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Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
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walking the feeble line
——————————

there is a name for what is witnessed nearly nightly,
common ****** and/or scientific, when I awake circa
3 AM,  and the entire sky is overhung with a stolid,
calmly, ponderous inverted ******~single, sky-filling cloud,
with  faint, ragged line of far distant of didactic, urban and natural light, an imagery what s presumably the end of the world insofar as far as the human mind can interpolate the faraway mystique, for our
modern eyes see but cannot necessarily comprehend  the enormity and the simultaneous limiting granularity of the night horizon,
when it is
just outside through the clear glass, this enormous fog that is indescribable, an overwhelming, inconceivable conception that our ancestors took for granted as a natural demarcation of everything physical,
of our world’s entirety.

3:47 AM when the semi-roused mind bids the entirety of me
to awaken, ascertain the mystery of the sky and the sounds of rushing water within the confines of the cottage, both
which have no earthly reason to be simple, self-explanatory.

the parallel of external state to body internal,
comes first to mind when I creakily stand,
to better understand
the grandeur vision seeing, and the noises
so localized hearing, that a time/body disorientation disorder
is the sole explanation for my disrupted feeble state of mind,
physical and mental, occupational hazarding
  of my confused existence.

are you still here?
are u coming along with me on this journey?

amazing, if yes is your cognitive reply!

is this a poem, an essay, a plaintive wail for a general infirmity
that is irreconcilable with facts and the imagery of a mobile
man, who yet dodders and toddles, when stumbling stiffly through the fodders, them open spaces of his mind, and his physicality,
both stumbling erratically like that sort of
out there, sort of not,
feeble line in the sky,
and the feeble line inside him of a shuffling old man he knows or recognizes not, hence the title of the poem, created in a millisecond of cellular cognition, whose explanation, exploration
and expiation of his existence needing some kind of sensible
interpretation.

edging past 4AM, WITH NO answer for anything clouding through the rivulets of the mind, he summons up the time
in memoriam summary of all men, for all essential existence,

it is what it is,

that neither satisfies at all but just sufficiently,
that he could put down the imagined pen, pull the cover beneath the chin line, letting sleepy reign over him once more,
and perish the thought,
he will do it all over again,
tomorrow some twenty four hours hence, thankful the murk
of clouds prevents him from seeing
a battlefield of stars, which

too, comprehensively incomprehensible to the feeble
line he hopefully, is yet then still a straddle.

good night you boon companion,
meet you on the other side
of the line, which is what lines are for, a demarcation between
you and me that we welcome, to cross wordlessly and word fully,
and shall do, as is our due, again,
soon enough.

g’night!
4:26 AM
On a winding stair, that leads particularly nowhere
each flight we save, to be lost is grave
the winds they flee, over a starry sea
and our hands are clutched, our hearts in touch

As a wisp of a cloud, flits sultrily by
and the yawning wave, wets our toes, and tries
to lure us in, to the hungry waters within
where doom is us, should we look in its eyes

We lay awake, gleaning much from the sky
she seems subdued, the sands softly sigh
a dragonfly dodders by, so slowly alive
we stare at nothing, as it stirs inside
Some days, I am lost within.
PK Wakefield Aug 2010
6
specifically:very:yes the gray grows
speaking slowly rainy bones
disheveled drooping vertebrae
c
ambered lovely death .a wrist bangled stupid colour's

      finely pounded grains galloping fleet ovals
the apt pupil dodders and the sky is a *****
why today?rain
betterdays May 2014
and the old grandfather
groans and shrieks and
knocks out,
  five bells and a tinkly riff

the face says four,
the heart five and a bit
eccentricity,
is not a good companion
to measuring time...

the pendulum swings
and hitches on the return...
pausing on a memory fine
and then dodders on, over
to begin the loop again.

the cherry wood case,
the faded coat
that holds frail
mechanics within
cogs and wheels
smoothed,
by many years
of tocking service.

face cream cracked
just shy of sour,
saved by hands
refined filagree brass
and gild roman numeracy,
black and solid outlined.

outlived generations, two
and sailed from far away..
god bless
our old senile clock ...
always,
just two ticks
from fading away.

— The End —