Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
beth fwoah dream Jun 2015
[you were]

"where love is a song settling in the night"

you were the softness of feathers
and the harsh cadence of grief,
you were the sky’s frail mists
and its glittering pools.
in the warm indigos of summer
i welcomed you home,
the sea with its engine pistons
played loud harmonics,
it wasn't the noise but quiet
i wanted most, the way i wanted you,
star silent, drifting like a boat.

[tonight]

tonight i can't write poetry,
a star is just a star

[shadows on my bones]

"when everything is washed out like faded jeans"

i thought i could stay alive
but there were shadows on my bones,
summer fell through my lips
and washed the colours from my shirt.
i became a lizard in the
dry heat.

the sky layered greys into
clouds, told me how
expressive it could be
and then turned white.
i wasn't going to argue
but i liked it better blue!

when your heart is
full of softness it gathers
the flowers of dusk.

the sea is so far from me
now, how can i remember
a wave or the bluster of
the wind?
i am as forgetful of
shape as foam, i am
as broken as driftwood,
i am the memory of
something that never was,
an impromptu impressionist
painting in ink.

[i've not written]

i've not written for a week.
i need to visualize, feed
on an image, grow out of
immense distance, slumber
on the rocks.
i need to paint a flower
in all its frailty, gather
the skies on the horizon.
until the bright lilies
have drowned me in their
white linens i will not feel whole.
gathering, gathering the world,
its moments stormy rooks.

[love poem]

"where love is a wave that splashes on the sand"

when a heart
loves
the stars surrender
to the heavens,
the moon catches her breath
and the avenues
of silence become
voice. i follow the
path to my love,
i die for him,
i live for him,
like a spartan
in the heat of battle,
like a flower in the
mist.

[summer tide]

the moon, shrunken, faint
as pencil, as if the wild nettles
of night carried her loads.
her glazes the raptures of
dancing stars.
her stencil mark a white crescent
leant on cloud.
the trees shudder in the
wind, break their promises,
forgive no one.  
the tide listens to her rhythms,
traps them in water, distils
her victories, unwraps the dark,
stretches it out.

[out of the night]

out of the night, the softening rain dripping
from leaves and memories hanging like stars
in a northern sky, everything sank to the sea,
sinking in night and song and silence.
everywhere was still, no climbing to the dawn,
no old ghost singing winter to the sky.
it was time to leave, time for the grey ghosts
to crumble, time for the rose beds to sleep.
the morning dew is the water's flowers,
the early frost is the marbling of the earth,
we're pushed to emptiness by the iron-hinged wind,
melt in caves where the shadows lie hid.
from your hair, the glistening drops of rain,
from the air, the flight of a bird,
terrible and black the dark clouds,
where the night utters vowels its voice full of stones,
and its breath an empty pail once filled
with water and the kiss of the moon.

[grey stone sky]

grey stone sky, ghost clouds crying to the wind,
remembering the distant wave.
the moon was the whitening mists of time,
was the quiver of a musical note,
her broad branches silver seas,
her caverns quiet visions of light.
i stride the shores of oblivion where
dark ages hide, where the ocean falls,
i capture infinite moons in my
mouth, capture something bright,
something of you that i bless,
something of you that grows out
of the dark, glimmering like a night frost,
midnight stars dipped in a clear lake
and as the surface gleams and reflects,
how the water ripples in little blue tides.

[i ask you]

i ask you how the water cries, how you hold
the tide, the light, the thin light glistening.
i ask you how you bury root and earth,
how you dress the wind, how you carry
clouds in your mouth, how you drift
out of morning's ghosts, sky full,
how you drift downstream taking
part of me with you. i ask and i ask.
why do you not answer me? tomorrow
stretches her wings, tomorrow with her
tremendous oceans of fire, her dark eyes
full of hope while part of me dies.
no furnace could burn like you burn,
every whisper the dark, the infinite dark,
and that little flame hovering like a bird
a paradise higher than stars.

[the ocean dreams]

the ocean dreams...
colours like burnt kisses,
the blue mist tangles the air.
the shore shook out its creases
like old linen, fell under
the tumbling wave.
i drank the silence,
walking where the moon,
carried along by the song
of a ripple, dipped
her feet in the foam,
dancing, dancing...
beneath her ivory tongue,
a glistening jewel,
her alabaster skin
night's whitest rose,
and where the stars
wrapped december in
ghosts and the
gleaming water was the
quietest echo of love,
i could no longer bear
to be alone, and my tears
were the wilderness
and how it grew inside me,
and everything i loved was there
the wave carrying the wind
and i felt alive, as joyful
as the silver shore, a dark-pooled
painting of you, a river-eyed song.

[sad, sad eyes]

winter fed us with blood-red berries and ice clouds,
our visible breath soon colder than our lips.
i did not want to see what you had seen,
could not grow out of those sad, sad eyes.
we fell into the calm wave of circumstance
and twilight hurried from us into the dark.
hurried away like the last drop of sunlight
purples the earth, dancing on the edge of the world.
do we wait, stone-heavy, for the last tendrils
of day to melt like ice?
the fearful cold breathes like a fog,
gathers its stars of voice and hill,
gathers memories and distant dreams,
lets us forget.
are you the ghost that lies on the hill
calling to me?
are you that ghost,
whose irons soften like cloud,
whose frozen leaf trembles on the branch
waiting to fall to the whispering land?
your eyes are from the past and yet
they follow like a cold wind blasts.
your eyes, everywhere your sad eyes,
biting like a frost.

[do you dream of me?]

my love, you wear silence like a coat
and i am left drifting like a far-out wave.
the wind tangles leaf and sky.
winter is barely noticed, the moon
is a ghost of forgotten flowers where
the night sings to the starry waters,
sings of our love. everything is sailing
like a ship in a bottle, a kaleidoscope  
of brightness, gothic hill and wildflower
ruin, flowing like a silvery stream.
do you dream of me? do you burn when
the night wraps you in her cloak and the moon
unwinds the waters of the seas?
do you dream of me?

[morning]

a bird slid into the wind's
bright paths, awoke
the sound of morning, the
only elegant sound. i sprinkled you
you with the roots of the rain and
with a song sweetened by
sunlight and although you were stunted
and your blue-blossom wings were broken,
and the very earth swam in dark
floods of tears, that little piece of
love was a kingdom as reachable
as your hand touching mine.

[song]

this was a song that lingers in caverns and
caves, scented by sea rose and anemone,
lost kingdoms where we dream of the sea.

this was a song like a whale shivering
through the water, diving into the
impossible dark, with its huge tail
waving, flag-like and star-hungry,
its skin the moon's lips, in a world
with no moonlight, no brightening pools,
and only echoes of a forgotten sun.

how deep do we dive, seals of ink
and overtures of unanswerable
dark? our eyes have been betrayed
many times and the water buries us
whole, takes us to the staccato rhythms
of a ghostly tide, takes us back to
a womb woman whose prayers lie
like whispers on the water, who tells
us to hush and we hear our mother's voice.

these are wild notes that press into the
waves, and i am frightened of this song,
it is dissonant and gathered from the
rivers of night, her tombs overgrown with
wild flowers and the bones of the sea,
and she cries for the lost,
for those that were taken from her,
and she will cry for all eternity
and her tears are like breath of ice.

[winter]

winter buries her flames,
buries whispers of river and leaf,

the sea wraps turquoise into bronze,
everything is full of white bones,

the sky is an illusion of clouds,
her petticoats blue rags,

the day is as heavy as a paperweight,
as brittle as a glass flower,

the light is as naked as the trees
gold could not be more cold,

the sunlight reflects in the snow,
her amber eyes gleam,

nothing flows, nothing flowers,
nothing flows, nothing flowers,

and your smile is the sun,
a ghost as faint as watercolour,

the brush dipped in daylight,
a little part of me.

[waiting]

i stood there waiting like a
nettle with the moon's forget-me-not
eyes, wild flowers overflowing
down the little paths, i was the flower that
no one wanted, a black companion
****.
my cherry mouth was built of
forgotten orchards and swallow's wings,
while my hair was blown by the indigo wind,
the moon tap, tap, tapping on the door.

the whiteness of the land, the colours of
winter and how her song arose out of
the dark, bearing my soul like the
earth rediscovered, glistening in the
light, drawn out of hollows, the shadows
driven back, with a dry root's crazy thirst
that left me longing for rain.
the poetry could not quite free itself
from my lips, dragged me down to
the earth where i staggered with
the lost and the weary. i tried to get back,
but all I could do was sink into the frozen waste.
no, the poetry would not free itself, and
still I waited but it didn't seem to matter
now because leaf and moon and the
frosting that covered my body had left
me like a pale ghost in the wilderness
and all I wanted to do was sink into
the cold cornered night, sink and forget.

[moonflower]

out of the water, the water of ghost pools,
you rose, naked figurehead, oh, flower of night.
an impressionist's brush shook the water
like light reflected on moonstone.
****** of prisms, flowering, flowering,
lost ocean of star voices, forgotten star.
you sang and the night ran towards the sea,
you blossomed and the night became a wanderer.
nectar of the gods, sky-visionary, you sink into
the night like the petal of a rose, the grass almond-
eyed and whispering to you her dreams, fluttering
like a butterfly; little moonflower, you gather
the shadows and the song of the dark, the
drift of the clouds is your bare feet running,
the drift of the clouds, the cold sea crashing
in the harbour, the drift of the clouds,
the incredible overflowing of sky, poet-
ink and straying hair, the drift of
the clouds, everything that scatters
like you on the wind.
Julian Apr 2020
Floating above the rifts of apperception I glaze over the gaudy faucets of imagined vector thrusts in hibernation by the lucubration of space-time materialized crystal in the somber beats of fetched farrago of choice slices in delicate hums of hemmed balance rantipole only in ethereal importance but otherwise supersolid above the sprauncy vagrancy of dilettantism. We shout a clarion virtuosity so that the conclamation of neovitalism conjures upon a spell of lapse and regress a motive for further crystallization of epidemiology into harmony with syndicated admonition sleek in design and parceled into renown by feats of completion rather than slugabed gregarious fountains of wasted ingenuity bleeding from the vacuum of an empty hearth in a hospitable dwelling otherwise cleared of imperfection. Right now, I levitate with transcendence with an approximated eidetic memory that is the surgical vibrancy of renewal rather than the chameleons of hidden talents buried by the walls of Jericho sounding tocsins of alarm that the anointed favor of choice destruction is only an encircled rapture of rhapsodies of confluence found in axiomatic truths ribbed with the futtocks of seaworthy but cauponate recidivism into the donnybrooks of apocryphal revelation preceding the whimsical fall of cascading permanence just as gravity so ordained it. We breathe the life of the ethereal numinous spirit of isangelous repute because we navigate the exquisite cobweb of reconciliation to surpass all understanding in peace what would be a miscegenated carcass of war otherwise apart from the incidental apartheid of the drones of causality ignoring the antecedent reality too much to register fathomed streaks of preventive endeavor because of the scars of a scrappy schlep of the rampicks of ecbolic servitude to moth-eaten star-crossed lovers of the mean menagerie of gutless succor renowned only in tepid rejections of harbingers bequeathed in succession but ignored because of the procession of “Billie Jean” politics.

