Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
What poem will you wear, when first we meet?

How will I recognition-you,
when you transverse my land?
Unknown our faces, our voices,
Only silent words electronic exchanged

Will lantern, it be: one, if by land, two, if by sea?
Will your ID badge, passport stamped and state,
Your chest bear a witness-sign?

The Arrivals Board flashes:
                    une poétesse est arrivé
                    eine Dichterin ist angekomme
                    a poetess has arrived
                    una poetisa ha llegado

Will there be a haiku in your hair,
A limerick exposed by raucous grin,
Or just ten words
allotted for your entire visit?

Desperate to locate
Urgent to sensate
Matters I take
Into two cupped hands,
On the shoeshine stand
Climb and recite-shout

Know me by my words,
Know me by the lilt lyrical
Of my American accented,
Canadian Tongue of my mother

Know me by my words,
Carved by time on my forehead,
Poetry is the blood of this fool's soul,
Hear me, find me, look upon me slamming

Poems are the thorns in my palms,
See me crucified, bleeding stanzas
Upon my shoeshine stand cross
Recitation resuscitation welcoming:

Benedicting Gloria, Gloria, Gloria

But if this should fail your attention to secure,
Or the TSA unappreciate my second coming,
Look for the crowd gathered round,
A man of moderate height, in a tall hat,
Beard scraggly, looking sorrowful
Reciting the Gettysburg Address

Either way,
Should be easy peasy to find me,
Grab your bag, off to short-term parking

This is how an Americana poet meets n' greets
Arriving poetess from a foreign land

Is there any other way?
------------------------------
Postscipt
Alas, five years on and I know in my heart
that you are not coming...
Aug 2013
You found me.
I prayed for someone just the way you are.
In this vast and beautiful universe,
I bet we wished at the same star.
We
Every time we, as people...as a group, think of a new category, a new classification, a new label, we further our own separation from each other. Every new name gives us a pre-conceived notion for us to pre-judge other people with.

All of us will be familiar with generational categorization. Millennial, Boomer, Gen X, Y, and Z...etc. We all say, "Millenials are spoiled and have it easy and complain too much," or "The Boomers ruined the economy because they're greedy," or "Gen Z is lazy and never knew anything that wasn't on a screen..."

These sayings, are all just easy ways out... lazy assumptions we can use to generalize one another so that we don't have to put in the effort it takes to actually care...

And yeah, caring is hard.
Truth is, we've all gotten lazy.

Every single "group" of people, has some of the most amazing, loving people you will ever meet, regardless of age, or anything. Love and hatred have no bias as to who you are, where you live, what you think, or when you were born.

Think about it.
It's so easy to see one person doing something selfish to us, and we immediately look at them, and label them according to our own biases, but we never stop to look at the many more people that don't do us wrong; Perhaps even the ones that help us out. When that happens to us, they're just...people.
When we're transgressed, those people become "they." **** them blank, **** those blank, Selfish blank.
And every time we allow these little events to affect us, we become more selfish ourselves... and the cycle goes on.

This doesn't just go for generations. It goes for political separation, gender identity, race, etc.

Every,
Single,
Name,
is an excuse for us to hate each other.
Fuel for the pyre that we ourselves, you and I are tied to.

We are all human. We are all kin. Every single one of us will bleed the same blood, and cry the same tears.
That ******* that cut you off in traffic may have been on the way to the hospital to catch the dying breath of his wife, son, daughter, father, mother, or friend just in time.

We need to stop seeing each other as they, or them.
We,
Are Us.

We,
Are the only people on this tiny little rock in space,
And if we allow ourselves to hate our kin, surely we will destroy everything we know and love.

We live in the age of being overfed with information no one asked for, and we allow this information to divide us as a people.

I don't care if you are Gen Z, Republican, Democrat, Millenial, Man, Woman, or anything in between...you are just like me. You bleed red and you have a heart and a soul that wants to be loved and to feel important and that you're doing the right thing.

There's a very simple solution to this epidemic of social divide.
Next time you feel like someone has wronged you, or done something wrong. Take a step back. Stop and think.
Benefit,
of,
the Doubt.

