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Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.

Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.

These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking  
you into dreams
that make you wonder              
unceasingly  

I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander                              
meaninglessly

so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that  fool
willful and mostly please
nobody

don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated

yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,  
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind    
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill

Repudiate yourself,  
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling

Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them

Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to  the trash box of inconsequence

My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent

Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,

In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,

In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,  
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County

So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?

My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.

Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub

surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate

the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state

please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!

let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records

let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning

***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies

What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:

"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"

Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM
the same mood haunts me, three years on...six months on this site today
I long for the animal you hide
Won't you come out to play?
You won't know unless you've tried
This space is safe, promise it's okay

I am going to leave my mark
One way or another
Raw untamed fervid spark
It is you I am going to smother

Let the voracious hunger mount
Escalating each minute
Primal breathlessness paramount
You are your own limit

I'm not going to make love to you
I utter rather sweetly
Neither am I going to *******
But own you...... completely

I want to tear you apart
Don't make any sudden moves
Pulsating beat of your heart
Every inch of me approves

I want to forget my own name
While I'm busy moaning yours
I promise to start quite tame
Until you are out of your drawers

My body I do herby bestow
Let me show you how
I whisper in your ear and let you know
The time is Now
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2014
for Joel Frye

whose bear roar will n'ere be diminished,
for one who  has the good sense to laugh at himself,
is destined to live in the permanency of the place where memories smile and our
hearts store our affection unlimited,
for this earth, better for him

Deities and Muses!
you are herby responsible to guarantee this quality will never be lost from him and his residence, his near and dear, or else!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in my mind a thorny paw
is irritating my most private
mirror-revealed thoughts,
asking me to fulfill obligations

oft have I writ of our chosen crew,
daily do we cement bonds,
with winks and nods and
meet away from the
glare of likes and reads

we exchanges vows
with stronger than the strongest words
for
there in not a single letter,
A's, B's or
even C's
that give us pause, no terror,
we bend them to our will


Betterdays wrote:
"i am a word written down.. any word, any word.
i am undeniable, desirable often incomplete
always open always waiting
for some one.........just like you ...
to open your heart let me in
to recognize a new start
to have a play, a scribble,
doodle, pen jive. to become
alive.... to thrive, just begin with a single letter.....then another,
go on be brave.............grant me liberty......"

the alphabet,
is the grantor of freedom,
for the component integers,
sum of the words
is greater than any all of us...

your words, her words, my words,
all of the crew's speak spokes
a language common but peculiar,
we transpose and borrow,
transgress and combinate,
all the better for interaction
that allows the *******
to the places we want revealed,
indirectly, we shine the light on our
recesses and are unafraid for it,
indeed we are better for it...

these poems are the streams and
wellsprings you know well,
lay your body upon these verbal waters
and float forever, though deep,
they are the fluids of your soul,
permanent poetic nourishment
and your claim upon them
all the greater for having three years plus,
added to and lived their pleasures...


for did you yourself not write your place is where

"The ocean's pulse, the ebb and flow
of constant waves' re-nourishment
bespeaks to me of life, although
an undercurrent message sent
in whispered sighs of Gaia's breath
upon the shoreline where I sit
relates a tale of bounteous wealth;
the wind, the rain - that we exist
at all is purely by the grace
of Nature's cycles. Also heard,
a gentle, soft, disturbing voice
reminding me without a word:
when we have come and we have gone
the ocean's pulse continues on"

perhaps you forgot!
you are part and parcel
of that ocean's pulse,
waves of letters forming and reformed,
your simple words above
re-nourishing me constant and even,
perhaps,

*
their author?
James Floss May 2019
I love to love it; it is
A privilege to praise
When they go beyond,
It’s a gift to say it

When the work is mediocre
Less they know they can
I rue my job; psychic indigestion
Tired, I herby retire
Ashly Kocher Oct 2019
I
Herby
Say
That
Poetry
Is
My
Immortal
Escape
To
The
World
Of
The
Knowingly
Unknown
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.i simply can't get this song out of my head, for a second day: nancy & lee - summer wine... just like i couldn't get jimmy rodgers' kisses sweeter than wine (then again... that might have been the jackson browne & bonnie raitt rendition, i'm guessing most probably the latter)... as i'm pretty sure it's nancy springfield and lee the 70's tash-donning pornstar - sly upperhand singing on the side in between eating oysters...