   The citadel aflame with controversy buttresses carnality by witless contaminants of hidebound scaldabancos of ineffable destitution so craven in eisoptrophobia for their hypostasized indolent fatuousness of capitulation that they are but a minor punctuation in the largesse of centuries to favor audacity in candor over the prevarications of catastrophe to dented human pride against humane dictates of theodicy in fatalism that predestination experimented with its own vaulted verve to find permanent solutions engraved in the agrapha of time to solidify the redintegrated truth of God’s divine stewardship above the quisquilous deism of former regnant centuries of blench and blandishment. We revolt at the specter of rot only when the effluvia of disgust elevates the visceral reality above the utilitarianism of recycled prim nuisances of noisome lineage that yet balk because they are bereft of attention but not a vacant talent and therefore should the subsidies of man surpass the ignorance of appearances he will shrug of the demur of the scrimshank and sharpen his scrivello in the service of redemption found through cultivated prowess of gardens beneath where rivers flow above a cubic centurion of embattled visages of the heavens becoming the rampart for the vestigial clarity of Secret Masters to foresee the bypass that heals decadence and rebukes the formalism of puritan endeavor to sweat with exhaustive patience over the gossamer intertesselations of a ripe reality rather than a groveled fragmentary world shattered too much by exigent metanoia to mount the crenellated catchpole of vigilant enmity towards the stew of listlessness found in epigone and farce more than in organic fortunes. We flip the upheaval of society to squander our proportionate degrees of wealth on the necessity created by dire quandary which enamors by interrogations of pulchritude the verisimilitude of participle ivory dalliance of etched canvasses of simultagnosia for the librations of the liberated rings of betrothed liberation despite profound lurches of the mistetches of ignorance presiding dismally over the hulked disdain of glamborge rather than resselenque.

     The winter is a poor porcine glut of ciconine swelters because the prickly obtuse recoil of the delopes of caution find their permeable balance with a sort of photographic photosynthesis that braves the dearth of reprieve for the reprisal of nostalgic deeds found in the docimasy of riveted reflections because the preordination of God is the superlative champion of the witeless grandeval protectorate of infinite concepts guarded from the parvanimity even of the most strident minds squabbling over the braseros and battues of history as though those funereal stains of lachrymose regret outweigh the traditions of vaunted human progress because they are finicky about importunate pleas of subsidiary injustice rather than fulminations of the modern rebuttal to the disclaimers of an uneven history that shepherds the doubts of nihilism into ripe fruition at the expense of very expensive moral rot for the codlings of urbacity and mendaciloquence used to foment that tribalism of totemic justice. We see in Penuel the wrestling match of specters and heroic giants documented on the ageless pages and we notice the ironic twinges of struggle that kneaded the propriety of gentilian privilege that ultimately fostered an insurrection against chosen bravado among those that sear with zeal beyond the yordim afflictions of yobbery because the Jewish heart is stronger than any calamity even if it departs from the reverence of the colporteurs of the integrated syncretism of the attempted monolith that beseeches polyphiloprogenitive growth in mindset rather than in testy abeyance of forbearance because of known scrutinies into the tropology of wilted facts remanded by curious historicity that crumples without disdain when we memorialize the erasure of scepsis by modern standards of thaumaturgy.

    The minauderies of growth are a repositioned tacit allegiance to the untold fanfare and hearsay immunized against the broach of facetious levity to buoy discordant hearts above fumatoriums of relentless ignorance because coherent masterwork can be cobbled without such lapidary toil and toll on sincere affectations of wizened brevity. The seismic precautions for the forefathers of incidental convergences between expectancy and crystallized history are an ironic intortion of priorities because the heralds and tribunes matched the peerless foresight with the gerrymandered figments of apartheid between the imaginary and the real so that the delicate synchrony of events could unfurl a riveting carapace from the shells of protection even in amiable squalor for its impenitent attrition on the volleys of sensible rumor becoming fashioned in covert bedazzled errors in judgment leading to the triumph of the eventual civilization over the futtocks of the burial of the former trekleador of zenkidu belonging to provincial cadasters found so tucked in the hedges that discernment of frikmag would be an indelible scourge on the biognosy of the diagnosed endeavors that elapsed into remediated circumstances that brave the depths of deontological violation for the breadth of apportioned loaves and two swanky fish earning a place among the miracles of transcendent liberation from articles of decree imperious by sardonic disdain becoming nullified by the histrionics of a delicately staged orchestra that cements human achievement.

       We relish the frescades of a ruffled autumnal reminder of flourish above pothers of the screed of admonition swamped by nostalgic backtracks in the séance with ultimatum of design and the impregnated and carnal lusts of a world pitched in darkness with guarded lambent lights fomenting a perjury against tact for the deliverance of freedom in tacit agreement with owleries that every bonanza be tithed in their favor regardless of hibernation of spoilsports or their subsidiary remarks on indelible quills of invented manufactured realities we crave with desperation rather than cower from in requited nescience urging us to depart from affairs and stagnate the loyalty of fealty above the limber of utility mobilized above levities for solemn remarks and rejoinders. Promulgated above the robotic rubble of staffage haywire in wiredrawn contemplative resonance of tremulous subterfuge vestigial but immediate to the yardsticks of reprehensible malarkey, is the barnstorm for erratic dimples sauntered by the saunas of shelter above the chaos of ruined ginnels for the gimcracks of auxiliary duty to service, is the glorification of the sultry intimations of legions of remonstrance in guarded decorum about sunken atrocities lapsed in memorial to the incumbent brunt of sockdolagers of justice returning revenants from the bridewell of historical internment. The symphily of orchestras to cineaste symposiasts of surquedry in impudence beyond the brays of betrayal is the aborning mythos of regimented perceptions of a world that when magnified by minutiae appears starkly contrast to the gapped gubbertushed reality of the average patron of the arts to such an extreme gulf of receptive understanding that the qualia are dovetailed only in the swink of careful kisswonks to certify certitude itself when all the fragments coalesce into subjoined harmony to the substructures of inherent conscientiousness. The miracles at work that are vesicles and vessels for the swage of imprint above the loyalty of the imprinted tribunes of the fluminous is how hidden protrusions can emerge so victorious over popularized glazes on the pastures of a farmed culture itching for timmynoggies of innovation but only finding the etched remarks of pristine imagos of heroism dwindling in motivation to surpass the imaginative leaps accustomed to a newfangled laziness that bedazzles the guzzle of crowds but not the discrimination of the crowded morass of incompletion found in mosaics missing enigmatic philters of intoxicated love for the profound. So to be intermediary as a custodian for artistry we must cozen the wheedled imaginations not of the relic but the archaeologist that discovered the embedded prisms of attentive scrutiny for glinting sunshine inherent in troves of surpassed excellence beyond parochial sympatric blandishment of donnism rather than a resselenque that floats above demeanor to usher the cosseted age of treasure above the glib brocards and florews of past success.

      Immanent to the provisions of God as decreed from a syncretic reconnaissance of the pitiable gulfs that separate boundless divine love from the clavigerous potential for scrappy sympatric affiliation to **** through the barnstorms of internal comestions of conflated priorities we are ourselves prismatic in the indulgence of a tasty life sprinkled with zest rather than tempered with the vengeance of retorted animosity that we knead the pottery of ironclad resistance to a metallic conduit of pruned fulminations of unguided intuition so that the natural accord supersedes the goad of materialism for the sustenance of antiquity beyond its heyday for vital gains against the tauricide of panic and frenzy. The linchpin of all realistic attempts at the sympatric symphily of civilization is a guided remorse through the torment of affliction that sizzles without anteric barbs as it measures through engrenage how to pilot the vehicles of prosperity through the minefields of contingency that invisibly bequeath new hurdles and inestimable obstacles that collude surreptitiously to fulminate measured controversy against the backbites of restrained equipoise created by polities of the macadamized fabric of a welded smithy of a universe that with ubiquity proclaims above the senseless the harvest of conjugal repartee in sensible pride against militant bastions of incidental prejudice for a careen against the flyndresques of danger and the flyndrigs of glaikery alike for a humane spurt of enlightenment to tower peerlessly in supervision of entelechy created by esemplastic unity in apolaustic purpose. We cannot be puritans engaged in a pilgrimage to a palimpsest of priggishness because the daring elements of adventurism are necessary ingredients to catalyze the supply-chain of the innate gluttony of ego-seeking endless balance with a natural sustained biognosy that prizes biocentric harmony above bibliognost scepsis so that the enthused can flock with liberty divorced from libertinism. The ultimatum is a war between hedonism wed with donnism against eumoirety and self-restraint and this battle will be waged on the indolence of a future of cordslave tethers to interrogation of privy conceptualism hamshackled by the gradgrinds into the neat nexility of precise conformity that blacklists the samizdat because the genizah profoundly twists the already jumbled jengadangle and provides a junediggle of procession and ceremony rather than pomp without substantial grit embedded in the showmanship of a reality in need of a fourth-wall.

        It is ironic how we bewrayed our stewardship of the planet as a plenipotentiary sentience waged against the vesicles of instinct but more fundamental to this tattered but pregnant psalm is that the stronghold of our future is the tenacity of filial duty to enthrone the household with husbandry and restraint as an emolument to divine justice that sparkles opalescent in its own redacted notions of gravity imperfect in the taradiddles of science but refined by the eclat of the combustible syncopation of a reiterative trope of realism combined with surrealist caprice to henpeck affectionate violation above inviolable screeds of blood sport rather than conjugal affections afforded to the brood and the feast of the flocks that rein supreme over all things but exert inclement justice over the cattle and chattel of civilization itself. The minkumpf against the sacrilege of a prioritized kosher is to abhor the suffering rather than embrace the penitence of perceived but specious sacrifice which is an ornery thorn on the stained conscience of the yobbery of both the apikoros and the obedient because to attenuate all suffering even of instinctual beings we anneal our hearts to a glorified compassion that supersedes the relegated relics of pushful genuflection by succedaneum of sacrifice waged against the docile whangams of otiose theodicy. The filibusters against the regnant complexity of regalia that is a sprauncy poivrade with terpsichorean flairs to transmute the intimations of hibernated perfidy into finicky transmissions for the riometers that accord orbific merit in a lackluster time enchant the rollicking audience of this auditorium of the prevenance of the conquered universe bracing for the camorra of the insipid entreaty of defalcated casuistry—the prominent exchequer in hoodwinked political agitprop that forges ironclad allegiances to flimsy facades of the verisimilitude of dignity with recalcitrant but incondite bruits of venom militant against secular apostasy—that the fitful arrivistes that swim in dire dearth will be welcomed into the reconciliation of all time with a tempered lurid glint of revelation bounded by sunken albatross of hype unbounded with a peace insurmountable in prestige rewarded only with the highest reservations.


    On 3-1-2020 when I penned my philosophy—even at a slowpoke margin of crafty precision above rapid empirical faucets of folly—I was entirely selfsame with the autotelic engravings of the smoldering aboriginal talents within that many can swing through by tenacity for enormous plaudit but a flagrant majority will apprehend with flippant scollardical tenets of rebuke and remain honest in their appraisal only in meek resignation of parvanimity.
Consider the postulates of rarefaction whittled into a vehement zeal against the prostitution of our species to the anteric cycles of residual molds of dingy spectacle mired by the tyrannical towers of supercilious squirms of revamped novelty rather than enhanced by the freebooters of dirigisme that borrow from time the behest of philandered flairs divorced from the cadges of secular instinct and enthroned by the qualms of engineered virtuosity that is stark, barren but peerless in its outstretched clamor for luxuriant sprees against the silentium of grandeval asylum incurred by the flippant filigrees of recalcitrant modernism endangered by the irredentism of the future upon the whimsy of the present-minded momentary glare of rapture.  This impending architecture of nimble but subservient endeavor is a pinprick rejoinder against the wernaggles of prepossessed fountains of configured animosity against the stapled heed of a modality of trayned invictive invectives against the plodding course of fustilugianation that swerves in apathy of autopilot junediggle to emanate the surrender of epigone to the raktendure of the synaesthesis of the attuned perception of all superimposed minutiae delegated by calculated design into a synclastic focus on veiled caprice that is vaulted above the choppy and sketchy verdure of remiss perception to stellar continuities rather than mundane knickpoints of stodged blurs that magnify syncretic qualia into baseline congruity rather than staid torpefied resignation of the visage of thunder without the pangs of the widely vituperated lightning that bequeaths all certain notions but flouts the tortious saboteurs of the prim trucage of brittle fundamentalism.

