#lipstadt poems on Hello Poetry

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

The River ("Every artist was first an amateur…")

The River ("Every artist was first an amateur…")

rank, rank, rank ~ a word of multivariate meanings,
too many with hints of degrading nefariousness,
know
this
then:

the river we write upon, invites from all shores, enter!
where and when you will, let the current carry, or with
intent serious, furious paddle along side the rest of us
permanent beginners,

because each time we start to compose, all that we we
have composed before, is just loam, soil from to sprout anew,
no prior ordering survives, we begin as fumbling rank
beginners, amateurs, starting first and then over and over again
for each start
is not a statistically significant event, difference, indeed, it is clarity of challenge, search, and the joy to destroy, in order to be of finding,
it is same for one and for all,
we all are ranked, the same, first time amateurs…

so I bid you: run, get wet, welcome disasters, crumple too many
first drafts, BUT be ready when the ah ha period!
a gasp confirms: competed, satisfaction guaranteed…

it doesn’t query qualifications for quality is
yours to discern, yours to differentiate, yours to own,
to give away freely in abundance, nor does quality be an enquirer,
doesn’t ask what are your bona fides
your good sides,
just
to
bring and borrow,
impart and deport,
take us by surprise,
comfort and comport,
leaving behind outside a
crumb trail to make us follow
you to the coveted inside of that mystery
inner tube within that brain of yours that
roundly supports all of us ever lusting
for
just one…more

12:32 PM
Sabbath
May 25
2024

S.I.

#river #amateur #rank #lipstadt #nml

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

“I know I should write” (sums far greater than the whole)

in my private conversations, so many
emiploy this phrase, arms on chest folded,
a whispery plaint, and I too am folded into
too pieces, as well, my understanding fulsome,
for the struggling is well familiar, I under stand
beneath you, arms upraised, holding your shaking,
throbbing, wistful hearty sighs, constant tumbling,
floor~falling, see rose petals of sighs, all quiet screams,
and
my weak remedy is urging you to express
with the skill, known in you possess, to give
it forth, give it out and let us love your burdens
shared, and thus the be the firmament of our ties…

selfishly, I plead that you stun us with the
insight inside, hopeless hoping you surrender
and share in the only way I know that expiates some,
the grief, some of pained shame, and for a momentary
gasping, allows us grasping you, through you poetry,
the value you can bring forth to others humanity,
helping us to make us a better~both, with written creating
sums far, far greater than the to~us whole…
nml

7:45AM
Sabbath
May 25
2024

Silver Beach, Shelter Island

#know #should #write #sums #greater #than #whole #nml #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

the lovely picture window (always the same, always different)

the lovely picture window (always the same, always different)

There are painters who must,
having found the place, must,
repaint it, compelled to repeat it,
each a variant, yet always the same,
always different

I awake to a perspective that is wide,
always differentiated from the prior,
always almost similar, but never with
the same exactitude, differing attitude,
same longitude, identical latitude,
always different

horizon distanced, in all ways a view
encompassing, duality near, far distant,
harmoniously, eyes open, magnetized
to wake before 6am by the suns modesty,
first light, first clarity, a curtain risen, yet,
always different

am I so blessed or thus cursed, for the urge
to disclaim and ode, compose and thus self-
decompose, analyze, reflect, slice apart, needing
the comprehensive understanding this me/place
scripts the raw appreciation, daily differentiated
always the same

this peaceful venue seizures, chest calmly
pounding at the insistence it commands,
the price I must pay for the prize to praise,
to sing, weep, reward restful sleep with lyrics
eked out, pouring, unsustainable yet finished,
always different

a single May Iris, returns, born from a torrential,
thunder, lightning, sky mayhem, rises by a sundial
greets midst a planted clump, upright rises, lavender,
in a majestic solitary, absent but a day prior, yet mine eyes
failed to witness its discernible emerging birthing creation,
always different,
always the same

here, I am Iris too, always the same, a day aged,
but the differences minute but stolid actualized,
this overnight sensation, my body’s restoration,
what I visualize, indivisible, now visible, realized,
miracle of continuity, unchanging chained change,
always different ,
always the same

wonder, am I more blessed, or a s~lightly cursed being,
my breath restored, wet eyes full brimming, changed,
revived but always modified, a newer old man, whose
sum total always a different number, but in sequential,
compelled to confess, no understanding of this miracle,
always the same,
always different,
this daily visionary miracle