as i knew i would end the day and begin
my catch-2-hours of: night proper with
a bottle of wine...
how else to celebrate: 'you know,
i really enjoy working with yeast-dough...
oh hell yes, it's much more fun than
the usual dough associated with poaching
dumplings... it's the perfume of yeast...
catch me with a cube of fresh ones
and i'll sit for a while just sniffing it...
yeah... sniffing fresh yeast before actually
using it...'
or at least that how to do it proper
without wanting a take-away pi-za-za...
the sauce is extra herby (extra
basil and oregano) and there's
an added chilli or two...
and enough mozzarella to drown a slice
of ham in with a mushroom or two...

cooking... whoever said it was supposed
to be this pre-****** liberation
1950s postcard homecoming of the housewife:
who said that cooking was a feminine
"job"?
after all, who is Milo Minderbinder?
and who was the cook on the Pequod
or was it Essex?
perhaps that old saying from the Demeter:
it's bad luck to bring women onto a ship...
bad luck indeed: having to name a ship
a woman's name...
but cooking... he hunts and then has
the audacity to cook the **** thing?!
stereotypical - i guess...
what else could i possibly write:
to "correct" myself...

was that anything, in italics, as an introduction...
akin to talking over a radio playing
in the background?

otherwise:
'it was of your making and
then objection, inference and resignation
and revolt. well done'....

and and and...
how best to sum a slow-pacing...
i would have never managed to: well done or
do myself by reaching for the skeleton...
like: it was of your own making,
then an objection, then an inference -
pause: resignation and a crescendo of revolt...

the dignity of walking (cogitans per se)
is being referenced...
and any comment is not a kick-in-the-teeth...
but perhaps i... lack the basics in
identifying very common psychological
apprehensions...

how can something can become so simple?
did i over-romantise it with the latin?
in terms of morality:
i "trans-gender" myself as
new pronoun!

θought: i.e. I ought...
besides, there's the crude manifestation
of a will... when all the knives have
been sharpened...

a comment and i don't know what to do with
it!
i don't know: like it? love it?
dislike it?
can i just keep it, can i just sit on it?
can i pickle it?
can't it wait?
am i expected to provide a dialogue?
which is why i rarely comment...
i could never leave comments
or annotations on books i've read
in the past...

it seems so simple, though!
it's like everyone is supposed to keep this "reality check"!

'it was of your making and
then objection, inference and resignation
and revolt. well done'

a well done i'd call an inedible roast
of beef... a well done i'd call:
chewing gum chicken ******* that
were allowed to sit in the oven for
a period that: doesn't excuse them being
165 degrees when a thermometer is spiked
into the flesh...

what is so "blantantly" obvious!
william buckley jr interviewing norman mailer,
public intellectualism and being drunk
at the same time...
and this horrid testament of gory:
for the better health of the public discourse...

i imagine all the books that never arrived
at the hunchback's angel's purvey
of: what's worth reading... and what isn't...

there i was "thinking" that:
the per se suffix attached... "something"...
it's clearly not a noumenon: res per se
(thing in itself)...
and if it's thinking in itself...
it has to be complicated... adored for what it
is... esp. if it's not related to
some moral θought: I ought...

of the comment provider...
it's quiet staggering...
when you can emphasize with someone...
you hope they're writing about themselves...
you dare not think they're writing about you...
but... in their writing: they are like you...
writing about yourself...
so no... they're not writing about you...
they're writing from a "solipsism" venture
into the horizon "undistrubed"...
you can only retort... i've just come back...
from where you're thinking of going...
and it's not what any hope wishes
itself to envision...
for better or for worse...
for either life or dream...

it's so simple though!
i should listen to strangers more often!
(a) it was of your (own) making
(b) then objection
(c) inference
(d) resignation
(e) revolt

what's that in terms of schematics
and geometry?
that's a pentagram! i haven't seen...
schematics evolve past the square...

that's why i don't like commets...
if i could comment on everything i've ever read...
third-party sourcing someone for
a first-person reply...

