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  Aug 2024 Where Shelter
Nat Lipstadt
A dance lesson at 900AM,
she sets her alarm for Seven Am(?)
<>
restless. as you know too well,
a nite time house haunter, checking doors,
windows, rumbling noises from deep
inside the basement and his gut,
knowing in advance he has done
all this a few hours before…
what else should he do?

write your **** poetry!

ok

I will.

exhausted after diving into unplumbed
depths of love and death, friendship and
hatred, the angst of lost children, some dead,
some living but who have made him dead to them…

tired from debating god about the correct
way to spell hallelujah in English, as they
usually converse in the original Hebrew…

now you ask impatiently, what the hll does
this have to do with what time she sets her alarm?

growling, I reply, so glad you asked…

after a longest night of wrestling with angels,
reviewing the highs and the despondent lows,
of a life lived, mixed up, at best, he returns to
the bed stealthy~like, with much practice, she
does not even stir, when he steals back the half
of the coverlet and top sheet she stole in his
absence…rearranges the pillows, and thus
entirely exhausted, tumbles immédiatement,
into a sleep restful, a short battery charge,
to give himself a fighting chance, to recoup
the poetry they (Him and god,😉) composed
ensemble…

now, some addled add’l info you require:

the Apple offers multitudinous alarm sounds,
and she has chosen the aggravating ringing
of that old fashion alarm clock you bought in
Switzerland forty! years ago, and with great
bravery put out the back door for anyone who
was truly desperate for self-torture…anyway,

in throes, of a clasped embrace, a holy restful
cuddle of a dreamless sleep so desperately needed,
her A L A R M refunds at 7, for a trip to the studio
that is maybe , Google Map, has affirmed with
glee, is but a ******* NINE MINUTE drive away…

you think this is not  poem worthy?

WELL, YOU ARE WRONG, DING ****!

for what you do not know, that I am kicked &
injured awake from my last chance saloon of
sleep, with a shocking stillness of heart and
mind, by that jingle jangle *gringging,
and then,
she stirs & confirms the time is indeed 700AM,

AND GOES BACK TO SLEEP AGAIN…


WHILST(always wanted to try that word out),
I am groggy~angry, highly dangerous for having
been cheated on, of and by a sound that was invented
by masochists who overslept for Noah’s Ark’s departure,
and have never for~given those creatures, like me,
who made a timely aboard…

And so the day begins and if you are angry at me, for having decomposed my hissy fit into your so very important existence,
well, too bad!

so, awake, I return to unlock every window and all the
doors aplenty, for they who built this home fifty years ago,
insisted that no one should be no more than ten steps
from entry and egress, in case the Puritans come to
burn we witches alive…

so now you are aware, fully informed, why the
adjectives of choix, in describing moi in the morning,
are whiny, growly, and grumbly and any another word
ending in “ly” that you should feel free to add to the
equation..

You are too? ** ** **! welcome to the club chump!
feel free to post nasty, natty notes below,which will
be accepted with roaring laughter and good graces
at having made your & you
coffee, by now, icy cold😉😫😜😛



p.s. good morning

9:01AM
S U N D A Y(grrrr)
Where Shelter Jul 2024
Thursday

week has slo~mo’ed, edged on, visitors gone,
two and half rain days, but a mere coincidence (?),
it’s appearance, their concomitant dis-appearance,
inclemency has kept us closeted and cozily, but not a-lonely,
for the world’s tumult~tilting-plane distracting enough,
its axis! seems more than a few degrees a-kilter,
(lively, lovely word, rarely used), and since when have I awoken with
mine eyes have seen the dripping rhymes, for my germanic-jewish
is pretty prosaic, my musings confined to a middle-of -the-night “thingie,” but here and hear I am jingling away in anticipation of a rain-all-day situation, and frankly, a tad less political west wing,
King Lear worthy drama, polarizing, thee-ate-her, might incentivize an exciting trip to the emerald isle’s solitary gas station and IGA supermarket (weekend supplies for the newest arriving morrow-guest-mongers,) for sure-as-right-as-rain-it-will-be-ceasing,
they will be soon enough be landing by F-Day (3) ferry, on the morrow, with their own Shakespearean screenplay, and many compliments on the verdancy (a previous never employed actor’s verbosity) of our tree encased, oak surrounded, tiny cottage hideaway, where we are all the world’s a stage, and we, the designated locked down, can be all ~ heavenly host, wait staff, sommeliers, and most importantly, their captive audience members…for their small life’s litle newest pieces, require us to be fully updated…