6:36 AM
Fri May 24
2024

Silver Beach,
Shelter Island

#nml #tlovely #picture #window #always #same #different #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

people make excellent poems

~for R.A~

I cannot inform you if the verb
make
in the observation above is
transitive or intransitive,
what I can say is this, however:

the idea of people as poems,
the idea of people making poetry and
both
becoming, creating, and being poems

is transformative.

it begs and boggles my mind as the lattice of
these intersecting notions boils over in brain,
the avenues and the little dirt paths
all
request and require exploration & explication
and
and the crossover possibilities astound
and my head aches from the flush of
a maternity ward of mewing poems,
related but yet disconnected birthings,
individual but all at once,
all siblings related,
the greatest challenge yet
<>
perhaps
you are thinking
naive Natalino
perhaps
you are perspicacious
and correct,
but meantime
my heart is pounding

5/22/2024 early morning

#lipstadt #peopyare #poems #perspicaciious

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

Don’t swim in the sea of overflowing regret…

a quicksands *******, a trap for sure,
but the cozy warmth of the feeling,
is muy attractive, and the first step
is a ****** sweet curlicue slide into
oblivion

the more you sink, the sweeter the meat,
but when you can’t breathe no more,
and the lungs burst, neath the sea of
reeee~greeted re|greet, and the pinpoint
***** of light bidding you adieu with
a wink, is thinking out aloud
“ah those human fools, they drown themselves
so willingly…”

#lipstadt #nml #overflowing #regret

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

The sun~poem also rises every evening

The sun~poem also rises every evening…

A.P.U (as per usual):
this testimony~phrase tilts me sideways,
to relieve the condition, needy to be righted
one must expel the belly kicking seedling,
looking to be outed as a full fledged tree,
a poem planted, a gatherer of insects,
giving shade, perhaps shedding fruit

the sun bids adieu, self~same~centrifuge
of our solar system, is indeed alway rising
somewhere, though the light of our naked
eyes weak, incapable of trajectory bending,
to follow its course’s curvature, nonetheless,
we know it but struggle to believe just as we
struggle to complete, compare, and compose

replanted words in your heart, words that trigger,
are the notions inherent, of a center, rarely eclipsed,
that never ceases to offer up nouveau hope in each
of the days, a placenta to fret you blood and oxygen,
once purposed, discarded into darkness,
b u t
the words rise again, offering what you seek,
diurnally, need, to find within them, for my child,
is now
our child…

7:47AM
Sun May 12
Avenue of York

#sunpoem #also #rises #every #evening #nml #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

The Cherry Blossom Thicket (intersecting points of light and color and scent)

happened upon an extravaganza of spring’s hallmark,
the cherry blossoms outing their munificence of color,
I happened to position myself direct below a tree,
the thicket
of blossoms so, well, thick, that sky was obliterated ‘cept
for pointillistic spots of blue sun, yellow sky that poked
through the
few de minimus interstitial spaces permitted, and was
struck silent, by-for-before shimmering eyes that uttered the
requisite oohs and ahhs,

and

words came to me weeks later,
when the memory, now fully decanted,
reappears
courtesy of a giant tech company’s code tinkering,
merging and splurging the combined images in the
photographic memory
of my devices,
as if to say:
your life is
points of light and color and scent
as you write now
amidst the hubbub of jackhammers, raucous horns a blaring,
the homeless screaming on the street at god,
the fatalistic headlines of hate and
the pallor of a low level haze of perp~gray
between you and your true elfin self,
and you are not surprised,
but sadly, but not entirely,
bemused
that the photo’s true utility was to
remind weeks later
that all that my eyes utter
is not just
woe, double trouble and toil, toil,
but to Hey Jude and George,
step out and see the park on a Sunday
in its entirety and to glory in
your being
by being
a point in that tapestry spectacular
of ingestion, digestion and final comprehension and
a happy
exhalation

across the course of
May 2024

#lipstadt #nml #cherry #blossom

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)

Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)

”And you, dear poet, friend of many years,
have given me so many inspirations, birthed within
us words,so oft, and so well, that your pithy observations,
manufacture time, add minutes to lifetimes”

<>

wrote these words without thinking,
they’re sweet and neat, trivial but incomplete

but upon rear mirror review, Mr Poet
re-thinks, perhaps deserved of another serving,
curvy white, soft-to-the-lips, a moist vanilla kiss,
excellent ice cream in a sugar cone, words irresistible

for the sweetest poem sparks multi-coloration-explosion
of sprinkles ‘pon a skin’s surface,
uprisings of what lurks in the centrum of your
embodied universe and disembodied soul,
shockingly uprising from an internal fulcrum,
sea~tossed flotsam of a jagged life, now, all recovered
words sprinkling, beach treasures, and yet,
*adding minutes to a lifetime…

reliving old reels, is time recaptured, creating a
certain robust additive to thine cranking and
cranky engine, that’s logged much more than
a picayune hundred thousand miles on a voyage
of e i g h t decades, you employ ten fingers to
calculate your fugue of multi-voiced numerations!