     As the flawed paragon of a picaresque youth punctuated by vibrant plumage of self-wrought tropophilous usucaption of remote groomed frontiers of desolate luxury but buoyant morale into the ballasts of a nimble usufruct that hikkles yet still against still-framed thilloire--fatuous in endearment only to the polity of the waterdrip of craven but gravid disingenuous flickers of lambent cloaks of perfidy—that earned its birthright by meditative fruition rather than prodigal tallespin of indolent frapplanks of a vicarious personage rather than an autotelic haecceity showcases the folly of heterodyne inclinations meeting an impasse of accidental dislodgement. The interregnum between the spurts and sprees of luxuriance is a staid pause between continuities of afforded parlance becoming stapled demographic solidarity affixed to a strident gallop of effortful pushes against the tenacity of the slumberous wicked hibernation of vetust magpiety without hieratical internment because youthful industry beats hackneyed bludgeons of wiseacres of a stilted manufacture of steamy nostalgia for lickerish moments that dignify but undermine moral virtues but splash anointed and sometimes disjointed favor upon the congeners to a rabid escapade of a heedless love frowning on the girdles of the prim balderdash of heralded jolts dim on levity and puffed with elusive contextualized control of libidinous serrated defilement because the crotaline **** outmantles the sweedled limber of exploitable folly. The cosseted reality of wheedled gourmands of continuous perception rather than the Gaussian blur of the protean invention of stitches in time that obscure rather than magnify the supernal levity inherent to most artistry is a linchpin of lenient gravitas that levies the lavaderos of ripe perception into annealment.
Excuse the bravado of the gait of winnowed forks in a bronteum for heralds of megaloscopy fastened to the macroscian reality of indelible filigrees of countermanded controversy becoming its best behest in the sempiternal flowering of burgeoned demonstration rather than illustrious overhang of drab slabs of manufacture rather than organism that should be interposed between the constellated concepts of both apperception and the aggrieved counselors to obtuse obsessions that are an improper tutelary for a designated reprisal of the once profane now immediately gratified by ramshackle tenets of a guarded sublimation of the tenets of post-modernism into a sustained force of the internalized tabernacle of haecceity shepherded into exuberance by the manumission of spirit from the ******* of purblind scalds of defamation that incurs the penalty of flippant privation. The refuge the Lord provides is not contingent upon the vagaries of deliberation nor the calculus of oversight but the remontant amaranthine glower of a listed deed becoming an eternal reminder that a dismantled and disjointed world fathoming only remorse rather than the trudge of gentility against the headwinds of brunt asperity will always flout the successor rather than atone for the failure of the imponent condition that constellates around rudimentary drivel grubbing the momentary out of avarice for allotted merchandise rather than glommed magnets to amoeba sentiments for the kisswonk of ulterior motive beyond dungeons of desperation that lurk ghoulishly with spectral frights at the disfigurement of morale created by errors askew rather than a contagion of righteous valor.

   Ask the heedful servant if the captaincy of reneged commitment owes homage to dutiful instruction or whether it is a balking corpse of necrosis accorded to the omphalism of brutish carnal repose in times of sedentary silt siphoned in spelunked rijuice for preordination is a predominant specter for a world scared scurrilous and skittish in a diatribe against the very notion of tribal screeds embedded in the sedimentary heft of traditionalism above the pother of vacillation commended to the apikoros but counterfeit fiat system of a ruddy governance without a supreme magistrate. Now lets venture into the territory of visagists as we envision the swanky subversion of impoverished and nebbich visions of oligochrome that fixates on belabored but dead notions of rigid propriety and levitate above those concerns with a querulous transcendence that never wernaggles about the profaned irrelevance of burlesque tropes of sidereal friction but instead memorializes the thermolysis of permeable endeavor above staid countenances of imposture that lurk in the shadowy penumbra of the connivance of persona above the archetype of the tutelary guardian spirit that through windlass and sometimes deliberation affixes nobility to even the pedestrian in order to assize its proper proportions to granular ironies expounded into megalography transformative by the very rivets of its supersensible existence and cohabitation with histrinkage among human taboos.

   The handiwork of a permeable race prone to exacerbated proclamations of prerogatives bulldozed by the rapid percolation of insoluble quandaries to the gripes of the feast of foofaraw sometimes shelters our otherwise regnant concern about the plenipotentiary God that observes all latent affairs without the paramours that conflate vivid carnality with appeased luxury and superimposes a crafty system of seismic shifts in rantipole dances with numinous flux rather than dissipated militant suppression of the fracklings of dissolute pollution which swirk in their dastardly desperado endeavors to corral the entire monoliths that guard each province into a winnowed rumble of rubble by tarnish of Tyre rather than by the upstart rejoinders of Canaan. Every creature which has the capacity to perceive language is afforded benedictions by the overhailing force of the hypaethral heights of superlative ingenuity founded in the bolted speculation of the endearment of all to tropological seesaws embattled against the hearsay of nyejays that contaminates the telmatology of the ecosystem of revivalism rather than buries the leaden debts of the disjointed revenants of past prominence into recycled irrelevance for posterity rather than for anything but a machination of a clockwork apple rigged for a rotten worm to swindle the sweet delicate tempests of unforeseen disaster to perjuries against financial solidarity.

The spinsters of sardonic drollery underscore the imminence of an incondite cutthroat collapse blackguarded by the hucksters of incontinence grubbing every fetched noisome notion and congealing a bonnyclabber of desiccated mildew that proves vestigial when the victors of time earn their joyous serenade to the pinnacle of the totem of jaundice slits in wavy endeavors for the participles of sejungible syntax of the ephorized furor to outlast the draksteng of droned dereliction manned by half-baked spies of ulterior recitals for imprinted vicissitude in supremacy in synquest for frizzlounges rather than the pedestrian circulatory system of careworn polity. We vaporize the petty hatred of sympatric regelation that neuters the virulence of motivated impediments to the draconian surge of asperity that sinks temporal haplessness as a regaled blasphemy that crowns only the ringed betrothal to spumid serrated halts in slick superstition that is a buggery to the idea of insectivores devouring the erratic chantage of germane germs that pauperize rather than even blind the deafened to be a crutch to vehicular homicide. Melismatic sennet is a dirigible of immense herculean sinew without the traces of vestibulary retches of kisswonked grisly tepid intimidations of eccedentesiasts by the radioglare of wizened corrugations in thanatism that exhort the avatars of narquiddity over the natural departure of revenant souls back to their temporary hostility to crass lifeless decarnate immediacy that slinks with foibles magnified by vertiginous heights of scollardical reputes rigged by the rijuice of the plackiques of meaningless spoils for swashbuckler bonanza borrowed from serrated vengeance exacted in prominence to provide false avenues of extenuation to malefaction that is confidant to the panopticon of exemplary dimples meager in the largesse of the composite realism of a sizable imprint on megalography that outlasts impertinent excuses for dangerous trout swimming against the mobilized selachostomous frizz of sharks gathering to avenge disclosure with insolence and gravid atrocity of incisive surgical evisceration of attempted depositions that falter by innumerable facets of countenance that belie ultimate realism and the perdurable construction of a sturdy hive of bibliognost revelry.

     Even with the blaring sennet of majesty inundating my piecemeal perception with the marstions of flarium that is an efficacy in a flaccid world of otiose pretenses limpid only in folly but contraplex in ironic skewbald skerries of grubbed destination that is the terminus of karezza despite the maledictions of vehement guarded betrayals that conjure up lurid noisome virility against the gamines and gallywows that populate interstellar fictions of virtu rather than mundane pragmatica that astound with the resselenque of contaminated skeumorphs of latent fracture belonging to a skeletonized ossified reification of farce above historicity in seemly seamless countenance with overwrought princely stature deserving integrity to ripples through sparkling opalescence. The vapid insularity of the self-contained mythos of appeased groundlings is based on the rhizic and rhizogenic fracklings destitute in predicative flares to swelter above stratospheres of the illimitable into the dwelling of the highest serenity inherent to the pacification of truth to neglect its egregious errors of mistetches of a ripened pachyderm of bravery in times of austerity and now a reclaimed notion of sempiternal charades swimming above the punitive draksteng of dranger that is enlarged by acclimated attempts at foiled raltention hikkling against its own superior forces of galvanized preterition to elide over screwball insanity of derangement in this virtual paradise of inhabited souls belonging to former times congregating on the pasture of the evanescence of now for all eternity having the optative condition of incarnation above the ferules of the stagnant brevity of oversight in heavenly realms by postulate but not confirmed by regal logic.

     The troponder of the flickered lambent niceties of polity is a countenance that piggybacks on simpered jostles of negligent engrenage to appease sworn enmities among beatific havens for certitude swarmed by the fisticuffs of darbied bridewells of desiccated drainage traversing the distant disdain for the gravel of cemented slits of stilted pragmatica that is a gavel of atrocious estoppel mediated by heroic heresiarchs against pitiable betrayal for forceful remedies in acclimated servitude to the groans and groaks of a life of remorse and dearth rather than the glut of luxuriance in forbearance to its own intorted mirrored ironies that etch infinity with every scrawled rejoinder to austere ploys of checkered rumbles of threat and exigency posed by the clairvoyant hypocrites who benefit greatly by the design of the omphalism above the frays and brays of corporate dogmatism slowly outmoded by vibrant plumages of heteronormative originality beyond petty chantage. A hesitation overcomes the bluster of bravado as the restive earnest concerns of tribulation beset the minauderies of divine affection to reaffirm the teachings of the Gospel so that future generations genuflect beneath the altar of the ultimate stroke of sociogenesis and the blood ransom of suffering that promoted the human latitude and liberty against incarcerated throngs of virtue over caesaraproprism accorded to genuflection beneath denarii rather than absolution by tether to the eternal vine of sensation of the supersensible entelechy of all valiant insurrections against defective polities and renewed policies.

     We thus seek a transdimensional bridge between the morphean virtu of rudimentary alchemy of propitiation divulged by leverage and the teeming rambunctiousness of fiduciary tribes to the ultimate duty of man to consummate the future of eternity even in slowpoke mannerisms that sidle through rigors of entelechy and assize the masterwork of tutelage above the circumforaneous entrenchment of glut above the mastery of the subtle subaudition that beleaguers an adept conflagration of harnessed human ignorance staid in the incarceration of exotic virtues of freewheeling sapience never vulnerary to hospitable concerns that entrenches the verisimilitude of a refracted justice to reign over the stultification of a primitivism inherent to man and not man alone.
Used some neologisms
Alessander Feb 2015
I don’t get feminism.
The term, that is.
When they ask, "Are you a feminist?"
I reply, “Sure.”
They nod in bobble-head approval.
“I’m also a childist and animalist”
A confounded grimace glazes over
“Huh?”
“Of course. Aren’t YOU a childist?
Aren’t YOU an animalist?”

“Uh. What do you mean?”

“Well, don’t you believe that children
and animals should be treated with love?”

“Well, naturally.”

“Well. There you go. You’re a childist
And animalist.”

"Besides,  you would extend this love
To all sentient beings, I’m assuming?”

“Ummm. Yes...”

“Well, then, you’re a masculinist too,
Just like me!”