enough folderol! first glance reveals wet everything, windows moisture painted; and a halfway penetrable fog  means incautious
summer drivers will be out mise en vigueur, french for ‘in force’, testing their luck upon our ****, curvaceous, ample bosomed hilllock roads, (stop),  excited by their chance to prove their stupid mettle…and their auto’s european superior brakes & suspension…

so the six am borderline of unofficial time division has passed and it is still Thursday, still wet, fog-ever-so-light touch lifting, and the challenges of writing a good piece of poem, yet sizzling in the mind’s frying pan, is still a long haul walk down the creaky corridor to the
just-kitchen ing ya, and the bed’s seductive dulcets.
singing why not “Stay (just a little bit longer”) (1)…

thus throughly convinced, bury dreams of Javanese Enlightenment within the seducing drowsed plumpness of my pillow
unti they arrive in force, but that is a different story already written…(2)

<>

Stay… ah, just a little bit longer
(Please) please, please, please, please
Tell me that you're going to
… Now your daddy don't mind
And your mommy don't mind
If we have another dance, yeah
Just one more, one more time
… Oh, won't you stay, just a little bit longer
Please let me hear
You say that you will, say you will
… Won't you place your sweet lips to mine
Won't you say you love me all the time
… oh, yeah, just a little bit longer
(Please) please, please, please, please
Tell me you're going to
… Come on, come on, come on (stay), yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Come on, come on, come on (stay), yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Come on, come on, come on (stay), ooh, la-de-da
Come on, come on, come on (stay), my, my, my, my
(1)Stay
Song by Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs

(2) https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4732644/they-come-by-dawns-early-light/

(3) an appellation of historic inspiration combining F riday and F luck
Where Shelter May 2024
about
a year ago the doctors ordered me to return,
put down the tablet, cease driving, stay seated,
you a skinny hair from dying, the drop dead
unkindly kind, come back to the city, there’s
an operating table Resy~reserved just for you,
the menu we will decide, two or three courses,
but for
the summering on your sheltering isle, where the
lapping waves sounds of the sound, the greenery
calming befuddles your senses is ended, the congress
of animals too  have ordered your dispatch back to
the hubbub of pizza parlors, nail salons & bodegas,
and
we will slice and dice, drawn up plans to redirect
the arteries and veins that you’ve spent good money,
lazy years clogging & *******, sending you back after
you’re  in fighting trim, and and recommence dialogus
with
the sun, sky, animals, the water and the waves, and
write of peace of mind, knowing that your body, too,
is
at peace, but not at rest, and let the writing begin
again, with a refreshed perspective, and re-greet
old friends, Hafiz and Whitman, who were left
behind in a hasty departure, your retreat is ended
and now, a new re-treating of the soul, to match a
newly refreshed body


postscript:
where is shelter? why, within and without…both needed,
in happy juxtaposition

but to those who a. companied me on this journey, I give my “undying”love thanks and to all a good night and a god bless…
Where Shelter May 2024
Inevitable, that the circle be completed,
celebrating our seasonal return to the
sheltering abode by river, bearing winded
surround sounds to our isle of near-perfection,
where slivered tongued foamy waves deposit
new & used poems on beach, emptied from
now repurposed sea shells and hardened
conchae's, evidence that the truest inhabitants
never leave, always return, with their markers

Inevitable, that I write this in premature
anticipation, amidst the towers of babble,
& honking taxis, imitating Canadian geese,
who await our presence to refute any paper,
that we fool human claimants, before Nature
pretense of ownership, are not mere renters, albeit
but for a few centuries, which by larger definition,
is an interim short term lease, writ in invisible ink, that tho it
yellowing disappears, the orange summer heat magic revives

Inevitable, that decades of worshiping this
place, now mindbound, as temple, shrine, to
a place extant in our minds, wherever we be,
as land that owns us; here, we have buried
super~hero figurines, sanded, polished memories
of loved ones, parents, friends, adventures, times,
confusing generations, for the children of earlier
children, whose children, now too scream with glee
& courageous abandon, familiar+identical to forbears

