations, a shining example,
and the perils thereof
when we err,
mistake the,
of course!
of
our truest course,
and go adrift

but!
look around,
many, not few,
placing their hand
over the heart,
words reciting,
that’s how I
know, we
yet, still,
want and pray
to be a great nation,
a light unto the world
She was an old barn cat, around the place for
a dozen years or more. Superb mouser and
yard hunter. Came from feral parents, aloof
by nature, and breeding, a little wild at heart
I suppose.  In time she developed some slight
affection for some of my family, me included,
eventually a regular welcomed visitor to my
porch, even crawling upon my lap for pat and
scratch under her chin but always declining to
be held by any human being.

She would come when I called her, running
full tilt and jumping fences, ignoring the food
just wanting attention and companionship.
Over the years she and I became good friends.
She came every day, morning and evening to say
hello and oh yes, get an offered meal. Rubbing
her sleek cat body on my feet and legs, offering
up her affection with an audible purring for
everyone to hear even from some distance.

Her age was starting to show, thinner, slower, she
was getting on just as I am, perhaps we both knew
it. Last night she came to the glass door and looked
so forlorn. Though cold outside I put on a coat and
brought her out some food, and I sat in my chair.

She sniffed the food with disinterest then came
over to lay upon my feet softly meowing, I could
feel her little purr motor vibrating on my shoes.
I reached down and gave her a tummy scratch,
she always loved that.

We resided like that for a while, her upon my feet,
me in my chair. Becoming too cold I started to rise
to go back inside, but Daisy did not move, I reached
down and felt no purr vibration, she was unmoving
and silent. In that moment I knew that she had passed
from this earth. I picked up her now limp body and
placed her on my lap, my eyes teared up knowing
that she was gone.

So sudden, one minute there and then just gone.
Not a bad way to go, rather than some long-drawn
-out affair, with doctors, useless operations, hospice
and lingering formidable pain. Just lay down and
go to sleep.

We should all be that lucky when our time comes.
Most of the outside cats we have had, when their time
was near seemed to know it and they would find a bush
or some dark seclusion to lay down and go in peace.
Modest and aloof to the end. Seeking privacy, I guess.

What a marvelous gift she bestowed upon me, to share
her last breaths and minutes with me. I will miss her
sweet ways and visits. Adieu, dear friend Daisy cat.
Poetoftheway Feb 2
before commencing his third
poem of the day, to review,
reiterate, reorganize his day’s
life, and his life’s day, to establish
better value, logical priorities,

He thinks,
better to let woman sleep,
as no pressing pressures
of  decisions or choices
need be made before noon,
and another huge mug of
coffee seems logical, wise
and a prudent next step

and no sin needs forgiveness,
by the act of sleeping late

He’s torn,
between readying the
coffee machine’s unending
needs for water, beans, snd
careful waste disposal,
shaving a  2 day stubble,
and starting his next poem,
when he grins stupidly, or
stupidly grins, for clearly
he has made and an acknowledged
decision, certified by a silent
exclamation of duh!

He reassures,
his inner demons
that all will be satisfied
in no particular order as
the day is young and the
coffee hot, good and satisfying
and he can  type letters without
spilling coffee (again),  and the
world will be no worse off
or improved if he focuses
on completing this dirge

here then the third poem:

life is nothing but an
endless series of decisions,
many, most, low hanging fruit;
ironically, the big ones,, the
important one, get made quietly
without malice and forethought, by
deliberations so quiet they go
unnoticed.

At Nine o’clock, he will
wake the woman,
because he’s lonely for company,
but wisely
will bring her coffee and breakfast
in order to
soften the blow of his arousing action
  Jan 22 Poetoftheway
Nat Lipstadt
Disclaimer:
an unintended very long poem
from a very long walk,
hoping it might come
to rest within your
heart
but feel free to go your own,
another direction