perhaps i'm not playing the psychology
game - if it even is a game - at all?
the psychology was just a tow-along
dog with a leash and a muffer...
fair enough: muffer "vs." muzzle...
FF ZZ...
there was this concern for:
what sport will there be demanded...
for man to perform... if he truly
takes walking to the task of countering
all other pleasures: coinciding with
a physical exercise of the body?

i call this: prompt...
how could i not come to such a simple
conclusion, prior?
how could i have possibly coupled:
the freedom of thought...
free speech...
when being... bound to an otherwise:
automated body...
an automated heart... a conscious-unconscious heart...
same for the liver, the kidneys, the brain...
and how... only when it fails...
do people... give it any conscious effort
to mind its existence...
a heart-attack will leave the heart in the hands
of someone who will prize it above...
as long as he is able to sacrifice an eye for it...

walking is where thinking "happens"...
it's a forever dasein since there's
no real "here" or "there"...
and... there's the pervasive interlude...

to have to abhor explaining "things" to oneself...
what are the chances of conjuring
the royal-we or the royal-one...
in that first person via third person meddley?
is there a "they" to be made inclusive...
from a perspective of: the horde of hallucinations?

perhaps i am mad:
but i do know that such conditions do not
become viral,
or at least they shouldn't...
it's not like a schizoid hallucination
can be passed to the next person
with the impetus
of a common detrimental cold: or... zee flu...
you can't "somehow" ingest
symptoms of something akin to this:
without a self-regarding
violition to become... debased to begin with...

i will rarely dare to leave a comment...
on anything...
in so doing i will always want to bypass
"the work"... "in question"...
and speak to the narrator...
because whatever this is...
is it's own purpose...
once i click on the save button...
i do the Pontius Pilate deed...
this poo'em becomes
an abandoned house...
it becomes a squalor...
it becomes a "*****"...
a point of reference for all things
public... akin to a toilet...
**** on it, **** on it... comment: yes do...
**** it... ******* over it...
take Alice with you for
the walk through the corridors of...
not another imagining of not yet another
Elysium...

sometime ago: this would have been...
exactly january 8th...
at ten minutes to 1am...
perhaps it would have been five years
ago...
where was i five years ago?
somehow not right now, "here"...

after a while i get a brailled response...
⠼⠁ view... it's cruel... to have to resort to +
a ⠼⠁⠼⠁ is ⠼⠃
well because of the equals (=) symbol...
morse... contra braille...

count them! (⠼)...
⠁(a and 1)
⠃ (b and 2)
⠚ (j and 0)
⠊ (i and 9)...
and all the other "numbers"
follow suite...
because you really couldn't
write an la dièse: A♯
in braille... then again... perhaps you could...
but that's how i figured out...
it's not exactly the case that
people are born into wheelchairs...

some skydive... some ride horses
competitively...
some scale mountains...
they fall...
i like walking... i always liked walking
more than i would ever care for running...
ignorant of me then...
to "presume" that people are born into
wheelchairs...
like "nothing happened"...
ever...
that 101th carrot a man would eat
being going blind...
or rather: not eating that 101th carrot...

ask blind willie johnson what he
thought about picking up the guitar...
better than waxing a phallus
with forrest gump intent of also playing
the do'whip stoopid toto too!

no... something happened...
Melaine Reid... sure as **** she wasn't born
in a wheelchair...
that's not being mean:
but can i at least enjoy walking when
i don't have a need for the 50th goldstruck marathon
gimmick to celebrate the olympics:
but not the ping-pong or the archery?

can i? it's not like i'm about to swim
like an octopus with inks spare
for a page... that just requires
a dabbling in... a Rorschach?!
really?

who is this person that would have written
either circa 15th century german music
or the dignity of walking (cogitans per se)...
well... certainly not circa me, now...
i was expecting a slow night...
to have written something and not have
clinging to it...
i was welcoming it to have passed
with the purpose of time as:
neither classic... nor worth any intellectual
debate...
something private for those...
wishing it to be most private...
never a taunt...

you can guess when a comment is asking you:
is this a taunt on purpose...
or a taunt... without purpose?
- about how to start a d.m. escapade...
how something is not, "punctuated enough"...
or how... when diacritical markers come to play...
it's somehow... "overtly-punctuated"...