This is about the time their cell buzzes
Or their double soy frap is ready

They whisk away

“Oh, I’m also a worldist!” I belt out

Before they exit

As I resume reading
Remaining clever, and

Alone.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
The Seven - The Mashup


In memory of my mother who passed away recently, I wrote, or intended to write seven (only six were actually done) new poems themed about her, her passing and some perspective on life and death.  All were read and I am deeply appreciative.  I have consolidated them all here, in order, though not necessarily the order in which they were written. But the order does matter, as it reflects the change in my mood with each passing day.   Perhaps I will write the seventh someday, but not now, not soon.

Thank you all so much for incredibly kind words of sympathy. I am not a dweller, so I set myself a goal to complete this vow, this task, in a week to correspond to the seven days of mourning the immediate family observes after the burial (the shiva, shiva meaning 7).  For seven days, the bereaved family "sits shiva," sitting on low, uncomfortable stools and the comforters come to share their grief, praise the deceased, from mourning till late at night


#1 Shiva

I am confused - what day is it?
Windows tell day or night, a necessary but a condition insufficient.
The days have no distinguishing marks, a video stuck on
Repeat - a single track of recollected tales, prayers add a mild seasoning.

Though brief is this week of pre-sentencing hearings,
If one cannot dice the time into portions,
Then, there can be no pardon,
No early release date, from Phase One.

Rinse grief. Repeat. Seven cycles.
Apply stain-stick at the intersection of
Bloodied hurts and dimming memories,
Strangers secreting, spilling on you secrets unwanted.

This play, saw it many decades ago,
Before there was poetry, children.
A young man of twenty one,
Very afraid, silently, of the newest unknown,
His father, cancer won.

I hated it then. Now experienced, I hate it more.
This semi-catharsis, a tapestry tale wove of faded pasts
Twisting an heirloom blade into an old wound,
the original cast, a new revival, playwright, regrettably, deceased...

First time at bat, hid in a small room, away from this tradition.
Beating my head against a wall privately,
That being my preferred manner of mourning,
Not this Broadway show, twice a day, seven days.

Rituals well intentioned, a time tested method,
nonetheless, jail time for me, a/k/a, the boy, the brother.
Familiarity comforts some. Me? A prison uniform.
I write my own poems, I am not a Borg collective.

Cast as Son, my obligations specific, aged.
My Hamlet doublet, cut/torn, messaging my somber status,
The cuts deepest, invisible, but all see this child
Drowning in eye pools that continuously self-replenish.

I'll do the time, this show the longest running ever,
Did forty years as son-shadow of a father-man,
Tacked another concurrent sentence for his woman,
End Date: Indeterminate...

The low stools will reappear, seven days for me,
Yet my job as poet not fully done, until this be read!
Leave 'em laughing o'er this Official Release from the obligatory,
Read, sit but once, read this poem, this script, this story, and be freed.

#2 Hover^

My Children:

Ancestral homes oft possess,
a unique scent, product of an atomizer, a memorizer

Musty time, the odor of
faded and shadow,
hollow, yet hallowed.

Somewhere along the road,
a residence transforms from home to
shrine-storage unit-hospital room-tomb-records depository.

Dust, expired perfumes,
the sweet odor of crumbling, yellowing books, disinfectant,
stale medicine chests, years of furniture polish, sabbath candles.

It is my smell -
the parfumerie of my history, a customized blend,
a commissioned work in 1964, entitled, more accurately, emitted,
"Her-Story."

Photographs, memories, and paper scraps
my very own Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Yet the most potent firing pin for historical retrieval,
the molecules of scent.

Soon all will be dismantled, discarded,
just plain dis'ed.

Confused and disenchanted,
my departure orderly but, in a disordered fashion.
unable to seed one last kiss upon your forehead,
nonetheless, surreptitiously enter your neurons
though my entity, away, across the miles-wide Hudson River.

For three days, I will hover invisible,
implanting myself once more,
slapping your mucous membranes,
transversing this pathway, an additive to your cells, nuclei,
where my markers always reside.

Adding one more ingredient to your inner vision,
strengthening the formless structure, my altered state.
This odor, keep close, fresh, no becoming musty too, my scent,
the last of your senses knowing me, a true keepsake.

Hold me close and hold me fast.
This one last magic spell I cast.
This one last magic smell I set fast.
You cannot hold it, but it will cradle you.
You cannot see or touch it, but when contact comes,
You will see me, hold me, as in the days of your youth,
When you loved me best,
And I, you.

^According to the Talmud, the soul hovers over the body for three days after death.  The human soul is somewhat lost and confused between death and before burial, and it stays in the general vicinity of the body, until the body is interred.


#3 Orphan

The funeral will commence at 11:30 am.
Gives me one last review time before the
Final Exam.

Panicked, I discover a whole new chapter
for which I am wholly unprepared,
though its inevitable presence was
assuredly knowable long in advance.

Orphan

It doesn't fit, occur, imagery is of a young child to
soon abandoned, not a late-in-life curmudgeonly poet-boy,
who has been multi-times reincarnated.

I add this title to my list
of proper ways to address me,
titles earned by dint of hard work,
or just unlucky luck.

This new status, orphanhood,
bequeaths no special privileges,
other than, a semi-official
societal permission slip
to feel bereft, lost, and compose poetry.

Know a real orphan, from early, early on,
has never recovered and
never will for it is just impossible.
Just impossible.

So whom am I to make light of
my undesired, unrequested new degree?

I accept it and to my surprise,
It hurts.

# 4 Judgement Day

After you put in some time on this planet,
You kinda know what the world thinks
About you, your rep, what they don't say to your face,

Sure, thingies, time and incidence and circumstance
Can sometimes cause makeovers external,
But each of us know the quality of ourselves,
Self-certification, you can out your internal self,
Better than anybody else.

So I inquire of myself, about myself,
what will you be remembered for, if at all?

Why do I ask, today, now?
Do we not ask ourselves this
On the low down, subconsciously everyday?

Is this a poem?
Most assuredly...
And a trial.
You, the judge the jury and the prosecutor,
The defender, if u can, if u will.

For seven days my mother was adjudged,
Family, friends, hers, her children's,
Almost an 80 years of live, in color, HD, looking back video,
Tales told, memories dug up, old photos explicated,
Who what when where of the details of one women's voyages,
Creations.

I cannot, I will not, do the details here.
Suffice, acts of kindness, faith in people,
Feminist in a strange land, a chance taker,
Gifts of memories, streaming of adoration,
Many strangers are witnesses to me,
This trial a runaway train.

I am outed.  There will be no such verdict for me.
I am outed.  There will be no trial needed, just a
Summary judgement delivered.

Out yourself.
What will you be remembered for, if at all?


#5 Summer Girls In Their Summer Clothes

Oh yes!

The streets of Manhattan, jewel dusted,
Summer girls in their  summer clothes,
Bedeck the streets and make men say, Thank You!
To their creator.

Little black dresses, previously immortalized^,
Seasoning and sauces, halter tops and jeans cutoff,
Give thanks for the tanks, revel in the revelations,
For God created man and women in his/her teasingly bare image.

Yo! Dude!  This is number 5 in the series,
Of sad and somber, re dad and mother, ***?
Have you lost perspective, not read the directive,
You're in mourning, time to be introspective,
Not dis-respective!

My mother was a beautiful women.
Till the day she died.
Yes, physically beautiful at 98.

She, was a poem.
For her exterior was suffused, burnished,
By the spirit residing within her body

I ask myself, why not judge a book by its cover?
Her cover was exquisite, but what gave her a glow,
A radiance, was her modesty, her love of humanity.

What's under our cover?

^ Nat Lipstadt · May 30
The Little Black Dress (and its magic prowess!)

*#6 & 7 Live like you're dying

Perhaps you know the lyric, the song?

Live like your dying.
Dying caught my ear, my eye, can't imagine why.
Con-Textual emendation, Natalino style.

Live like your writing.

Yes, that makes sense...
Embrace with passion each new session
Charge every second stanza with ruminating rhythms,
Cut the wires to the air traffic control sensory tower, go solo,
Pulse each word, beat all into a plowshare, even the anger,
Even the hate, dressed to ****, in words, forgivable...

Grant the mundane, the insane, even the pain of tragedy,
You refuse so hardily to glorify, grant it and
Record it all - a moment,
A royal audience with all
Your writing parts.

No fancy footing, keep it simple.
No jesters in rain puddles,
Let images of clouds of sand
Born and perish  in other's eyes and sighs, let verbal games bedevil other
Wooden puppet princes drinking fairy ales.

Huh?

Write clean and clear,
Let the sheerest wonderment of a new combination,
Be the titillation of the tongue's alliteration,
No head scratching at oblique verbal gestation,
Let words clear speak, each letter a speck,
That gives and grants clarification, sensational.

You, afternoon quenching Coronas, white T shirts,
Sun glazes and later, a summer eve's Sancerre,
Wave gazing on the reality of rusted beach chairs,
Babies sandy naked, washed in waves of Chardonnay,
The traffic-filled word-way highways and bay ways,
Exiting at the Poet's Nook, for exegesis & retrieval.

Write of:
Body shakes and juices, skin-staining tongues,
Taking her, afternoon, unexpectedly, her noises your derring-do!
Broken tear ducts, the Off switch, so busted, write about
Real stuff.

Write not in fear of dying
Angels delivering bad news in vacuum tubes,
Write joyous, psalms of loving life,
Live like your writing,
Write like your living,
So you may die well.
His ***** tongue infuses every phrase
She glazes, spreads like honeyed butter
into the words.

Trickling slowly
Oh, so slowly
Through each stanza

This is her molasses moment
She is ready for his pen
to catch her syrup drips, to stop this slick
Becoming a pool.
Please read 'Write ****** Read', I'm experimenting with different points of view.
MsAmendable Jun 2015
Red paint dries on a tissue
Slowly
The same rush hue
Glazes imperceptibly
Gently losing shine
And carefully dulls without change
And softly hardens until dry,
When you can touch it without fear
of red fingers, red clothes, red smears
But still, wasted paint on a tissue
Will be thrown away without notice
And still dry red.
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.

The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.

Last summer's reeds are all engraved in ice
as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart's waste
grow green again? Who'd walk in this bleak place?
Jade Sep 2018
V. Ethereal

Maybe being drunk
is the closest I will
ever get to zero gravity--
to walking on the moon.

My fingers curled
around the neck of a liquor bottle,  
I wander to my bedroom window,
as a tipsy weightlessness settles
amongst my limbs
(and my thoughts).

Swaying slightly,
I part the curtains and,
in my intoxicated stupor,
search for Polaris in the night sky,
point to it,
press a clumsy hand to the glass,
convince myself that
I have captured the star,
and all the omniscient power
it possesses,
beneath my finger tips.

Star light,

{lips pant--
inebriated,
heavy}

star bright,

{my breath appears a catalyst
as the window pane glazes over
in an impenetrable paroxysm of fog}

first star I see tonight,

{I take a swig,
raise the bottle--
a toast
to the cosmos}

I wish I may,

{Lashes meet in
silent matrimony}

I wish I might,

{Behind closed, desperate eyes,
ribbons of colour dance
towards me in a disoriented jig}

have this wish I wish tonight--

to be
obliterated by the very galaxy
that birthed
these grieving bones
and this tumultuous heart.

Because only then--
as the Gods paint the Night
with the innards of my soul,
acrylic purples
churning against the blackness--
will I become what I
have always dreamed
of becoming:

Lovely.

Ethereal.
Don't be a stranger--check out my blog!

jadefbartlett.wixsite.com/tickledpurple

(P.S. Use a computer for optimal experience)
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2014
This is the game, set and matching end-piece to what is known as:

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/385266/poetry-round-find-your-self-within/

by way of an introduction....