<•>

“Another writer told me a few weeks ago of his New England Yankee mother,
who believed there are no problems
that aren’t made at least slightly better
by a long walk, and
none that are made worse.“
<•>

a moderate walker am I,
on the Promenade,
hard by the wide & narrow strait,
a tidal estuary, that divides our urban island
from its suburban Longer cousin,

this my path, most oft traversed,
a time spent usually creating,
reciprocating verses from a
copulating mind

every walking expedition is
an-in-transit composition,
an enchantment by a song
anointed, appointed and a
derivation
of a song about
going home

the last of my family
to be buried, l,
to be interred,
finally grounded,
in a park of cedar trees,
next to my immediates,
for can’t think of any other place
that might, would willingly,
not resist mightily, taking me in

it will thy will that they bury me
there if they can get permission
from the heavenly authorities,
but told the betting odds
are 3 to 1
against,
the Lords of song not so happily
with the quantity and the quality
of my unseeded spilled,
of my un-indeeded actions,
they were not entirely
rainbow colored,
some very berry blackened,
urgently misdelivered
with no justifiable delicacy
warranting memorizing or
further discussion

most likely will continue
to remain a pedestrian,
though unlikely I’ll have to
look both waysides before
crossing over

I’ll carry copies of  my scriptures,
psalms and even my one and only
flawless poem in hand,
wrote here so long ago,
s small proof that my theorems
were not
always entirely wrong,
but my replica action figurines,
were posed and struck,
were sufficient evidences
that my overall demeanor
of demeaned marks,
were negative numbered,
irony, they were unlettered
and ungraded,
mostly average, only worthy
of a place in the sadeyed lowlands

So walk I shall,
hoping they give me decent
walking & wailing shoes,
a warm suit,
a fedora or a watch cap,
cause it is more than chilly
down by the uninhabited riversides

this thinning vision is not
tinged with
any tingling regret,
nor sorrow,
what I did, what I wrote,
every word mine alone,
the way I lived,
walking solitaire is
something grown quite accustomed,
and a pretty fair pre~text of a
judgement coming
down

on the morrow,
will walk with no
measurements needed,
not speed, nor distance,
not counting crows or any other
unenumerated birds of a feather,
those on a wire or a river railing
spying observers watching,
who will go unnumbered,
as will all my
steps of no value

so this poem’s title absolute right,
no needs for solving
for absolutions,
was never ever sorry for
taking a walk,
and there are no more vocabulary
modifiers,
unneeded words left, like,

but nonetheless

only
just don’t know how
this river poem got
so long
Poetoftheway Jan 22
morning, Jan 21~22, 2025

*what I did for love:^
these conversations
in the dark, where
lies and smiles and
visual clues kept
hidden, so the sweet
and the sorrowful
never fully disclose-able,
or totally hid, half-sin,
half-kin to kindness

even the evening passing
pleasantries fall upon
non responsive interrogatories,
and soon wonder wanders
into the dark, hid neath
a cloaking coverlet
that frees suffocation
to cut off the freedoms
of oxygen intake to
restore and keep embers
of fine memories just
barely alive. glowing
brightest before extinguation

life’s lessons, tears pooling,
of never ending schooling
granting due to the
primary notion that
nothing is given,


nothing is granted
except that cycles
are recyclable
Recycled Conversations in the Dark: Sweetness and Sorrow poetoftheway
genuine

so many ordinary bees in our vocab hive,
workers, important, but rarely seen,
some never, or rarely trotted out,
no-fresh air, we just must be too too, too
busy, busy

had occasion to employ said titular
queen word recently, a love story
that strummed a chord of the
randomness of good love,
genuine slipped out unexpectedly,
this word, a crowning modifier to a
love poem herein written

truly a word not used too often,
perhaps because we live in a time
when it is a quality rare, though
much celebrated, like so much,
has becomes a debated talking point

but genuine is not hard to be
uncovered, it has a warmth heater
generator internal, a signal signal,
that is hard to be disguised or
mistaken

but our sensitivities are dulled,
easily misled, by the shouting and
the latent bitterness that runs through
the veins of our ordinary conversations,
making it more difficult to believe our
five sensory discernments, to what is,
and what is not,

but love, perhaps, is a genuine genetic,
at a cellular level quality that has evolved over millennia, so easier to spot, it’s heated hot, and awhy a love story should be the focus causation of my happiness, that it
yet thrives, and functions and supplies
we humans, a chance to see, to believe,
that genuine yet exists, inward and
unwarped, within we ordinaries
for a.v.

MLK  Day 2025
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