We need to love ourselves,
but more importantly,
We need to love each other just as much...
Because in the end,
Without each other,
we would just be alone, and lost.
We are meaningless without each other.
This isn't much of a poem, but It needs to be seen.
onlylovepoetry Feb 2018
Parkland: Oh My divine, We Wrestle Over What is Yours



and what is mine

it took days for the after- shock and awe to arrive;

the bizarre tempo reversal, myself, out of order,
is my shame, after the mind’s pretense ennui of “yet another,”
had to slow seep away beneath the
firewall cutting off the pain of my the true self
and the I, of ordinary

how else, to keep the madness away?
it’s disguised in a well tended secured lockbox
chamber labeled, I, all about me,
deep hid in the rear, not too near the true self,
must keep the unseeing functioning, functioning

but bus-ted poet is triggered and the weep welling
in the eyes commencing that makes writing on a cell
on a moving vehicle an annoying frosting
on what is an inconsolable hell

everyone stares unawares that the shock,
is without awe, and the only awe is in awful awful awful awful

we sit at the Friday eve sabbath table to begin our negotiation;
but there is no negotiating though the excuses and the divine’s stumbling, flailing failings are pre-prepared,
we know this battle too well and the outcome as well,
it is mine true self’s to win, have me not
words and stanzas and music suffice
to convict the lord of the hosts, adonai

take all your seventy names in vain to crush the vanity of
omnipotence for your godliness degrades and your instant access to where the good in me resides is cutoff;
under My Contacts
you have been


blocked

we shall meet as always on the Day of Atonement
but this year no repentance to be granted, the pardons shared
with my kind only, none left for the lonely gone-gods,
no longer seek yours for me, there are 17 extra to be given out*

the left foot and the falsehoods join in the denunciation,
though some suggest reprieve and only reproach
for isn’t atonement possible for even gods?  No. not,
for a god who got human kindness installed in all his devices
but then never opened the app

my name was
onlylovepoetry;
but for now, till the culling of the agonies is done,
till the hollows are refilled and the curses fully final expended,
till the sudden eye tearing ceases to render me torn, messed,
you may call me nothing but this:

onlyreproachpoetry

should you come calling
there will be no beseeching,
just the stoic bearing witness of my silence,
my finger-pointing judgement,
and my angels presence

“May the angel Michael be at my right,
and the angel Gabriel be at my left;
and in front of me the angel Uriel,
and behind me the angel Raphael...”
and above me seventeen new protectors
whose names my true self will now memorize,

for now they are mine

~<•>~

2/16/18 4:34pm  ~ 2/17/18  3:34am
Jolan Lade Mar 2019
Going seventy thousand miles an hour.
Our comet is increasing in speed, building up power.
We are exiting the solar system.
We will never look back, never miss them.
I will never get bored on a celestial object, in a lonely space if you are with me, and our love is the subject in a star full place.

You and me
libra Mar 2019
do you know
the way i trace the contours of your face
and study the depth of your eyes
the kisses i long for but am always too afraid to steal
i want you
and i want you to let me in
memoona kazmi Mar 2019
we
we are all so not,
what we truly are,
just like a jester,
who entertain others,
but hides the darkness deep,
in a corner of his heart,
we all are wearing masks,
afraid of the day,
when they will be dropped,
we all are living lives,
that others want,
feasting on so much,
yet can't stop that hungry feeling all the time,
we all are hiding behind the cloaks,
behind the pinched faces,
hides the wolves ready to attack,
we all are holding daggers,
rolled in silk clothes,
ready to cut everyone,
coming in our way,
in the guise of white,bright moons,
we are the the hidden scorching sun,
of our own personality,
we may seem the whistling wind,
seeming a bliss to their soul,
but in real we are blowing,
to flake away their identities,
we all are so not,
what we truly are.........
memoona kazmi Mar 2019
and if we aver meet,
there will be moments,
i will look at you,
without any reason,
yet with a meaning,
i would love to see,
how you move your hands,
in space while talking,
how that pretty smile of yours,
spread on your pretty face,
and i would you to,
shake my hand,
and,
ask me whether i am listening to you........
-memoona kazmi
Next page