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Nat Lipstadt Jun 2017
transitional times

midst the ordinaries, not paying close attention,
the yet to be baked batter of chatter while driving past the familiar,
a plain pasta with butter conversation,
the human carbohydrates of our racing consuming energy,
she slips me up, by slipping in two words,
her icing on the cake phrasing

"transitional times"

pull over to the side of Menantic Road
in the early of the late afternoon, Saturday's reclining sunlight,
question her closely, CIA taping her words to my brain:

did she mean the late afternoon hours of our lives when
reflection of sun sprinkles on our bay voyages us as voyeurs
past the old longings and into the future recalling?

perhaps, the au contraire, the steady stepping,
sneaking away of the sheltering night so that the earth's
inhabitants and organs may be revived in yellow golden greens of damp grasses and the whiteness of a Sunday's fresh milk?

of course, of course, the times when the horizon calls,
saying come to me, cross the transition to the newness
of everything, in the ages and days of celebration of
unfamiliar entrances?


No, no, she answers, bemusedly grinning,
not everything is a poem,
you thieving wordsmith, simply did I observe
that having an extra pair of sunglasses in the car for
transitional times*
was a good idea!

pulling back on the road that goes past the
Tuck Ice Cream Shoppe, the island treasure hunt Dump, the ordinary homes on the range, all  along the way to the boatyard where are kept and stored and stockpiled each summer colored sunset evening along with the drinkable French pink Rose wines and gleaming yellow Sancerre and golden ales of Nantucket,
I think to myself,
nuh uh,
every transition,
every glorious mindless conversation,
even in the town dump,
treasures in each word, in everything, especially the
extra extra-ordinaries,
is a poem*

June 25. 2017
5:20am
Poetoftheway Aug 2015
she posts her credentials
privately, to just you,
in the din of a currently popular
university barroom

and you dressed in your
pick up best,
plumes of all male grinning,
reeking in thinking -
oh yeah!
va va voom,
lucky

laughs and liquor,
cheap 3.2 Ohio beers on tap,
come super highway fast via
as my finger flick be wagging
to an attentive bartender
who recognizes,
a new venture worth
his investing in a newly forming
gene pool of the
collegial world of what you children
can google as
The Sixities

you see, she says,
she is minor famous,
had two minutes in a movie
called Woodstock,
instantly recalled distinctively,
which you honor with
a dozen roses rising of
very cool
and a few daisies of
wow

so young,
she's hitch hiking thru life,
karma, ying and yang, Sagittarius and  
Hesse's Siddharta,
a little ****** break out back,
our lives have intersected in
Cleveland in 1969,
and there is no question unanswered,
your bed, is her bed,
this night

you puzzle yourself,
memory recycler,
why in 2015,
you celebrate a one stand,
a single strand
excavated from
the meta data of your brain
tonight,
from among a hundred lifetimes previous

Why Woodstock Woman Wonder
and you do,
why, wonder,
have you stayed with me so long,
that your face is indelible tattooed,
easy extracted from ancient cells
risen by this
dawn's early light?


are you pining old man,
are you dying old man,
trying to write it all down
before the insurance company
grumpily has to pay up?

this carefree woman, no,
young forever girl,
looking up to you
asking where can she crash tonight,
answered in a single guttural
exclamation sensation,

with me babe,
with me baby

fifty years later,
crashing you,
crashing with you,
with roses and daisies that never died

wonder where she is today,
a grandmother multiple,
or sleeping gone from an overdose
of stuff you occasionally fooled around with,
or are you spending another night
in your tripping life,
with another
one night man

no answers given,
but it is, it was,
a single dot on the trail of dots and dashes,
the existential Camus moments of
of two ordinaries that intersected,
however briefly,
and you wonder,
not why, but if,

Woodstock Woman,
do you remember me?

