#islandpoet poems on Hello Poetry

Nat Lipstadt Sep 2

after Alexandra Leaving, a song by Leonard Cohen

<>

to go where?

to a city self-consuming in madness,
giving every excuse to stay, and yet,
it came to me just now when the poet
must be leaving his redoubt, with doubt,
and return to the concrete and anomie
of a different kind of splendid isolation

when the last leaf meanders slow down
to the battlefield, and the falling terminado,
and the tree branches are stick figures, each
finger pointing skyward in an j’accusing manner,
accussing & conceding defeat, begging for mercy,
their pleadings too much for me to bare and bury

when green has been wiped clean, and deleted
from the dictionary of colors, my moth eaten soul,
can no longer be granted a stay of execution by
merely looking at the landscape and seascape
to admire their friendly contrasting schemes,
their installation in me of the awe of a visual
quietude, that was an astonishing injection
not truly appreciated till now, too late and
still early, the awe colorations of nature’s vibrancy

The gods have come, my soul hoisted upon their
broad shoulders, the dead-appearing tree branches
can no longer keep their poet safe, hold him back from
meeting his fate; now, he too is a leaving but
floating upward, unlike like the fallen crowds that have
come to rest upon the soil that born them, now to be buried,
all saying: Goodbye Island Poet leaving,

Island Poet
has no poem, no good understanding, no vision,
had no plan, no foresight, only a hope against hope,
that safety was/is not seasonal, Van Morrison reminds,
“These are the days of endless summer,”are memories,
to be held onto tightly, until when if I pass muster, angels
will return to my island abode, where my natural friends
will greet me again, with a flowering and new births,
and The Island Poet can once again revel in ideas in words like
future, sanity, when boarding the ferry with a one way ticket smile.

From a Labor Day funereal so long ago,
yet forever permanent…nml

#nml #lipstadt #island #leaving #islandpoet

island poet Aug 2020

Woulda Wishes

Woulda that I was a woulda owner,
Woulda that “coulda” was never doable,
World where woulda the only suffices,
Wishes woulda all come true, and we
Woulda
correctly state it this way:

*woulda, woulda...woulda!

#islandpoet #woulda #wishes

island poet Jul 2020

morning first poem: tropical storm coming north

morning first poem: tropical storm coming north

two days of rain, with a first appetizer of
***** white clouds falling to earth where
renamed, fog, a wonderful guttural word

fog

a curse, a wonder, a summary, an exclamation,
later the rain and the wind will visit to remind
us who’s the boss, if the blackout whiteness
was insufficient to mind mortals ro their proper
places, basements, closets, and under the covers,
thinking of Dorothy, visiting Oz, going home to that imaginary,
wherever it really be, if there is such a place

the avians coat the lawn, camouflaged in brown grass,
and climb the house as an animals-only observation deck,
a big buffet breakfast ordered, (possible delays for a civilized
lunch and a roast beef sup) in anticipation of the change in
atmospheric pressure, which is far more accurate than
the goofy looking weatherman on channel 61, who announces
disasters approaches with exactly the same unwavering, unnatural
damnastic enthusiasm as a gorgeous July Fourth weekend

and here I am watching, observing, thinking
maybe I’ll move the chairs and umbrella into
the garage, you know, be responsible for once,
instead of a lazy whatever pretend poet writer,
but the coffee is warm and fulfilling, the music
randomly licking, hitting my mental G spot,
this creamy easy poesy coming so pleasy so
being responsible just too damnistic boring,
and why start now?

Robert F. and Walt W. wave by, on their way to someone
better, it’s ok, they gave me the old college try,
and the ground is more fertile up North and
tropical storms are not of much interest when
the world is burning itself up and history is
being revised by rose colored glasses to make us forget,
if we clean up ancestral blackness evility incivility

then Jude Johnstone one of America's finest
songwriters sings her Wounded Heart, and I
hear it solo on piano, hear it break my heart,

”Wounded heart I cannot save,
You from yourself.
Though I wanted to be brave,
It never helps.
Cause your trouble's like a flood,
Raging through your veins.
No amount of loves enough
To end the pain.
Tenderness and time can heal,
A right gone wrong.
But the anger that you feel,
Goes on and on.
And it's not enough to know,
That I love you so.
So, I take my heart and go,
For I've had my fill.
If you listen you can hear,
The angels wings.
Up above our heads so near,
They are hovering.
Waiting to reach out for love,
When it falls apart.
When it cannot rise above
A wounded heart.
When it cannot rise above
A wounded heart...”
~
and now a tropical storm seems like no big deal,
and maybe someday
I’ll write so sad n’ soft, good
and
be at last
heart-satisfied,
no longer afraid of the tropical storms
that live within...

#morning #first #poem #tropical #storm #coming #north #islandpoet

island poet Jul 2020

the osprey flys overhead, but the baby rabbit trembles not (for any grandparent-poet lurking about)

the osprey flys overhead, but the baby rabbit trembles not

~for any grandparent-poet lurking about~

the osprey overflies, a regularity scheduled patrol over
our backyard emporium and all its hors d’oeuvre creatures,
he/she has parental responsibilities, beaks to feed, PTA conferences,
the pilot, a wary watchful animal-his-rights guy, catalogues their still living existentialism, for though they are not fish, his diet of preference, but in a pinch a rodent or rabbit stew will do, if the fish are running too deep for no warming sun beckoning them to the surface.

Motel^ the baby rabbit, who lives with his parents,
(who doesn’t these days?) beneath the deck,
chews the clover overnight sprung, blissfully i g n o r a n t,
unawares or ignoring the poet be-laureating (him-her) but a mere
few feet above and away, pays no attention to the Poppy’s (grandfather) lecture about the rules of the animal kingdom,
who, eats whom, and to be more attentive to flying raptors.

thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon, severe say
the textured textual phone-netical all green messages, which
of course is a signal signal to the sun his job is done and can
leave the untanned poet in his state of original sin, soooo deliciously
white that he earns an appraising glance from eyes of the osprey,
a privilege he would happily tan away to promote equality ‘n stuff like peace on earth.

Motel, with his thermometer-humidity nasal instrumentation twitcher, decides, after chewing it over most carefully, time to go underneath where the white half naked people domicile, in order to avoid bathing, not his fav pastime, but making the osprey quitter le ciel, which is French for get out of Dodge, they got babies of their own to shelter and protect, even feed.

The Poppy, contented, thinks to himself, god couldn’t be everywhere,
so he invented grandpas to be “En Loco Parentis” which
Does Not Mean Instead of Crazy Parents,
but easily could,
for who else writes
poems like this?

^ Motel, (pronounced as Muttle, as in Motel the Tailor from Fiddler o the Roof,
so named because of his mottled fur and markings

#islandpoet #osprey #rabbit #motel #loco #parentis

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