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  Sep 2020 Tom Waiting
clear conscience
this is how the poetry bows out



the tying of the tongue,
fingertips are shaved, nubbed,
heart seized, it rhyming ceased,
veins are dammed, arteries blocked,
the emotional fled, to a wild wind wed,
this is how the poetry bows down ‘n out

the remainders, sticky stuck, viscous,
through small pore filters they leak,
with the soap and the sins, all drained,
the shower uses holy water to no avail,
this is how the poetry bows down ‘n out

the brain cognitions loss, realizing a release
ending, time sensitized, the mantelpiece badly
cracked, each of the body’s words in reliquaries hidden,
the other worldly acquaintances greet him joyously,
commence a choir chant, a motet centuries old,

this, this! is how the poetry bows out
  Sep 2020 Tom Waiting
Nat Lipstadt
~for teach~

tell me, are you ok?

yeah, more or less;
like everybody else,
wires get crossed,
static builds up,
the speakers bleat
when they should blat,
and you try to stop thinking,
cause why hurt yourself
too much?

what’s wrong?

nothing to specific,
that seems to be the problem,
like aches and sharp pains
that come without reason,
on a schedule all their own,
no prior consultation,
permission slip sig forged,
so badly, it’s insulting

it’s 3:14 am, woke up with
headphones on, every tune,
reandomly selected, saying,
only the lonely, solitary man,
miles to go, it’s probably me,
long monday coming,
gonna spend it
looking for the summer

now look at this, me done wrote
another impoverished poem,
just by stringing together
song titles that were selected
just for me by an artificial intelligence,
it’s closing time, in the fields of gold,
prine singing a blues lullaby, just for me,
so I won’t have to think so hard for an answer to

tell me, are you ok?

me?
got no complaints that
ain’t my own fault,
my guilt is plugged in
always charging,
sleep comes in dreams of many colors,
eclectic eclipses, electrifying and elicited,
words come spilling so easy, pre-selected,
elocuted and executed, with madding ease.
two more lines, then calling it quits, but at least
got an answer, why for me it’s so easy,
the being hard

<>

3:32am and the moonlight so bright,
it’s making shadows on earth, left behind
like good graffiti announcing I was here,
maybe I’ll find these words, when I wake up,
wonder who wright these, twasn’t me,
I’m a sound sleeper, can never remember,
dreams, or nightmares, even those in technicolor,
wake up a blank slate, to see,
gotta answer somebody’s question,
if I’m ok?
  Sep 2020 Tom Waiting
Nat Lipstadt
none of us would lie like in  history class,
our equations would always be easy & pretty,
everyone so introspective, multi-language fluent,
precise explanations that obscure clarity, now that’s
something worthy to discuss endlessly self-importantly

ah, well! even if schools tawt  ONLY art and music,
we would still fight wars, arguing about important
things like proper spelling,
now that’s worth dying for....
3:52 am  dumb thoughts, course, world would  be pretty good  on Copperhead Road
Tom Waiting Aug 2020
wish i knew you
way back then
but again then
you wouldn’t have
glanced at me once,
let alone twice

but them ole aphorisms
have their uses,
useful when dreaming
in colorful surrealisms

better later,
than not at all,
my sad eyed lady
of the highlands,
better for having
met you,
than not
at all...
did you know my mother was born in Toronto?
a (the) woman’s body (pretty pleasing)

is my reciprocal

her waist is my happy place

her neck is my doorway

the rest is
best when she is mirror accessorizing,
preening, **** upon first rising,
tallying the gains and the losses

unaware of my watching,
never satisfied she, tho she is 98% unadmitting contented,
as she shifts her weight,
from knee to knee extended alternating
with slow delicacy

for the pleasure is trebled
for her imagine image reverberates
throughout the house

for ever(y) mirror is pre-positioned,
accidentally angled just so, lol,
her image transported from living room to dining alcove
all the way to the kitchen’s bleacher seats

she doesn’t know and asks why I’m grinning,
answer is
no confessionary, no telling I’m swelling and
sinning

eyes scheming-dreaming of her reciprocity

she smiles and says  
“good morning bad boy”

maybe she does know
but you won’t tell her,
we, you and me,
are pretty pleasing

she is 1/me
she is won over me
  Aug 2020 Tom Waiting
Left Foot Poet
as our letters age

my twenty six best friends gather round a winter fire,
a Valentine’s Day retreat from the bones internal chilly yellowing,
we’ve been together from the Day One beginning, a life of
commencing conception, deception, immaculate and messy mixing

practicing fumbling, making and breaking the conventional,
we arrange and rearrange our unique ordering, overlapping
with your version, cousin, so we communicate, but uniquely ours,
individualist letters, witnesses, markers, word~children, born, lost

soon seventy will come, and a party, a literary review to be held,
mourning the many, works uncompleted, toasting the few that satisfied,
acknowledging the collaboration of all the twenty six with
special guests,
an aging five senses
that were the kindling that sparked them into action

oh my dear ones, my best friends, your knew me too well,
my best, worst,
my progeny, blood of my blood, voice of my guts,
consoling friends, who
brooked my self-deceptions, yet denounced them when
over-the-topping,
comforters of our mutual ashes buried in one casket,
our final poem, clutched, at last...
my alphabet of life...




Sat. Feb 22, 2020
10:26am
you will be invited.
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