I need you to,
I want you to,
explain better
why we are crashing together
one more time*

~~~
August 20, 2015
5:32am
nyc
Bus Poet Stop Jul 2017
June 6th 1944 was D-Day.

an ordinary Tuesday,
delightful divided into an ordinary gamut,
a potpourri of Earth-Ordinaries,
with me doing my very best job ever,
bus stop eavesdropping.

Buses are for everyone,
but ever since they taught the
city buses to kneel to the elderly
and gave them an additional limb,
an elevator for wheelchairs,
they seem more majoritized by those
who have earned
the discounted fare of senior citizenry.

two prim and rose blushed ladies await the M31,
to head uptown on York Avenue,
where the many hospitals
have elected to build edifices
side by side, to more easily share illness,
and rise far as the Babel elevators can climb.

prime material for a bus stop poet,
and sure enough, these two, mid-eighties,
I reckon, provide me rich veins of
words, matériel, to cross under the arches.

What is the proper way to put in toilet paper so it dispenses
properly, which somehow is super fascinating.

who has had their hips replaced and who passed,
because they did not.

the deterioration of bus service under the new mayor who seems always to be out of town, or late.

a few blocks before bus approached Sloan Kettering,
where one was to be scanned precautionary,
while the other was due an intravenous cocktail of poison,
the more aged of the two changed the subject extraordinarily.

do you know what day this is?

the other replied,
oh yes,
the day your older brother died upon a French beach,
the brother but eight years older than us,
the brother your adored and that I loved, even at age ten,
was to be my shy one, betrothed unto me

for seventy years my darling, we have together remembered,
even in the years that my abusive husband wrested me away
to California, and forbade my seeing your countenance,
and the second, a good man of proud Missouri stock,
poorer than an interdenominational  lmouse,
who wished but could not afford our joining,
have we not always chattered on this day,
of this and that,
so you could ask as if by chance,

do you know what day this is?

this is the day
they chose to name with scarlet ****** letter,
not an A but a black and bold
D,
and redirected our lives,
its tremors and
remembrances,
its directed chances and luck of the draw, and diminishing memories,
knowing that we shall never again be separated till we have word
choice
stripped from our vocabulary.

now our stop has come so let us alight and delight
that we defeat yet again, that deathful enemy,
and even when he must win the day,
we three will be reunited in a victory,
in a victory so patiently awaited.  

missed my stop by ten blocks,
and was thinking maybe
being an eavesdropping bus poet stop
was a more dangerous profession than I could handle.
7/21/17 York Ave.
Their connection cannot be denied.  heir shared depth crosses all lines of reality.  An infinate wisdom, an unspoken truth.  An empty space no one could understand but is now understood and shared.  An empty space no more.  Their seperatness and likeness brought them together to share in those things which are normally beyond human comprehension.  They are not bound by the limits that ordinaries have placed upon themselves for they are endless, hungry, searching souls who reach heights unimaginable to the common man.  They soar above the never ending boundries of the universe.  Their passion is great in all things, their life rich with unsurpassed emotion.  They know eachother so deeply that it exceeds all understanding yet they understand without question.  Its as if their souls were lost and somehow came to be in this existence, for they often feel they do not belong in this reality we call our world.  They are one with themselves, they are one within creation...they are one within eachother.
mjk plumage May 2015
even when we are gone
our words will live on

is it possible for anything to truly be forgotten? i don't think so. ancient greek graffiti still creeps on the walls of pompeii. telling the tales of the everyday ordinaries. starkly eternal reminders of things such as grudges, curses, brags, screws... and love.

if ancient greek life can be known of even now, why not our lives? write about everything. centuries in the future, someone will be reading about 'the history of the 21st century'.

make sure that that someone in your future
will know how strongly you loved in their past.


our words will live on
even when we are gone
Kimberly Lore Aug 2015
I do not want peace
Peace allots for too much time to think
I do not wish for wisdom
I have been trapped inside my head for far, far too long
I do not seek joy
It is fleeting and insubstantial
I do not require hope
I have plenty to spare, thank you

What I crave in the depths of my being is chaos
What I desire is life lived fully
I want to dance upon the rims of volcanoes
I wish for thunderstorms
Crashing upon my bare feet
I seek sunlight peeking through greenly leaves
I require adventure and extraordinary ordinaries
                 I want to breathe
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
The lifelike wax ordinary Mary
In Uppsala Cathedral

So lifelike
I almost say Excuse Me
When I walk past her

Not a goddess
Not a Catholic Queen of Heaven here

Ordinary. Like a Swedish peasant woman.

Rick Steves has the same response I do.
He sees and agrees.

Ordinaries.
ManVsYard Oct 2014
Each generation of we-bots
installs an app called "Been Forgots"
(of-the-wheres), we came from long ago.

So, each can play their special part
in life, just one great big, freak, show.

Hairies, fairies, ordinaries
hybernating with trolls and stealths.
Hypertexting to alternate selfs
churning, burning, always, on - the - go.

Grinnin as-if all is peachy.

"It's like they have and endless supply
of hi-grade hy-dro!"

So, drink eight ounces e-v-ery day,