T'is season to move forward,
back to old acquaintances renewed,
sand, water and salty sun,
three lifelong friends who,
Auld Lang Syne,
never ever forget me

I get drunk on their eternity,
their celestial beauty,
and they, upon my tarnished earthly being,
muse and are bemused

unreservedly and never judgingly,
share shards of inspiration unstintingly,
we share, never measuring
this captain's humanity, his human efficacy,
by mystical formulae of reads or hearts

grains of sand, water wave droplets and sun rays,
and his beloved words, derived there from,
all only know one measure...
immeasurable

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/699991/adieu-my-crew-my-crew/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Pilgrimage (Reunion)


at last to begin,
to begin the 'at last,'
this reunion occurs
this first day of June
where on my
body's flesh colored calendar,
X red-marked,
deeper than any real cut of despair


this morn, leave for familiar parts,
embarking 100 steps to that
Adirondack chair,
my name, my self,
(oh god at long last)
so often, long lovingly
revealed unto you


the garden's sundial welcomes me,
Prince, Guardian, of the gate to the green,
the green steppe way to bay and beach,
a brief song of "ring around the irises,"
blooming around him,
he issues,
to celebrate his own glory recalled,
his own purpled prosed long ago one ecrivez'd,
by having the third mate
ring the greened worn,
bronzed ship bell
upon conclusion of
his raising of the gate


shorts and T white hair shirt,
costume de rigueur
of this Peconic pilgrimage,
turban and baseball uncapped,
stepping humbly
toward that worn wood throne
where carved are
the initials of
my poetic friends,
and his vast modest,
Concordia of poetic essays


Those odd disordered
collection of aleph bets
that have been prepared for this hour,
are sun dappled,
breeze caressed,
wave watched,
a fresh redressing after a
dum hiems,
a long dark winter


all rise up welcoming with voices
tremulous yet oratory,
sing with a love so spectacular ,
Handel's Messiah Hallelujah Chorus,
au naturel


the armies of ants declare this a
Truce Day,
parading before me in formation,
the rabbits race
in elegant uniforms,
white tailed bemedaled, dress grays,
announcing their  showoff arrival
with a new across-the-lawn
land speed record


the dear **** deer,
familiar families and generational,
look upon this human and
grumble while chewing our shrubbery,
an act of sherwooded lawn high robbery
but perforce acknowledging our entrance,
by uttering a Balaam blessing/curse,
a neutralized
"****, they're back"


the seagulls on the dock,
sovereign state observers from
Montauk and the far island city,
sent by the mother winds superior,
observers and reporters to nature everywhere,
Summer Season of Man Has Begun


a few white wakes disturb the water's composure,
the early low arc'd sun has not peaked in strength,
at 10:00am, the temp just breaches 60 Fahrenheit,
the beach sand untrod, no unlasting human impressions,
no children's red pails yet to them decorate,
amidst the sea life's detritus and smooth licked pebbles


Enough.


each tree ring and grass blade demands a verse,
an all my own tributary accolade,
this too much to accommodate


a year ago I issued an invitation,
do so again for my word is my bond
my responsibilities, my *******,


there are chairs for all
on my righted round and my motet left,
here, there are
no Americans,
no Canadians,
no Aussies or Brits,
or Indians and Fillipinos,
no African or Asians present,
East nor West,
None Invited here,
Only Poets


even those hardy pioneer
West Coasters, a proud lot,
and my Southern family drawling,
and perhaps lessening the mourning
just a touch, a minute modicum,
all sit quiet in the admixture
of poets come to celebrate
the blessing to have been tasked,
to write from and of places we visit
in the cerebral,
and to imbibe each other's words


Three Hundred and Sixty Four Days ago,
I wrote :

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words...

I am exhausted.
So many gems (poets)
to decorate
My body, my soul

I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out,
none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt


Again,
I await your beckoning wave of hello,
greet you in your mellifluous native tongue,
iced drinks at the ready,
the opening ceremony already started,
when all are seats taken
we commence officially,
with a blessed

*"Now, let us begin"
See the banner photo...paying off the promissory notes owed to myself
Tawanda Mulalu Feb 2016
Perfect: I used that word once to talk about you
as if you were a doll with limbs made of plastic:
stiff and whimsical and subject to the niggardly
commands of the conscious- yet you, who thinks
as aggressively as any doll-house builder do not
construct your own set-pieces; instead you
pirouette into one carefully constructed day to the
next as you delicately
stride
from bed to shower to wardrobe to mirror to desktop to
window to mirror to mirror to
mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them
all-
and the staid look on your face when the mirror gives no
answer
because it can’t. Checkered skirt, sharp eyelashes, wary
jumper, almost heels. Perfect, you might think
for a moment before your eyes roll gently from self
to mirror
to self
to mirror
to mirror
the self. What was
it that you were looking for if all it does is lead
you back to your skin? Meanwhile, the snow
stutters softly from above as if God had dandruff-
perfect- and it all gently glazes the spongy surface of the world like
flawless coconut icing on some sorry party cake- perfect- and the morning
bell rings impossibly on time like the last
breath you thought was your last- perfect- and somewhere in
America I use words to remind you of the little
unreachables
of perfection that both start and end with your perfectly
snow-pale skin, where somewhere in
America and somewhere on
your thighs perfect ridges of red have formed themselves like
plastic scratches on a Barbie which we both think
are little but we both know
are big
because you are not plastic.

                                               At nighttime our feet
skip on the icy brick pathways that lead from
the dorm-rooms to the library and we shiver
as the snowflakes bob in and out of our bodies
like thoughts
that seem funny but aren’t quite- they melt away
as soon as they stumble upon our skin. From our mouths
cloudy puffs of being flutter out- little butterflies affirming
out listless snowflake-filled minds, sperming out ice-clouds
from our mouths, our mouths, our mouths; birthing friendship.
Breath, visible, is laughter. I trip and swear and momentarily
skate
across a sudden ice-surface as you speak another ice-breath. We
arrive
at the library but dart towards the empty right-side, the science
classrooms. We hope
to examine the thought-skirmishes on your right thigh, to turn  
and change this hopeless world-spinning into centrifuge
separation-
make apparent the light from the dark
                        the firmament from the void
                        the flesh from the plastic, the-
here we are as you talk
about your family and I
try my best to look you
in the eye so I
can become
your eyes
even when
normally
I
am
so
vehemently
against

staring

at the soul-gates of another being-
here we are as you talk;
God is still missing from the centrifuge
of the endlessly turning world- your
axis
is your skin yet
you trust it
not. The salads without dressing,
        the weighing scales,
        the taste of bile at the back of your
throat-
all for skin that
       you
do
not
      trust.
All for flesh that you think is plastic
so
     you
     cut.
      
             Enough
talk because the bell cuts through the flesh
of our conversation. Enough
talk because the world insists on
turning still
and forcing us to revolve
with it. Enough
breathing, enough
snow, enough
life. I remember you saying
that the ratios of your face are wrong;
that certain equilibriums do not exist between
your cheeks your lips your eyes your life…I remember the science
classrooms where parts of you were as mathematical as the architecture... I remember how
you keep thinking your flesh is plastic… You forget how
inglorious the nature of these words is. The problem
with human thought, with the ratios of your face, with the
geometric structures that cut across your thighs, with the
statistical neatness with which your family decomposes;
the problem with our conception of perfect is how
awkwardly it both exists and does not exist for us to
see.
The ratios of your face which you think are broken are
the same miracles I wonder about as you laugh. The incorrect distance
from your cheek to your eye which you think is wrong is the same
lightyear which separates the stars from the planets. The curvature
of your stomach is the bending of a spacetime to accommodate
the way the air must move to let your body occupy the space and time in which it
exists.
The ratios you speak of spring from your own limitlessness, your own
perfect imperfections , imperfect perfections-
strange oddities and unfathomable beauties and yes. Yes,
even the ridges across your right thigh are minute, red,
gasping
grand-canyons of
flesh,
of human, of breathing clay
flesh-
           never
plastic;
            always
worthy.
            
              Recently the voices in my head have been getting louder,
telling me all sorts of things about how the snow ought to bury me
in its mercilessness. They mention also that my words bear no meaning,
my thoughts even less so. Assumedly, the ridges across your thigh
carry such spectres as well but, I messaged you before you went to bed
about coming out and having an adventure because tick-tock-tick-tock…tick…tock…tick-
the last bell of the day is going to ring soon and the voices and ridges
will assert themselves again with the bedtime silence, but check your Facebook
messages and come outside and let’s go skipping with your friends across
the century-old polished prep-school brick pathways that smell archaic because it’s

snowing outside and it’s lovely.
For a friend.

Update, 4/23/2018, the poem found a home here: https://postscriptpublication.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/ratios/   thanks to a friend.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
Mashup Part III


I mashup me, myself, and thee: Part III

Excerpts from my poems posted after July 16th, 2013,
about poets, poetry
and the process of composition.  
This time, in a disorder all their own,
for my own words,
Did not consult me.
-------------------

When inspiration is imprisoned,
insight,
a crime-of-no-passion victim,
strangled by codification,
clothed in a prison uniform,
where uniform be another word for a
poet's death sentence.
~
If you courage enough to
Call yourself poet, then
It is audacity, not blood,
Warming your extremities,
So foolishly try, always be prepared to fail.

~
Commandeer the words hidden within,
Sort them by rhyme and meter,
Answer the critics,
bend them over to your way,
Write your own poetry,
fearing no ones judgement,
Put your self out there,
I have so many times.
Death, betrayal, disillusionment,
Regular visitors in the upstate prison cell
of my head,
Are all greeted with
new poems of old words,
Sent packing,
but confident in their inevitable return,
I write defensively between their visits,
Best prepared,
a good offense is eloquent literacy.
~
The clouds were magnificent.
No, I cannot write a poem about the cloud colors.
Their shape shifting inexhaustible,
Mine eyes high on their creativity,
I'm just not good enough a poet to tamper with that sky.

~
You who write after midnight
Of razor blades, pills and shotguns,
And not marked two decades even,
on this planet,
You want hard,
Write a poem about a sunset in ways never done before.

The saddest poem ever wrote
Was not yours, where you titillate with daring words
Razors, pills etc.,
The saddest poem ever writ
Was this one,
a meager vanity to capture a
Sunset that keeps trying every day to
Surpass
Supersede
Its previous glorious failure,
Like we should too.
Keep trying
~
I will write about pain,
Arrogantly, as if there is any unused combination of
Letters, vowels and consonants left unspoken, *****,
Having sworn not to, for pain is cumulative.

Asking myself,
Which is greater?

The pain of
creation, inception, origination and birth,
The pain of  
wreck and ruin, destruction and death.

Homework Self-Assignment:
Compare and Contrast

Suddenly, I am expert.

Creating a poem a day is very painful.
A poem that is the sum of
Reflection, research, and purging.

~
Here, surrounded by the gentle breezes of
Long Island Sound and Gardiners Bay,
Sweet and salty flavors
of the Peconic atmosphere,
Words unlocked,
from your eyes to the page fall,
Smudged by joyous tears,
for the muses of the island
Have embraced you yet again and rebirthed
Inspiration,
within their comforting, sheltering grasp.
~
With deep regrets and promises solemn,
Adieu, Adieu my friends, bay and chair,
sunlight extraordinaire,
wait for me!
This poem but my R.S.V.P.
an oath of return sworn,
for I am man, placed here only
to sing the praises of my earthly delights,
my truest friends,
I sing of thy grace,
Grace Before A Meal

~
If not for you:

I would weep more.

I would weep less,
(so many tears of joy!).

My carousel, horse back riding days,
would be over, ended.

I would never make a bed unasked
(but it gives you so much pleasure).

I would live on Frosted Flakes
and microwaved hot dogs

I would die w/o ever seeing
someone weep
after reading my poetry.

