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Nat Lipstadt Apr 2023
tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar

not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute


a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just  numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected

naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?

here is the hard part.

your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am

gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:


I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…
early April 2023
NYC
jǫrð Jan 2021
You lost that look that
Kept me by your door waiting
To see where we'd go
The History: I'm the dog that waits over zealous by the door, ready to pull the leash and gag itself. Simple dreams, I suppose but you forgot to take me out.
-Goat Apr 2020
All around me I see houses with beautiful yards
yet my home is built with nothing
but spare parts
It's not about what you have to show, it's about how much you fought to be able to show it
(kind of a stretched rhyme but whatever, right?)
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2020
ten thousand shall sunrise arise
with confidence and no surmise,
their only skill, a declaration made

I am poet, my eyes see and my tongues
unravel what overlaps, overloads, what
connects us, our sinews are tongue tied


the heated transfer of our gut alpha juices
in ways invisible but fully sensory sends
impulse ******* scouring clashing galaxies

we are a war of worlds, a war of words,
a war of class, gender, crossing boundaries,
creating new ones at our intermittent tangentials

I slip and fall, my face deep punctured, leaking
notions that cannot be stemmed or reacquainted,
alas, alas I-am now poet halved, the clock will soon

leap forwards, words anoint my unhealed scar,
longer for daylight tries to save my taste of immortality
but the year twenty twenty is for the younger poets

their simplicity fancies itself as creatively bold,
but this poet in his declining times of old
knows only my reputation is the being being shortened

their succinct pierces nothing, but egotistical ism
by dawning early light, weep copious for us both,
my holed face gushes what they don’t want to know

poems constructed and constrained by words near expiration,
use or lose the mind muse unkindly warns, the never of now,
by sunrise, ten thousand new and one old poets will meet their expiry date

one old one, be mortality lessened, lesser, used up by the dated date

march 6, twenty twenty
10:48am
Canis Latrans Mar 2019
Sentinel of dust.
Guard your resolutions quietly.
Calamity comes but to no avail.
The card signifies strength in opposition. If attacked he will meet the onslaught boldly.
Canis Latrans Mar 2019
Desolate sands, vacant blood.
Sunset bleeds into final night.
Aut Caesar Aut Nihil.
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