Eat an apple every night
(you add ten gigs with every bite).
Bytes! Liquids help the data flows.

PS: garbage in, garbage out,
power down nightly, for upgrades of, your "knows".

Blowing, wafting, in the cool breeze,
the exhalations of the trees.
Solid ground on which we walk,
becomes the tongue, with which we talk.

The seeds we planted last December
will bloom into beauitful fragrants.

Take a sniff. Now, remember.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2020
<>

with time whittling my days down,
the plurality point of my days long since
surpassed, my poems to the wayside
fall as new generations seek the voices
that are nuanced to their ear, tastes,
I remain, for the more obvious, more now than ever,
forever for the poets who sign their emails to me with:

I close with much gratitude


spoke or unspoken,
you-see I-see your poetry nuggets in everything,
the extraordinary ordinaries!
that delight the weakening eyes, move the ****** muscles
upward and outward, those nuggets by that,
one can grasp
the nexus of existence in words few and singular, open/close,
and the filters that mark life as word worthy,
salutations of words like:

Gratitude

and all that matters is this simple, my friends, my children,
that I go down in days full of gratitude
for them, for them.
- Sep 2017
For this day lay sudden undeathly amongst much life ' love. That if us too beloved bards be as one upon this plane, what greatness hast been to humanity. Shakespeare O Shakespeare, here wilt this life bear our sweetest love? With the spirit of troves hereby truity, what would be of thy rave. I thank thee for such guidance in these arts, more so bestow by whom speakth by the frequencies of the frame. These verses etch'd in stone mayst grind this Earth with goodness. For that even in future, man is evil and his content is low, he hath the word of the bard. To day things be not so slim that man mayst do things he canst not limn but it is by nature his grace is holy. Be it the painter, calligrapher, sculptor, and so the musician- all things lie great for these men and women with anyway they are to be in tune. I thank all wordsmiths of this phaseless art. All whom partaken in the arts fine and fair, I hope it remains a subtle way. Should this form not go astray no matter the one. It should forevermore be for the greater good of the Kosmos, the greater good of mortal life. To beyond is possible by the word or by the sound of tether'd consciousness. This is not all, more is all and we hast yet more. In this time I taketh it as mine. I remember O Shakespeare, I remember thee. Worrit not for relevance of thy excellence, it is eternal and is to be. As thou saith; 'To be or not to be' I in this frame saith but the same, 'of or of not' so shall it be known. This world without the bitterness of poetry is a world void. The verses spew'd by this passion art noble, gentle, but fierce to where no ordinaries canst trod. Only those with the light of the greatest substances of spirit so genuine. Shakespeare o gallant one, rest...rest upon thy crypt. By thy word rest easy and if so the world is sway'd in cause of man's ego and rage I shall soothe thy stone long the crescent moon above that fluoresces god's acre.  Mine thanks Shakespeare, thou hast mine thanks. For us all I'll keep poetry and true lit alive for the greater good of humanity, for the sake of salience.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2023
for Joel Frye, who loves
“my sharing the marginalia of my life”

<>

the tiny smile in mine eyes’ white *****,
glistens,
my eyes inhabited, as is my
habit,
of your noticings of the what & wherefore
of the “it” of my writing…
the marginalia of life
as you adeptly label them…

touch you, my fingernails ,
sensing the ragged edging,
alternating with the smooth

all is revelational, all is relational,
the irreverent,
the minuscule,
the bytes of super-valued
ordinary
and the
extra-undervalued-ordinaries,
each and both,
elevated by you…
observing me observing you!

living on the margin,
doesn’t mean the unimportant,
the margin is a place,
where our mind’s neuralgia
embrace; where you-receive
my envisioning, feel my marginality’s,
my discrepancies, the odd, that oddly

that makes us even!

and
understanding my fingernails,
are what you’re touching,
my touch, your sensing.
identical, precisely provisioned,
and our invisible envisioning,
with nothing in between running interference,
is everything
finest and fine

the marginalia are,
the margin is the beginnings and
the endings of my myriad words,
the overstuffed SUV of my mind
that you help me to unload!








<§>

Thu Jan 5
5:08 pm
Manhattan
Yenson Sep 2020
They queue to spar with the Best
hoping for a bit of glory to rub off on them
or just plan acknowledgement to lend some relevance
at least some bragging rights to show off to fellow minions
I touched the hem of his attention and courted his exalted notice
inferiority complex is deep and traumatic enough to defend stoutly
nothing takes away  self-loathing and underconfidence of ordinaries

They queue to **** and poke
in sanguine defense of glaring inadequacies
hate steaming in base vessels of counterfeited wares
unable to reach, unequipped to match refinement and class
what else but debasement, mockery to assuage banal beings pained
the uncouth fundamentals of the ignorant and dense minds take reins
kicking and trashing in destructive tantrums and in idoyne rages of saps

They queue to earn street cred
that badge of acceptance among soiled urbanites
where idiocies are sensibilities and delinquency is celebrated
and sane ambition is a curse while simpletons espouse illogicalities
piffle bravado lacking substance, grade one clowns in battle fatigues
lone coward apes a warrior provided a surround of fellow mates in tow
look and curse as a real man stands alone and has put you all to shame

— The End —