For that alone...
~
Let us intimate a Poetic Competition,
Tween an Irish lass,
and a New York Jew,
I shall serve, and you,
You shall return

A contest:
Our tongues, our racquets.
Across the table,
The words, shall birdie fly,
Across the net,
Couplets and haikus
Shall smash and whistle

The winner will be the one
The God of Poetry
Accepts for permanent servitude

And the only lingua Franca
Shall be darts of poetry
In a language our own,
A collective work we will weave,
A blessed unity, a single tongue now,
Lilting, singing, bespoke

~
explicate and deconstruct
our unexamined lives,
help us to extend the boundaries,
record the voyages of our timepieces,
declare us all free and victors,
file away the chains of language
and declare us all poets
~
The reality of this composition
of kisses incessant,
of hugs galore,
tears and thoughts,
is for you, for us,
for now, for whenever,
for our forever, whatever that be,
but that too, limitless,
for this poem will be stored,
incised in our conjoined hearts
and in our genes

~
They say speak to her, she can hear you,
But the evidence is contradictory,
I am not convinced.
When no else is there,
I stroke her head and
whisper in her ear,
"It's ok, time to let go, my mother fair."

You think to yourself alone,
This is not poetry,
This is real,
This is an extraordinary
Daily occurrence,
Life or death warfare.
~
Write clean and clear,
Let the sheerest wonderment
of a new combination,
Be the titillation
of the tongue's alliteration,
No head scratching
at oblique verbal gestation,
Let words clear speak,
each letter a speck,
That gives and grants
clarification, sensational.

You,
afternoon quenching Coronas, wearing white T shirts,
Sun glazes
and later,
a summer eve's Sancerre,
Wave-gazing on the reality
of rusted beach chairs,
Babies sandy naked,
washed in waves of Chardonnay,
The traffic-filled word-way highways and bay ways,
Exiting at the Poet's Nook,
for exegesis & retrieval.

Write of:
Body shakes and juices,
skin-staining tongues,
Taking her, afternoon, unexpectedly,
her noises your derring-do!
Broken
tear ducts,
the Off switch,
so busted,
write about
Real stuff.

~
Lipstadt-Roth, Miriam
née Peiman, 1915~2013,
passed peacefully Sat. July 20th.  
Critic, speaker, writer,  
her fiercest feat, her leading role, creator.      

A near century of memories  
her legacy, memories that  
         linger not, for incised,        
chiseled in the granite of the books, papers,
and poetry
              and the very being of her descendants.            

Her faith in Almighty, unflagging, for He did not    
forsake her in the time of her old age,
when her strength failed.

~
Write not in fear of dying
Angels delivering bad news in vacuum tubes,
Write joyous, psalms of loving life,
Live like your writing,
Write like your living,
**So you may die well.
Amen.
The ~ and demarcates a stanza from a different poem
DON’T LET THE ROBOTS WIN


The red sun gazes upon a blue moon’s reveries
While the baker glazes over our doughnuts memories
5-9 TV talks of talcum dreams,
Suicide sweet
****** machines.
Fascist fornication with communist candy
Tastes kinda like Yankee doodle dandy

I whisper over the roar of a glazed man grazing,
Dazed, and drowned,
to the Automated telenation:
“Don’t use self checkout lines,
Don’t let the robots win!”
Read this one aloud. In fact do that with everything I write. Including this note.
Kaeli Hearn Feb 2016
The shooting stars danced across the night sky

Its tiny feet leaving behind fingerprints and memories on the scarred and broken

Shoot- bang - fizzle

It glazes the dark skyline filling every crevasse

Stars used to be my favorite thing
Now they remind me of you
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Time to Get Serious: In the Poet's Nook

Yes it is verifiable, just as prior alluded to,
a few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs,
wizened gray, like occupant, all seen better days,
overlooking the Peconic Bay,
where inspiration glazes over the calmest waters,
your ancestors eyes ere forebear.

Despite prodigious production o'er past weeks,
ditties, love laughing tributes, silliness aplenty,
these works of dishes washed, odes to Paul Simon,
what to wear to your funeral, knuckle kissing, etcetera...
Though some contained soft shelled, mints of juleps hints,
little sundries, items for sale re suicidal thoughts,

no one takes-tales you serious

Be it tormented rain, intemperate gusts
whipping lashes of sand
excuses real, manufactured and yet,
despite opportunities always existed,
but you answered the question unasked,
you're unready, more likely, fearful.
to pen more in the Inner Temple, in the nook.

In the nook, the poems float by,
you need only extend arm and
grab them whole,
ripened by the delivering breezes,
If you unmask pretense, and wear a seat belt

But here I am, and the welcome I receive is the one
deserved, for one who has joined the ranks of deniers

Favorable prevailing breezes service the sailboats pleasantly,
turn surly and unmanageable from neglect and disuse poetically,
this wind mocks this coward, taunting:

We have waited, fall and spring, for you, our sacrificial lamb.
Your return we smelled, the odor of barbecue and suntan oil,
We observed your beach touring, your eyes upon the moonlight
Highflying, highlighting the path you follow
when walking upon the Water,
when nobody knows, nobody sees


You scarce provided the deep reveal
that is our woeful provenance,
So, having returned, unleash or leave,  
expose your La Mancha countenance,
Fulfill your daddy's curse,#
Portray the siren shriek of our gulls insistent,
the blood cold words, as of now,
yet unfastened, un-cast,
the forge lit and fired,

Are you ready, self-appointed, poetry smithy, wright-man?%


On knees bent you should have approached,
For the inspiration, years rendered, unpaid, and unacknowledged,
But most of all because of these interlopers attached to you,
So many children, green shoots, babes visiting the bay,
New friends hoisted upon us without permission!


Do they understand despite the solemn serenity
of the place you attend,
This is the observatory
where the stars and scars,
undiscovered and unexposed,
become our property to carry-cross the ocean?


Do they comprehend that black is the only color permitted
and the sunshine coverlet is meant to keep
the unmotivated, the uninitiated,
who think that writing poetry is easy,
unaware, and far away from us, the truth purveyors


Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed
Onto paper
And by human, realized.


Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.



June 9th
2013
Late afternoon.
#What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

My Night with Paul Simon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This poem is part 1; part 2 is "In the Poet's Nook: Perhaps I should write less"
Taija Jan 2017
I've never craved the touch of another, until I met you.


You make my lips quiver as your tongue glazes over top of them.


My legs tremble as your fingertips make their way down my body.


My lungs weak from the way you make me moan and gasp for air.


My hair, messy from us being naughty under your covers.


My voice cracks more and more every time I scream your name.

You show me how much I want you.

t.h.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Poetry Round (find your self within)

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words,
Commencing:

You say unto me, whitecaps, I reply,

"Solitary swimmers, poets, arms crooked over head, in the sea of us"

I say flooded with gratitude, and Stephanie replies,

"Thou art my carved destiny-and the river that permits my blood to flood...And all this noise shall fall into poetry; Which every day grows statelier and comelier.

You say to us Moonlight, and we laugh, delighted, for she has given us

"This love can be ours,
Under the iridescent moonlight
Embraced within one another,
To live for an eternity,
Languid and soft"


Someone calls out Bala,
And Vicarpio Gale favors us with his words,

"a poetic rain, in small print, fills the white sky page"

And we pray nightly, that come next morn, he will rain upon us once again

We pretend it is night and there are
Stars to Touch,  but this poet of pax corrects us and writes, t'is but,

"late afternoon sun slanting
behold, jaune compassion
alfalfa ocherous leans willowy in wind
distance of silence yearns on
afternoon shadows lie within majestic vales"


Who is it that calls out
Have Mercie  B.e  upon us,
for she reminds us of what we B.e tasked individually,

"Provoking ideas and intoxicating imagery overflow from within and yet somehow you can't see.  There are dreams that run wild inside of this heart and there is no way I'll let them be tamed"

Sunshineflowers every where,
But even more beautiful when she coaxes us to laugh
at ourselves
when writing of true love,

"Why don't i have bananas, said the monkey.
The tiger said, because you are my soulmate"


Did you C Holmes reminding us that

"when you're certain you've
painted the next Van Gogh
with the swirls and gusts
of blues so pure,
any mortal would
stop stare & lose track of time?"


Fyi, Fyi,

"Her callous persecution insinuates,
The elusive flaws of humanity and life,
It implicitly elucidates,
The sombre reality"


About certain Angels  was writ, that both in heaven and on earth, she was garbed, for

"She wore an air of mysticism
Her memory bore prophetic visions
From ancient egyptian
And judaic traditions
She knows every star system
And every night is a mission
Where she wishes and wishes
For help from the legends"


Emily  has met an unwanted friend, familiar to all of us,

"Cemented shoes
And silenced talk
It's even hard to describe
Writer's block"


Sara B.  from B'kara, that's in Malta, gives advice most sensible,

"Times they are a changing
make everybody feel blue
just turn up the music
and forget what you're supposed to do"


Victor  claims not to be a

"poet, a musician even less
but I may be kind of a beggar
when I beg of you
don't forget me
or let your music fade out
of my rainy days"


Dare I disagree? **** right I do!

Little RedWritingHood,  from my city hails, so wise, far beyond her years, reveals that,

"people try to
make me see reason
or their definition of it
but reason is relative
as is too much in this world"


Should I go on? Why not!

Something's are ForeverMarvelous,  like

"Hurt is fading
Fists are pumping
Bass is trembling
Some are hating-
But I keep dancing"


mybarefootdrives  me forward because

"every seed of thought
starts itself out like a whisper.
Until weight behind words
allows them to stand on their own merit"


Maria GH  could be an old friend, who

"draws me near,
it's slender form bleeding into
the background.
Slowly, kindly,
it extends a hand and
I take it
as to forever hold comfort
in mine"


Andy from Mombasa, your poetry

"conspires to purge me of my sense of reasoning
Leaving me bare to suffer the perils of an incongruous world"

And I am a better poet for it...

Brendan'  I've watched your words,

"Crack the veil of tired souls
cloaked in lonely sorrows,
broken by faithless wanderings,
and feel the strings course through your veins"


I am blindsided and Blastsided  when I read

"Onomatopoeia
I love words
for their meanings
their woven tapestries
but also
for their taste"

For I know exactly what you mean

I am exhausted. So many gems to decorate
My body, my soul. I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out, none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt.
If I could do nothing more but write your names, I would be endowed with thousand more poems.
OOPs, occurs to me someone may not like my excerpting their work, so let me know if its a problem and will edit....hopefully not and taken as the compliment it was meant to be!
Mark Aug 2018
The bodied lilly fires in ashing haze
and from her amber embers I devolve,
into a weeping candle - churning maize;
an orb at night, alight to my absolve.

Remorse suffused with jasmine glazes woe
as moonlight trailings battle hue my grief
for left no infant child to mirror so -
my lover's petals, ceasing lines of leaf.

Nor have, I flare to scribe a marbled ode
that could so hymn or bear my love that shared
nor stone as cold as grey, be just; that owed
the flaming satin, fate had not so spared.

