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Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
Motet: an unaccompanied choral composition with sacred lyrics; originated in the 13th century.  Suggestion: look up on YouTube, the Hilliard Ensemble.*  Jewish tradition says that there are 36 righteous souls on Earth, whom for their sake, God preserves the planet and its inhabitants.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Motet II

August 2013

Last night,
I lay with God,
Again.

We made love inimitable,
As if it were the first time.
The music of purity, voices ensemble,
The only commonality.

Afterwards, heaving, sweaty, in bed,
He reminded me that I had already
Written of the motet, long ago,
But permission granted to
Love it, write of it, once more,
As I He, and He, me...

Because after-all, the motet prayers belong to Him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Motet

Nov. 2010

Ce soir, I am prepared, My Love,
hopeful of being worthy,
diminished before all,
rendered and prepared,
transported and train-spotted,
prostrate and yet risen.

The motek-sweet motet wings me
heavenward to more than relief.
Grace, grace, I am both,
becoming and becalmed,
drowned and delighted,
entwined and unwound,
compost but composed,
invaded and imbued.

These voices doth
wrack my fibers,
seethe and contract,
my internal power plant
implodes, heart attack.

Glorious generations of singers,
O woven voices that harmonize,
your motet is
umbilical to my lyrical,  
calming chemical reaction,
I am servant and
you are my server,
uplift, calm and provoke me.

Sing out loud God's
ephemeral, unpronounceable name,
cover me with the fame
of His naturity,
love me with divine kisses,
release unto and within me
the essential oils,
oils by which we breathe,
ancestorally transfused,
oils once called the
blood of the soul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In my past harmonies of poesy,
you shared, lost or just deleted,
tribute unto tribulations human:


I recorded, ven diagrammed,
sorrowed tales of souls waylaid,
debts foreclosed, dues unpaid,
tales of non-fictional agonistes,
suffering a tutti frutti of sarcastic
Earthly  Delights.

Wrote writs re some poor souls,
Prado preserved,
by threading and dying,
on a cloistered tapestry
woven by Adonai worshipers.

With those selfsame oils,
they painted anticipated memories of
Heaven and Hell,
the ones of which I write,
far too oft.

But this night,
In my customary hour
when inspiration is my only tongue,
in the lean hours after midnight,
afore dawn's orangerie of
morning skyed break fast,
I am risen, nourished and
uplifted by the motet's synthesis,
by what I hope to see,
by what I wish to hear.

For I watch,
porched and perched on rooftop,
in the company of
urban spelunkers and debunkers,
all of us desperados,
differing reasons for despair,
yet together,
a human minion-minyan of ten,
we search Jerusalem,
from the Battery to the Cloisters
for glimpses, hints of human angels,
the thirty six^
ministering to the
homeless and dreamless,
to us all.*

Ce soir, I am prepared,
hopeful of being worthy,
diminished before all,
rendered and prepared,
transported and train-spotted,
prostrate and yet risen,
the motek-sweet motet wings me
heavenward to more than relief.

Grace, grace, I am both,
becoming and becalmed,
drowned and delighted,
entwined and unwound,
compost but composed,
invaded and imbued.

Reveal, reveal to me the identity
of your ministering angels!

As the thirty six preserve me,
motet me on eagle's wings, and
return us to you Lord,
that we may be returned.

Renew our days,
as they were before,
when the motet
was bright, organic,
in each of us.






----------------------------------------
^www.neveh.org­/winston/wonder36/36-08.html
Motel is Hebrew for sweet. Minyan, a gathering of ten (minimum) Jews in order to pray collectively.

In the PRADO , The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch
This is without doubt one of the most enigmatic paintings in the Prado Museum. The left-hand panel of the triptych represents Creation and Paradise, the central panel the sins of modern man, and the right-hand panel illustrates divine punishment. The obscene poses, strange characters and impossible buildings that populate this 16th-century work create a delirious world that anticipates the Surrealist movement.


In my youth, I was too young to know love, for I thought it was me thst mattered.  In my old age, I was sorrowful for not having loved enough, knowing that it was me that mattered. Nowadays, I only speak of God in tongues, for now I know but just a few words to speak, woman, human. He or She who has read this in its entirety, will have seven years of luck.  Very few of you will, for you have yet to listen to a motet.  Should you do so, I will carry you heavenwards on a ladder of these words. Promise.
onlylovepoetry Jun 2018
you have the formula

A Love Poem Recipe:
  Fij = G(Mi x Mj)/Dij.

