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  Nov 2014 Still Crazy
Shelby Hemstock
Manual labor isn't for me
So I freed myself from the farms drudgery
I'm a classical scholar and a fine linguist
Emancipate yourself from being the definition of living breathing machinist
You can get free if you want to
All you have to do is use your mind,
Pay your dues,
Expand your intellect,
Earn respect
I wasn't born to assemble on a factory line,
Lotta yellow boys never put that to mind
Never will
Never dared to dream
So they perspire as another part of the machine
  Nov 2014 Still Crazy
Third Mate Third
is this craft
that chose you,
not defined by millimeters,
precision absolute,
curvatures, so eye pleasing
they demonstrate
no tolerance
for tolerance
of the
ordinary

the skill of words,
too, cut so fine,
find the
extraordinary within,
refine, refine, refine,
shave away the trite,
the reused, discard,
instant recognition,
unusable

cut new cuts,
thy spirit tolling,
thy soul trolling
anew
is thy
toolings earth sourced
from and of the
ever better,
ever closer,
always newer

make thy own designs,
faithfully execute
the new born original,
by elevating,
with the tools
in you, provide us,
by illuminating

no thing machined,
can ever be as fine
as the originality
that requires
soft spoken definition
in new ways,
heart and hand
guild crafted

when God designed the Connecticut
autumnal leaves,
overriding the summers's single green, good
but not miraculous, insufficient,
when contrasted with the
shades of red, yellow,
purple, black, orange, pink,
magenta, blue and brown
of newly fallen
words and worlds

in the season of change

write me a tool
so elegant, so complex,
so refined and yet so simple,
that its point will force no choice,
but engrave gasps of pleasure upon
my faltering eyes,
my slowing heart,
my exhausted limbs,
and make me
live again
through your
finest creativity

heat heat heat
burn to look beyond
For Joe
  Nov 2014 Still Crazy
Nat Lipstadt
all my life
wanted to write just
the way
Joni (Mitchell) sings

seesawing
rising unexpected,
write the changing temperament
in the pitch,
of now

yawing, oscillating,
speedy slow,
enunciating the whip of
love crazy

twist to fall into a
double-time
bass baritone insane
from and into a higher pitch,
switch on the
en garde,
blue ink
onto cloth napkin poetry

plain plaintive,
rendering the scene,
rendering my heart,
it's crazy high-lows,
emotion backyard
swing set

Oh Joni!
I could drink a case of you


that is was what I
told the single girls
when I was a wooing man

send me home,
high and crying,
thinking uneven,
creatively,
drinking you,
pounding the dashboard,
sing our palpitating poems

thinking up
the in-between
songs of
till next time

that they loved so much
they begged,
sing it again and again

I drank them all
and think now of poem love songs,
vintages that never caged,
never aging,
those songs I wrote for them,
back in the day
when Joni
taught me how to
see life in verse
6:05am
Still Crazy Nov 2014
For Al*

your limbs,
a finger, a toe,
an arm, a leg,
cannot be amputated,
without your presence...


when the men
drive in the car together,
the women, best friends,
absent,
temporarily away,
their men,
time release the
the secret shavings
of truthful conversations,
the unconstrained sharings,
spoke, untold,
free from the raised eyebrow,
the serious shushing
of censoring partners,
Lionesses-in-Absentia

who else
where else can you tell
the complaints unspoken,
the peculiarities, the ironies,
that make you smile/wince
laughingly grimace

and now the men are
friends

so when he asks,
come to the movies with us,
tho you are neat beat,
dead on the feet,
you now know,
too late, too late,
always and evermore
say sure,
cause,
now that he is gone
in a single swoop felling,
his oak trembling,
fallen
oh my friend,
now on his side,
lifeless

you say sure,
always
sure,
cause you have to be there,
just in case,
it is time they declare
to severe sever
one of your very own
limbs
Still Crazy Nov 2014
I'm thinking of loving you,
make a note of that!

put a yellow stickum
on the fridge
already curling up,
from the good steam of
the first coffee atmospheric

I'm thinking of moving in!

clear me a drawer,
half a closet will do,
not much for possessions,
thinking I'll stay awhile,
as long as you possess me
and vice versa too!

could be seasonal,
winter marking me,
scarf dug out from somewhere,
but that just means
it is the season for
better slow loving

baby,
don't please misunderstand,
my intentions good,
just human, no regretting,
motives purely selfish,
want to put this self in you,
and see what comes of it

the stickum note,
to the floor now fallen,
in the under the fridge space,
where things go that...

no omen, no, oh man!
cause when I decided,
got past the thinking point,
arrived at the sticking point,
appears to be a long time
such a long time
to be loving you,
so many other things
curled,
neither of us noticed
that first stickum fallen

make a note of that!
Still Crazy Nov 2014
run the hands over every
tissued cell,
race the tongue upon and under every
unsealed pore

linger, tarry,
only if you must,
here, there and where
you stop only to drink
my body's must...

lid to lobe,
crevice to mound,
uncover the obvious,
reveal the infinitesimal,
finite the desire,
end at the beginning,
fire up the cool hearth,
emblazon the shields ofordinary,
exit and enter
simultaneously

refill the apertures
with~not~my
peptones, enzymes, amino acids,
replenish my
well

then drain
well
the abscesses and repair
the wearable wounds ,
reminder remains
of prior contests,
won and lost

make me better
than well

know before,
realize afterwards
that ceasing,
never and always,
is an always never*

for this route
forever changing,
for your hands and tongue
redraw me
every time
they run the course

every time,
ever and when you
exit and enter
always and ever
simultaneous,
the course of
my flesh
11-1-14
My only weakness is a woman
A woman is my strength
Without her I’m a half man
Longing to be full length!

A woman fills the half of me
Without her I just can’t do
Sans her I’m half empty
And know she needs me too!

Her only weakness is a man
A man is her strength
Without him she’s a half woman
Longing to be full length!

A man fills the half of her
Without me she just can’t do
Sans me she’s half empty
And knows I need her too!
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