Then let this writ incense - her newly form
until my vigil dims; to death's reform.
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
AnnaMarie Jenema Feb 2016
Rising to meet the sun,
A relative of the wind and time,
His branches reach out,
Stretching from his slumber.
The forest flames awaken fear,
Into the heartwood at his core,
He gives the thought a shake.
He would like to see the spring,
After the falling snow glazes the forest.
A resident of nature,
The Redwood withstands it all.
inthewater Mar 2018
it drips from the bottle
and into your
mouth
which spouts words
with no regard for my
feelings
that you don't know how to address
without alcohol kissing your
lips
that form sentences
with a mind of their own
uninhibited by their flattery of me when they were
  sober.

it agitates your face
as it rests in your
hands
that used to hold mine and it
glazes over your
eyes
that used to light up when they saw me
or when they heard my
name
that you can hardly stand to speak
without alcohol
dancing on your
breath
that doesn't render sounds
without cheap courage summoned
  up.

it depresses your
mind
that I used to find intriguing
as it was paradoxically
kind with a quick
wit
that no longer aims
to make me laugh
but is now restrained by the liquor
label
that you plastered to yourself
without concern -
would you even stop
if your own bottle said
  please?
Connor Mar 2015
Eight months limp in a guilty repose,
Waking with no intent.
Clouds eclipse the routine rooms,
Societies dynamic continues
directionless I spin dizzily within it,
Cycle on high.
my eyes hold their listless weight.
But here ends the night, intermittent,
Cease the unconscious days!
Sun soon glazes the archaic temples,
February becomes July.
MsAmendable Aug 2015
Honeycomb mazes
And sweet honey hazes
Thickly sweet, mind glazes
Confused, smoke blazes
Making a home unconscious races
Falling asleep in honeyed cases
Trusting those honeyed faces
Gold drips away from honeyed places
And left with confined spaces
Wax rooms, so smooth
And no longer honeyed, but true.
*wake up
Dominique Aug 2018
Honey and lies
Pour from your eyes,
Strip off your skin
And try ours on for size.
If it fits, let it sit,
Let it settle down,
Then wipe off the dirt
And watch us all drown.

Oh, how hard to be trapped underground
Don't make a sound 'cause there's people around
And they don't want to lick our wrists clean
We drink up our syrup
And don't make a scene

Candy canes and you win alone
Sugar glaze and a mind of stone
Sweeter days and you send the rats out
To whittle us down to the bone

Lavender skies
And existing to die
Another world crumbles
And the internet cries
And it fits, doesn't it,
With the human frame?
We learn
We advance
We remain the same.

Oh, how hard to be watching them burn
A crisis returns and the leading man earns
And babies bawl and the gun shots are dire
But we get a thrill from fearing the fire

Candy canes and we choke alone
Sugar glazes and stomachs of stone
Sweeter lies and apathy comes
To whittle us down to the bone.
I'm not really sure what this is
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
Seven New Poems For Seven Days #6 & 7: Live like you're dying


Perhaps you know the lyric, the song?

Live like your dying.
Dying caught my ear, my eye, can't imagine why.
Con-Textual emendation, Natalino style.

Live like your writing.

Yes, that makes sense...

Embrace with passion each new session
Charge every second stanza with ruminating rhythms,
Cut the wires to the air traffic control sensory tower, go solo,
Pulse each word, beat all into a plowshare, even the anger,
Even the hate, dressed to ****, in words, forgivable...

Grant the mundane, the insane, even the pain of tragedy,
You refuse so hardily to glorify, grant it and
Record it all - a moment,
A royal audience with all
Your writing parts.

No fancy footing, keep it simple.
No jesters in rain puddles,
Let images of clouds of sand
Born and perish  in other's eyes and sighs, let verbal games bedevil other
Wooden puppet princes drinking fairy ales.

Huh?

Write clean and clear,
Let the sheerest wonderment of a new combination,
Be the titillation of the tongue's alliteration,
No head scratching at oblique verbal gestation,
Let words clear speak, each letter a speck,
That gives and grants clarification, sensational.

You, afternoon quenching Coronas, white T shirts,
Sun glazes and later, a summer eve's Sancerre,
Wave gazing on the reality of rusted beach chairs,
Babies sandy naked, washed in waves of Chardonnay,
The traffic-filled word-way highways and bay ways,
Exiting at the Poet's Nook, for exegesis & retrieval.

Write of:

Body shakes and juices, skin-staining tongues,
Taking her, afternoon, unexpectedly, her noises your derring-do!
Broken tear ducts, the Off switch, so busted, write about
Real stuff.

Write not in fear of dying
Angels delivering bad news in vacuum tubes,
Write joyous, psalms of loving life,
Live like your writing,
Write like your living,
So you may die well.
This poem~title, been on my "to write" list,
In a wine cellar of stored notion~nuances,
A smack-down list of ideas that require:
aging, awaiting, body and fleshing,
ruminating, brooding, masticating.

Challenges, lying, comfortably asleep in my iPad.

Sometime when bereft,
these well used empty Mason Jars
catch my glinting eyes.
Bell Jars ringing, finger wagging,
attention deficit needy,
to punctuate the season of bad timing.

Need pie-filling, plum jelly-canning,
crying out like a sad ole country song,
twanging, achy breaky, heart breaking sounds of
Write me write me write me!
So now you are done, to sit and stew, till ready for
Next year's pleasured tasting

The last of the poems inpired by the passing of my mother.  Tho I wrote only six in all, there is a good reason for that. I set myself a challenge before the funeral to complete this "collection." This last title was indeed sitting on my list of titles in need of a poem, when I tripped on it as the way to finish the task.
Tori Hart Sep 2013
"She should have known better."
"She had it coming for her."
"It's just a joke."
"And you're just sensitive."

You're ignorance glazes over your words
Like paint.
Thick, glossy, and shiny
Words covered with a gentle haze
Of misunderstanding.

Hearing those words
Of un-acknowledged shaming
And saddening victim blaming
Stabs straight through my numbed Soul.

But you know what?
I'm glad you are blinded by your
Ignorance ever so blissful.
I am glad you cannot see
How misguided your word can be.
Because that means
That you have not experienced
The Horror
Of being sexually harassed.

Because if you had the opportunity
To feel that kind of
Helplessness.
Terror.
Agony.
Violation.
Degration.

Then you would have never said
She could have prevented it.

And I thank God up in Heaven
That you have never experienced
That kind of pain.
This poem was inspired by a conversation with one of my closest friends. We're both very passionate about the hurt and triggering effects of victim-blaming, both against women and men.
I love you, Sam.
Annie Potaktos Dec 2011
Dear Nina, yet to be born,
my life you may never adorn,
but, I'll be your port in a storm
and your anchor at Cape Horn.

You are the blood I lose cut by a thorn
and the tear that splatters on the lawn.
And know that when salt glazes your look,
There will be me, swinging a hook,
to grab and change your passing luck.

If you ever breathe and cry,
forgive my worried sigh.
I won't lie, 'tis cause I'll be afraid to die.
Cause you'd whale and scream out, “why?”

Yet, even though, it's you
that will make me fear death,
know this is only true since
it is you who really gave me breath.

My sole reason for not wanting to leave,
ain't the silly reaper or grieve.
It's cause you make me believe.

I may not have seen your starry smiles,
for which I'd drag galaxies for miles.
I may not have heard your earthly giggles,
which I'd chase with tricks 'n' tickles.

Yet, I wanna put you on my shoulders and give you a lift.
I wanna wrap up the universe and tell you it's a gift.
For you. For being, if only in my dreams,
a supreme being truly worthy of freeing.
23/08/11
Sam Jun 2019
Red
It's the color of her hair when I first meet her
The color of her cheeks when she laughs herself breathless
The color that beats harder in my chest when her similar shaded lips meet my own
The color of her dress on our first date
It's the color that stains my cheek after every evening with each other
The color of my dress when I walk down the aisle
The color I see when I look into her eyes and see our future painted out in front of us
But
It's also the color I see dripping from her words as a bottle of whiskey swings from her hand
Its the color that paints the skin under her drunken eyes
The color that glazes her eyes when she swings at me
Its the color that drips from my cheek and her ring
The color that paints my vision as I feel the words pour from my mouth like lava
The color that I hear when she slams the door
Its the color that drains away when she doesn't return
Im depressed and gay
Sukanya Basu May 2018
Lyrics written on Church walls
Bashful lurking Lucifer,
Carved glazes of canker crawling on the mead
Drinking vile torments of men
Lucifer hath angel been
Spread wings of human fate
guided men on burlesque dives
through historic and futile rage
Drawing on lost and regained have never been thy aim
For jeopardy in art's name is nothing but a lost game
God and man and Vinci guise
And letters of un-earthly paradise
And decades of poetry sinned
To unmask man through lyrical films
Morte, life, determining naught
Empty pages of science and draught
Realms of here and realms of there
Realms that thy heart found rare
Antonym of fright being scare
Is not what man learnt through time
And there as courage behooves and
Life draws you to her
Death seems close in the arms of beloved
Pain, man's secret armour
bellows courage with a fake accent
Coming of seasons and dawn and light,
Poetic romance fretful sight
World naught ready to love and cherish
Human cans't broil feel
April as thy knows
A heavenly soul of a year,
Brewing rose, carnations and dew drops in time
A certain cotillion towards the other,
A light breathing when eyes met
Beyond the language of the celestial walls
Eve and Adam through bright colour meadows
I see as thy eyelids quiver from haunts of past
And as night descends the maiden shy
With light prance of the lion he prances
Flesh by flesh swoon by temptation
Drops of naive lies
promises of eternity
Battles of Brunanburh
Horses line up to a steady flame
Fishes swim in fleshy rain
Draining mouth of Paris gates
Writing pages of descent
And on with thy fire of the month,
November rose in the wild grass of beams
Battle lost and won it seemed
On another hill a maiden swept her hair
Through rosy gleams and eye of glass
And smiled like the forbidden apple of fate
Jumped like the lion
left in dismay
songs of despair
An orchestra of pain
Nightingale of death bellows of wind
On sunday the fifth he had sinned
she had cried and shown the rose
cigarette and smokes
of nothing proposed
Flesh be thy crime
heart be thy muse
Naughts had been reflected
in thy abuse
Stricken the horror bladder
Rose with dismay
And to **** the canker
in whom the ***** played
Alone within thy celestial walls of God, Goddesses and fate
Questioning thy holy spirit
the mistakes thy made
Entrusted with athenian history
Women bearing dagger
Human sentiments are evil
Lucifer is the rightful dowager
It's him who sheltered blue
Evil is romance
hardly to swoon
The right and wrong and sadness grief
If they see world of poverty
And happiness a myth
And now trumpets of war
And experiences blithe
To see the world anew
whom is right?
If Lucifer the fallen angel saw
what was yet to see
God is a liar and heaven's a greed
Thy stealth steal within bosoms canker
hate, ****, juvenile crime,
Crime is the way
to drive horrors in time
Human history baffles thee!
Social etiquettes and manners of glee
Whom to fool and whom to wrought
The lamb, the tiger a hated must
Angels, demons painted square
whom to whom the battles were?
The right of man to sin and begone
are fated dramas of life and forlorn?
Brew the evil and feed thy good
Awake! Arise! never be fooled!
And sadness a step,
sudden and dark
Thy unending stairs to heaven abased
Lonely as autumn arises and leaves gather
Memories of child and man
Memories of fated hand
Thy walks through
Matured, mind of steel
Anguish concealed
A heavy sigh of a grown mind
Scorns the happy girl
And laughs over her dead pearls
Mind of a grown self
Visits Celestial walls,
The temple, the bed the wrongs
The right is a foolish girl
Inside her body the birth of a new world
the falls the laughs the pain the demands!
The gunshot of life
The circle of hope
And nursing and growing the cherub of flesh
Is they mother nature with a man of crest
The moon as it shines, shows horrors no more
But in thy heart, a maiden sad
To loose all she ever had
But to gain life
and knead love
To love love and to grow above
Lucifer reads bedtime stories
God saves the crown of glory
Life smiled and played along
Death for death
and finding songs
Growing up in lilac storms
She learned to battle and grow a home
Keen on her *** to bottle dreams
Milk and bread is new it seems
Tyranny with a ****** sword
Knives it's prey as it creeps from it's door
But in white she clad and drew the sword at hand
Tears as bows it drew
Battle of ages seen never so shrewd
The good plot for her
The evil shined
Who art evil or good
She painted blind
She called her demons risked her God
She became human is sad of all
Thy maiden story once again read
The man who left
Evil has no name
So good naught trust
for good is thee
Good is evil
That had been set free
Whom to whom
And what to name
Should haunt the grave
or visit a pray
For to pray is a prey
And grave is a paradise
Questions she darted
With wide eyes
I showed thee card where black and white
Rose to fame side by side
God is lucifer
heaven is hell
Man made tricks on walls
For stories to tell
Man is mortal
desires are innate
Soul is thy spirit that lies awake
Death of life is a soul that plots
Stays on Earth in shallowed knots
To be beyond and to see the light
Have naught done that
Life is a sight
Not seen to man, if realised is beyond
To trust in fame is all that is done
Meekly shown courageous sprout
To do good or evil is a judgement about
The religious amenities made by man
To shun Lucifer is yet in thy hand
To pray him is a choice thus
But to prey pray has been man's lust
Again memories squint of thy maid on the meadows
Flesh on flesh haunts thy skin
Shallow breadths and mortal eyes
Rise beyond skies they speak
What sky what ground
What lava and heavenly abode
To grow old in folktales
Aside dusky shores
Man knows all
Man knows good
Good of man
Is a questionable truth
Man knows evil
Man knows crime
Man knows nothing
He is lost in time
Man knows man
is what tale they should
Write on walls instead of evil and good
Evil might harm
And good might ease
But man does both
And later he grieves
For grief hath no church nor temple nor mosque
Grief is inside man's chest
Pumping through his *******
Of Eve's fool and Adam's greed!
Of the canker of the holy grail
Of the lies he feed!
Who art to decipher life beyond life
When life is tormenting
even in it's sight
Who death, desert or leaves the soil
Who plants and grows in thy turmoil
Who loves and cares and makes thy life
Who saves who draws and pushes knives
Who grows and finds peace in thy self
Who plots and fails and satisfies and helps
Who prays and begs and trust in him
Who prays and begs and trusts in sins
What the sins, what the truth
Human beings are born aloof
To end to grow to die or to be born
Man hath no power to tell of or scorn
Man is a flick
Man is a pride
Man draws wars
Man lies
Man brings flesh
Man grows thee
Man dies tomorrow
Man is me.
Orion Schwalm Jul 2010
A perfect place
A natural utopia
Snow sails down through the corridors silently
Sunlight glazes above sylvan serenity
Time will peacefully pass
Over the sleet sheltered viridian grass
How life has so deserted this paradise bewilders me
In this perfect placidity I feel so free
This landscape holds no surprises, only beauty
Just as my tongue tells no lies, only poetry
As I top the summit, in shock, I see
A ghastly sight I cannot believe
This defies what I’ve seen and cannot be
But if I can trust my own eyes on what they perceive
A terrible fire
Burns into the sea
That I have created, in my ignorant glee
The sight screams in my soul like a haunting banshee
But amidst the burning debris
Stands alone one rebellious tree
On the top of the hill, like a statue of hope
Mocking the treacherous fiery *****
With the means to end this all
I pray that the tree does not fall
As it’s placed on the edge so precariously
The saviour of paradise, the tree...is me.