This formula, simplified, means that trade between two markets will equal the size of the two markets multiplied together and then divided by their distance.
(The model gets its name from its mathematical similarity to the equation in physics that describes gravitational pull.)

~~~

long ago, swore off
the love poem business.
lying that this
the last poem ever published

moan not,
statistically, for sure be
a heart-infected sick teenager
bemoaning/high fiving
their  fated status
but I don't need to add to
that smoldering pile

the excellence, the richness,
the virtuosity
of the formula
a metaphor,
for the bounty and the risk,
in any love affair, thus love needy
for a diagrammed explication

two markets, soft upon each other,
multiply their trade in love and kisses

can you kiss her (him) but once?
nonsense!

saying I love you
but once a day,
like it was a vitamin,
preposterous!

no, love expands like a gas
(a distant cousin to our formula),
filling in the empty spaces,
escaping through crevices,
spilling, oft filling up
the nearby bystanders

in love,
there is no thing as
one touch clicking
but one touch
reveals the genetic marker,
the initial intimacy injection

Let the addiction begin!

ten thousand grasps,
some soft, some hard,
upon each other,
till fingers go lifelong contented numb

desire and affection spread like a
positive infection,
the curative powers
elegiac,
but never prosaic and though
formulaic
think more
voltaic and paradisiac

electric heaven

go forth and scribe
you got the secret
recipe
9/5/15

uncovered and recovered from the X file today

and found the short version  as well
<•>
The Last Poem Ever Writ
the last poem ever writ
by the dimming light of virtuality
and the laws of statistical probability,
shall surely be,
a teenager wail and bemoaning,
of a lost love yet smoldering,
a chest pain ember peaking,
then fire forever, last glow eliminated


who can weigh the greater apocalypse,
tragedy that none will remain
to glean and savor this last fling,
or that worldly existence has come to end
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2014
alliteration
delving delusory,
a literati shun
thy commissions,
galore,
the line goes around the
corner

Entrusted.
write us a prayer -
as if I were thus worthy

t'is a delusion
which is worse than
Illusion
my fingers command me -
not I, them
I scribe inky,
they write what they deem
the most unfitting fulfilling

thy requests
more crosses to bear,
this Jew has walked the
Via Dolorosa
then, and again,
now

oh yes delve delve
with archaic *****
turn over earth unsubstantiated
long time un~disturbed

"bring us your truths
in whatever form
they spill from you"


Thus, they command me, Lord

"Go back to living,
like it used to be.
No more tortured soul
to slow you down"


Thus, they command me, Lord

sleep restful,
feet bathed,
Pavorotti  & Pachelbel
comforted,
let it go,
live the fleeting,
well,
drink the wine,
wafer, taste,
Jew,
but stay away from the confessional

don't
delve into your own
thesaurus
when opened,
one can vision
right through us

don't
delve in to the recesses
thankfully receding, eroding,
except for the enlightening flashbacks
that stone cold come with no
forewarning

don't
let the sin memories
of ancient words,
black gold bubble up
with the first striking of the blade

Delve
(excavate your soul deep)
Not

I did not come this poem to write
I did not come to repeat
Solomon's poem,
nothing new under the sun

don't,
daunting
wish to delve into my delusions,
my original sin
the deceit
the conceit
I am unique
I am original

but let us weave as I best could
diagrammed prayers
as the sun rises over my eastern river
for it the seventh day,
the sabbath day,
which the commandments
commend as the day to remember and

to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor,
and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath
to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work,
you, or your son, or your daughter,
your male servant, or your female servant,
or your livestock,
or the

sojourner
who is within your gates.
For in six days the LORD
made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that is in them,
and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD
blessed the Sabbath day
and made it holy.


no delving today
I will observe thy reader's,
all of them my teacher's,
commandments
rest easy,
spill no truths this day

but on the new born morrow
I shall fresh
delve and sin again
and write them
joyful hymns
to sing
on the profane workweek,
for my torture,
my spilled and soiled truths
shall be
re-presented
to joyous comfort

and then,
I shall sojourn among them
I did not cone to write this poem.
It came and I mere mortalized, transcribed it,
for it too,
just a sojourner.
Then after thus commanded,
the boy,
rested.
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2015
For Sheron, On Our Seventh Anniversary:
Bound and Boundless