Inevitable, that we live here, though life demands
our presence elsewhere, in our minds,* for each
year burnishes our genes with sun rays, while sand
smoothes our roughened skin, and we are only refresher
modifications of our earlier selves, when we first were
lost, and stumbled upon this grail, with shovels and
red plastic pails, with which we commenced erecting
foundations, homes, gardens and vines, and images
that are always at home in our minds, living on,

in real time…
May 3 2034
  Feb 2024 Where Shelter
SE Reimer
a tribute

~

memories...
in fading sepia we find,
the romance of
another time;
albums filled
with black and white,
of glossy faces
burnt in fading light;
boxes of our ko-dak-chro-ments,
gone-by treasures,
once-upon-a-moments;
wistful years once crystal clear,
mem’ries drowned in haze,
resurface now,
renewed in tears,
...as we remember well.

memories...
the yellow ribbons tied,
’round an ol’ oak tree;
anxious waiting to make an “us”,
the anticipation of a “he and me”;
until the news from distant shore,
yet another casualty of war,
and now remains but this,
a marble slab inscribed,
in accolades of former glory,
merely remnants ’midst the pines;
on forest lawn where promises,
tween two for’er became untwined,
...as she remembers well.

memories...
so many are the ways
the mem’ry onward lives
even this, a,
“do this in...” request
restores a covenant anew
a "remembrance of..."
the “we” here left behind,
be it in the bread we break,
this forever to remind,
a sacrosanct entreaty made,
promise sealed as blood in wine,
reserving not for deities alone,
but given us immortal souls,
to us a gift at birth,
of staggering import,
responsibility of heavy worth;
of after-ashes keeping still,
an ever-after captured with
the shutter, brush and quill,
...so we remember well.

memories...
its keeping cherished lovingly
though its loss,
its diminishment bereaved;
as lovers silent grieve,
those lost to us yet breathe,
in memories ’midst the breeze.
forgetful of the slightest
until one day in finality
their mortal soul is set free
into immortality.
...to for’er remember.

memories...
to us, a call, a charge,
a “ne’er forget”
a duty large
a “do this in
remembrance of”
this our promise
to e’er remember,
always keep;
forgetting never,
to carry the flame,
while we yet live
in sunshine’s grip;
an oath is sworn,
that forever we,
shall always ready be,
for in remembering best,
the tears flow easily,
and so it isn't pity,
of a loss i seek,
no,
for ’tis in finding memory
that i shall always weep,
...as i remember well.

~

post script.

of love lost in the haze of war; of lives changing motion, a baby is born, as a grandmother moves into memory care... a cycle of life, brought full circle best in remembrance.  and this makes remembering perhaps the most important facet that defines, sets us apart as humans, best captured in this thought, "in forgetting the past we cease to be and bring hope forward for the future. and so we remember... for we must never forget!” and so we line our shelves, our walls with them, visiting inscribed stones behind fences.  

dedicated today to our memories each of loved ones, lovers lost; but on this dark eve, especially those who lost those souls, three thousand strong, a darkest day of remembrance, this September the eleventh, who never got to say goodbye... so we remember well!
  Feb 2024 Where Shelter
Nat Lipstadt
Our Holy Communion of Words

you wrest my words away, with tongue and teeth,
running their sounds out with your soft tonguing,
gentling their enunciated freedom to float airborne,
but not before,
your teeth hone them sharper, wiser, better,
before freeing the letters
for life eternal rebirthing,
swapping, warping words,
into a
a holy communion

then with thy lips closing after them,
wishing them godspeed,
safe travels to yet another’s eye imbibing,
until released once more,
traveling from souls you likely
never to meet, embrace, greet,
but to whom you have formed a
direct intangible tangling,
shared wafered words,
a holy communion*

But

yours,
your words,

gut punch me,
how could you know,
where/\were
you there beside me when in darkened hours
the sun shone brightly, illuminating with bent light
our crevices and our crevasses,
your, words, written,
stun me into crazy, as if
you were within my interior
a cacophony exposed for all to hear,
my grunts & oofs,
visceral, too real, and
my actual tears cascade unfiltered
into the cup of our tangible entangling,
salted & starry*


our holiest communion yet!

~~~~~~~~
Fri Feb 9,
10:00pm~10:30pm
inspired by Audra McDonald,
this poem came in a single short breath i taken,,
and left just as quickly
single, speedy insight
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