Hope I don't **** up.
Nat Lipstadt May 2014
Time to Get Serious: In the Poet's Nook
Originally posted here on
June 9th 2013

Yes it is verifiable, just as prior alluded to,
a few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs,
wizened gray, like occupant, all seen better days,
overlooking the Peconic Bay,
where inspiration glazes over the water

Despite prodigious production o'er past weeks,
ditties, love laughing tributes, silliness aplenty,
these works of dishes washed, Paul Simon,
what to wear to your funeral, knuckle kissing, etcetera...
Though some contained soft shelled, mints of juleps hints,
little sundries, items for sale re suicidal thoughts,

no one takes-tales you serious

Be it tormented rain, intemperate gusts
whipping lashes of sand
excuses real, manufactured and yet,
despite opportunities always existed,
but you answered the question unasked,
you're unready, more likely, fearful.
to pen in the Inner Temple, in the nook.

In the nook, the poems float by, you need only extend arm and
grab them whole, ripened by the delivering breezes,
If you unmask pretense, and wear a seat belt

But here I am, and the welcome I receive is the one
deserved, for one who has joined the ranks of deniers

Favorable prevailing breezes service the sailboats pleasantly,
turn surly and unmanageable from neglect and disuse poetically,
they mock this coward, taunting:

We have waited, fall and spring, for you, our sacrificial lamb.
Your return we smelled, the odor of barbecue and suntan oil,
We observed your beach touring, your eyes upon the moonlight
Highflying, highlighting the path you follow when walking upon the
Water when nobody knows, nobody sees

You scarce provided the deep reveal that is our woeful provenance,
So, having returned, unleash or leave,  expose your La Mancha countenance,
Fulfill your daddy's curse,#
Portray the siren shriek of our gulls insistent,
the blood cold words, as of now, yet unfastened, un-cast,
the forge lit and fired,
Are you ready, self-appointed, poetry smithy, wright-man?%

On knees bent you should have approached,
For the inspiration, years rendered, unpaid, and unacknowledged
But most of all because of these interlopers attached to you,
So many children, green shoots, babes visiting the bay,
New friends hoisted upon us without permission!

Do they understand despite the solemn serenity
of the place you attend,
This is the observatory
where the stars and scars,
undiscovered and unexposed,
become our property to carry-cross the ocean?

Do they comprehend that black is the only color permitted and the
sunshine coverlet is meant to keep the unmotivated, the uninitiated,
who think that writing poetry is easy,
unaware, and far away from us, the truth purveyors

Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.


June 9th
2013
Late afternoon.
#What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse
I S A A C Jun 2023
my healing mimics my raspberry bush
a seed in the beginning the wind could’ve took
there were sunny days, flooding rains
frozen glazes that took months to melt away
still in summer the saturated berries cling to their green roof
fruits of my labour, i can never return to that pain that little boy knew
strengthened, concentrated
bleed all the frustration, swaying to the wind’s tune
my healing mimics my raspberry bush
Sparrow Oct 2012
It’s the earliest light of today
and the man is walking back from the mail box
his belly round, his posture bad,
carrying the mail in one hand.

Each time his outline is distorted
I notice another imprint of my lips
flawlessly preserved against the glass;
the (un)avoidable reminder of You.

By late evening I’ve noticed three white cars
the windows tinted like shields
against my false-hope stares,
but I know they’re just doppelgangers
turning the corner and driving away.

At midnight I see the fireflies sprinkle my yard,
the streetlights finally put to work;
as the moon glazes my window
with that softly knowing glow.

So I bow to her,
the glass cool against my head
(like the kiss of a never-ending fever)
as I whisper my prayers to the windowpane
hoping the closer I am to God
the faster something will happen.

But by morning, only the man will walk by
his mail in the same hand;
defeated, unchanging, and almost surreal
as I sit by my window
waiting for an answer.
Sean Flaherty Dec 2016
There's a better version of me,
    up, ahead. And
        he loves you in ways,
        I can't figure ways,
how-to. Yeah,
you cried when he
left you.

And lonely,
    you screamed.
"But if he'd come back, then,"
you think,
you'd believe it? The
            roads don't just sparkle, every
            time that you need it.

            In the poem I write next,
    we're both losing games.
I press up then, catch on,
turning to flames.
                In a grand winning gesture
you burst
into diamonds,
                before I can remind you
                about asking Simon.

    In the distance, outside the door to your
    basement, a crowd la-las the
    Star-Spangled Banner.
From the bulkhead and foundation,
from "the Hobbit door," but,
behind me,
the Anthem goes silent.
                            "Not home. Headed home. Stopped
here. On-my-way."

"Where would you rather be,
                                            than right here, right now?"
Ralph Wilson died a rich man,
with a football stadium
by which to remember him.
            "Well then trace your
depression to its sources."
                        I'm afraid I'll never own the franchise.

There's a father, presiding
over a service,
                for both of us. It's the
same priest, at every
                    front of the room.
                        Our parents are crying, regardless.

                        I'd say somewhere, we sit,
together,
            sipping on the universe. This one
                                                    or another.
        If we don't, then they do.
And they're having the best time.

        But in our past,
        the same one we share now,
        a version of you stiffens.
She glazes her eyes, sugary.
Holds out her palm, fingers to the sky.
And he matches her thumb first,
before the four digits.
                                    Her face bursts, all rosy.
His turns away.
First full thing in a while. I re used a line. ******* its my line to re use it.
And t'is is truthfully why I am here, my love:
I belong to thee, sacredly, entirely, and soulfully
to thee-yes, only to thee!
My eyes brighten at every sight of thee,
my mind delights at the thoughts of thee,
my pulse fastens at the views of thee,
my blood curdles at the scent of thee,
my veins rustle at the gaze of thee-and hark!
Hark now, dearest-how my heart leaps,
sheepishly yet excitedly-when'ver I recall thee!
Ah, and how t'is feeling trembles and fidgets
as always, as thou stareth back-gladly and
with a smile so handsome yet animated and playful-
sweeping straightly back into my soul.
Like t'ose stupefying, sentient glazes of summers-
blowing silently with the rustic gallantry
of t'eir ruddy oaks, my heart is elevated
with defiant, but affectionate branches
of terrific, terrific love for thee!
Oh! And t'ese thou but needst to know-
t'at both my virtuous-and vicious lusts-crave only thee,
as well as how my pure joys rely on thee!
As despairingly as how
my soul was born for thee,
my life was crafted for thee,
my hands were paired with thee,
and thus so graciously are my young feet-
my toes, my ribs, my lungs, and the very limbs
in which my spines might dwell, and be celebrated
by thy gentle, manly breath.
Oh, how thou, my Western prince-so delicate
and blessed with all the might
of my very being-thou hath, my love, since the very first
been my gem, my bronze, my silver, my gold,
my charm, my pearl, my diamond, my light,
my fire, my treasure, and my lifelong dreams-as thou
shalt always be!
And so art thou the perfect accord
to comply with all such of my mine;
as thou art but the freshest bloom
of my ****** years,
as innocent as t'is nature's peaceful labyrinths-
but youthful and starry like the fruit of my most curious-
yet ardently succulent imagination.
And how I am so devoted to thee, my love!
Just like the stars are to the moon above.
Leah McGuire Apr 2014
Hell isn't a place but merely a moment, but for me hell is my life bcs the devils living inside of you
I remember when you used to say you loved me before walking out the door each morning
Although I don't quit remember when it stopped it's apparent that it did
Now I get fake sympathy, pity love but even that's scattered and broken
I remember when I was the invisible girl for 6 days straight
You didn't look at me or talk to me so I spent my time outside making friends with the rocks and worms
While you spent your time buying his love
((I would've just given you mine))
I remember when I had hope so I went searching for the good in you
To bad all of it had vanished, replaced with cold emptiness that seeps out of your mouth, glazes over your eyes, and is embedded in your fists and pretty soon the darkness crept it's way into me
I remember when you told me you loved her more then you'd ever love me, oh how I've always wanted to be as perfect as my sister
Oh how I wish you loved me just half as much as you love her
I remember when I wanted to be just like you when I grew up
How sad that day will be
To bad I got what I wished for
I heard you crying alone in your room
Giant sobs that shook your fragile body
I heard this and the corners of my mouth turned up
For the first time in years you made me smile
The futures inevitable, I'll grow up to be just like my mom
Chrissy Feb 2017
They ask why my eyes
stare blankly into space,
and why no emotions
blanket my face.

My walls reach higher,
my skin grows rough,
my smile turns dull.
My heart has had enough.

Silence fills conversations,
sadness glazes stares.
Fear fiercely pushes away
any person who cares.

I don't understand
why I feel this way.
For I tell them to leave,
yet I long that they stay.

— The End —