~~~
different shaped,
a square peg, a round hole,

and yet, the carpenter is pleased

two planes,
different shaped,
yet overlaying,
occupying
conjoined space,
angular symmetry

and yet, the geometrist is satisfied

can


bound and boundless,*

fully opposing notions,
incontrovertible,
yet be in pleasing poetic
combination?

how
can it be,
two bonded,
distinct spheres
contoured with crossover
bordered blended boundaries
exceed aligned,
beyond merest connecting,
overlapping,
intersecting

two circles
electronically collide,
venn diagrammed
to share,
programmed unknowingly for creating
a big bang
of a harmonious, simultaneous
new star creation

this mystery,
this poem,
its
resolution~solution,
comes to the poet
late in life,
yet contented, believing,
it is a far, far
better
thing that he does
now,
than never

life and love
living in unison,
transforming, deserving
of a unique discrete,
le nom est
l'unite

perhaps you are thinking,
this poem, a failed attempt,
neither the best or the worst
of any written anywhere
upon this green globe,
this day

yet he smiles
as it composes itself,
for though without its own sustaining merit,
it is a poem
regarding the best work
he
have ever done,
and the unity
it portrait paints,
is a
nova
worthy surely
of a thousand millennia

and yet, the poet is content
with its
content*

~~~
Dec. 15, 2015
Mary Aug 2013
A good way to feel lonely
is to drive the highways at night.
Fall in love like the headlights
that never touch,
only pass by,
feel like writing poetry
about the margins
that define missed connections.

Go home and make
as little noise as possible,
turn the lights off behind you.
You know how to make it look like
you were never here.
You think this
is a sad thing to be good at.

A good way to breathe
is to wake before the sun
and swim in the chlorinated pool,
partitioned and glassy,
think about brushing elbows
with the body in the lane next to
yours just to
see if you’re still solid.
You know you are less dense
than water. These days it feels
as if someone could pass a hand straight
through you.

Pull yourself out of the lane
and pad to the showers,
scour away the clamminess
with steam and liquid soap,
think about all the lives that intersect
in locker rooms and sit
in silence for a few minutes
just to listen.
You like the way the words echo,
just in case you missed them
the first time.
You always miss
them the first time.

A good way to escape
is to order packages from stores
you’ve never heard of,
diagrammed and backlit, fall in love
with the mystery of receiving.
Feel the calendar days
like empty spaces, hollow and aching,
missing parts of your body that can only
be filled by the miracles about to arrive
in the mail.

The postman crunches steadily
up the driveway, gravel
buried in the treads of his
boots. You think this is beautiful, to
carry pieces of where you’ve been
like last night’s spinach
in your teeth. Shameful and secret. Dark
and delightful. Something not everyone
is capable of loving. Lock
eyes like hands,
thank him as he turns away.

Think about
asking him to shake out his
boots, so all the roads
he’s seen can stay
even after he leaves.
You need
less things to leave.

A good way to mourn
is to write poetry at night,
chasing a tail that tastes like
mixed metaphors and
melancholia,
you have told your story
so many different ways
and none of them
have ever made him love you.  

Think about memorizing
his handwriting
and using it as your own.
Write grocery lists that could be his
and taper your signature to lines
so sharp they pierce and wound.
If you’re going to use his hand,  
make it hurt.

The curves of these letters
do not belong to you.
Your hands are so broken
they can do nothing but miss him,
and there are suddenly too many
teeth in the sickle of your smile.
This may be one fight you never seem
to stop losing and I know most nights
the lines of his shoulders cut like knives
but believe me,
this is the most exquisite
way to bleed.
If you’re going to hurt,
make it poetry.
Anais Vionet Aug 2020
(a story in Senryus)

Dew gently pools on
the rich green Bermuda blades
of suburban lawns.

Walking across grass
soaks your shoes like a splashing
child in a puddle.

Your passage diagrammed,
by wet, green tracks that trace your
path like ****** snow.

Proof you were here, real,
a charming gift watched through chaste
glass - that made me cry.
isolation *sigh*
poetryaccident Jan 2019
Look to the story’s fabled end
the sum of tales spanning years

etched by words on the page
the twists of phrase convey the steps

rambles stated in hindsight
with each passage diagrammed

the plat convey paths walked before
with a nod to what may come

stating prospects on the map
where the lines converge at last

a far horizon of destiny
awaits the traveler if they persist.

© 2019. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20190107.
The poem “Fabled End” is about life’s journey not yet completed.

— The End —