can it be? it cannot be! millions upon millions of
minutes, possess and passed, yet highlight feature
films, enabling reliving so real that by watching,
seeing, believing, re-reading it is as if one is earning
life extensions…adding minutes to a lifetime…

‘tis true, rereading every small scrip, every poem,
returns one to prior-places, each a datum,
a particular spot, a point upon a schema of integrity & integration,
that rule the visions, a message of individualism
in the largest context of a true vision(arie)

“chacun un point dans une peinture pointilliste…”
“each a point within a pointillistic painting…”

in a few years, a stumbling upon shall here return me here,
and I will smile with great gratitude for the life extended,
accepting with gratitude,
these few seconds, a last lasting chance,**
to say some magic words
with a great vanilla whispering
adding minutes to you life as well

nml

may 5~6
2024

#nml #lipstadt

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

Dear Pradip, “There is no dearth of moments…” Poem Enough!

“Every moment waking or sleeping/dreaming is a poem.
Sadly there aren't enough moments to write them all.”

back in the day,
(like 5 minutes ago)
I awoke,
and that miracle is

poem enough!
~~~~
the house is overflowing
with floral gifts,
orange roses, scented lilacs,
pink peonies,
and that friend, is

poem enough!

Sunday brings Birthdays,
One is 11, the other 7,
and I must change ~
my passwords will
require-updating,
and that friend, is

poem enough!

And you, dear poet,
friend of many years,
have given me so many
inspirations, birthed within
us words,
so oft, and so well,
that your pithy observations,
manufacture time,
add minutes to lifetimes,
and dearth
not a word,
to be associated with us!

Us,
as in always,
that my friend, is
just
ever a

poem enough!

Sabbath Sat. May 4, 2024

#poem #enough #nml #lipstadt #pradip #moments

Nat Lipstadt May 2024

It’s good to be hated! But I know my name…

It’s good to be hated!  But I know my name…

hate, blackened, misshapen, ugly, unnatural,
yet
how it clarifies the mind, like a cupped hand
carrying clear, cold, brook water to dry mouth,
to shock, enliven, resets resets, all your priorities
with alacrity, a word I prefer cause it is an intuitive
combo of eagerness + alarm, suddenly much of the

trivial is no longer worthy of your  ‘to do’ list,
you, without thinking, DNA filter your filters,
those screens that digest, then reject & reflect
the inputs ongoings around you, and you are now
reclassified! by the hate surrounding, it declassifies
the time wastrels, reinterpreting most everything
on a bipolar scale of  1  or  10, there are no shades,
the middle ground of gray be fully eliminated,
just like those who wish to
eliminate
                                                                                   me.

in a palette of black or white, your
e +e,
(essence and existence) cannot be ever
a gray area, yes, of course, the sunshine
is yellow bright, and the grass is spring
flushed green, the multicolored daffodils
newly define colors varietal, and the waves
of the Sound, roll relentlessly, but hate can be
coated, camouflaged and subtle disguised, but
we  know, oh how we know, and how we wanted
to forget, our “sins”, our original liabilities of
our multi colored skins, our religion, our race & ethnicity,

but NOT our names!

the Rabbis tell us that God nearly did not keep
his promise to Abraham, to rescue his progeny
from slavery in Egypt but saved them only because:

‘On account of four things Israel was redeemed
from Egypt: they did not change their names, they
did not change their language,  they did not speak
slander and not even one of them was found to be
promiscuous.’^

I know my name; and though you cannot distinguish
me by dress, know not my moral life, but now you
know my name,
given to me by my parents, in the language of my ancestors:

Mordecai Netanel ben (son of) Eliyahu Chaim**

Per my family lore, as told to me by my parents, our
family fled from Spain because of the Inquisition (1478),
settled in a small town in Germany on the banks
of the river Lippe; and from the shtetls of Poland,
and those who survived or avoided the Holocaust
ultimately left Europe, came here, to the land of
the free, the United States of America with names,
in their language, with memories intact.

I will not flee this country,
for I know my true name,
inscribed in my pores, in my
DNA

<>
(but should I have to…there is a sanctuary.)
May 2 2024

^ https://jewishaction.com/religion/jewish-law/whats-the-truth-about-the-jewish-in-egypt-keeping-their-jewish-names-language-and-dress/

#know #name #good #hate #lipstadt