feed me to the lions! feed me to the wolves!
never expect me to go down easily
as being fed to democracy in the lineage
of anglophile "public intellectuals"!
give me the wolves! spare me the mob!
the anonymous mob of the comments!
i'll probably sound german when
i have to: reiterate:
geben mir der wölfinnen...

perhaps i chose the feminine...
over the masculine... thinking of the valkyrie:
kyrie eleison!
when wolves showed up...
or the crab-bucket intellectualists...
i said it once... i'll say it again:
crab-bucket intellectualism...
even in my darkened abode i will never levy
myself to leave a remains of my self...
not in the comments...

but then again: i am chasing
1 millions words as a pauper...
semi-, oh lord! i have somehow missed
the calculation to offer: relief with!
precision!
if these not be hebrews...
then they must be anglo-ßaß!
esp. h'americanißed anglo-sächsisch...
the scurge of the spitz...
the pomeranian... the bohemian...
the bayer...

oh i'm content with my dole...
my dice roll...
i usually ridicule myself...
there's no better humor than...
self-deprecating humor...
and it always involves...
not succumbing to cheap psychiatric
metaphors associated with
a melancholic... i.e. the diagnostics...

rhyming should only happen on a whisper
of a whim...
spontaneously...
there should be no...
dissection scrutiny.... no fibula no tibia:
oh god... there's also a crest?!
what's a coccyx supposed to be?
ancestral tripod / pivot...
something we'd make of a monkey
should he not jump at your command...
break a few bones,
wind him up... until the jack 'n' box
would pop out?!

it's a poem: it's not a book...
it's certainly not an investment worthy
of these modern binges: season rocky XI...
star wars episode... X...
or some spin-off...

if it were as simple as the retort to the question:
why do you **** people?
- why do you pluck flowers?!
dracula, b.b.c. and what not...
it's not exactly a cliche if...
there's an afterthought lingering behind it...
no "great" punctures onto paper
would ever give
the secrets of constellation or...
if it wasn't for the drinking and the loitering
in the antechamber of spontaneity...
what sort of whim,
what sort of "inspiration"...
what muse... would be bound to loiter...
in a day...
for a day: where the zenith is here...
and the nadir the everyday welcome "chores"
that have, already been disclosed...

i looked at the output of the commentators...
someone's bound to be peacocking...
for a solid minute i thought i was
i.q. 95... sub-minimal...
and a reply to these comments would be?
a "conversation" with this current mask,
of a voice, only 10 minutes later: 10 minutes
too late...

so... why bother?
there's a better vision in my head...
10 minutes from now...
i'll be pandering a cushion
to allow my heavy head to fall into its cusp
and ready me with 6 hours of blissful night...
perhaps i'll dream: i hope not...
unless the dreams are less dreams
and more: ciphers...
upon waking i do not meet the litany of:
i think, i am, i will be, i hope to be...
instead... with a backlog of a dream...
i will wake up as:
de- and -cipher...
half an hour upon waking...
having to relax my strict rules of memory
being reserved for "things" that happened
to me when i was 4 years old...

that's when i break the rules for having
an extensive memory...
when i dream and sleep...
or rather: when i dream i forget that i slept...
and when i sleep and not dream?
i'm left with a hangover of not being awake
for 8 hours plus...
"conundrum" or what?

but if i do dream... those 8 hours of sleep
will seem like a breeze...
otherwise i'm ******...
when i wake up and persist with eyes closed...
de- and -cipher...
de- being i... and -cipher being: the dreamed...
past-participle...
perfect grammar doesn't really matter, now...
given that the royal-pronoun game
has been abandoned...
what with no care for the royal-we
or the royal-one...
one was not expecting to come across
the Mongolian Vay... of They... of the horde...
seems times are...
some on the way in... some on the way out.
Samara Nov 2023
morning strolls
along dew-kissed roads
to greet the rising sun.

slowly sipping hot coffee
meeting the misty dawn
& scattering seeds
for the song birds
to continue their melodies.

french blue, shear drapes
forest green dotted with colors
of the flowers.

napping in and under treeshade
where we too enjoy
fresh baked bread
& herby jam.
- - -
no beginnings
& no endings
just relentlessly
unpretending

my cottage core dreams ;)

— The End —