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Nat Lipstadt May 2014
Lactate motto naku smile.

this poem,
for my friend, who has hit the road,
in ways others only think they have done or know,
miss her firecracking wizardy,
she, the only inky reason
still talk to god,
to cover all the bases,
employ every tool and invention,
to make sure you are a-ok alright,
on the journey to an unknown destination

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


Lactate motto naku smile
That is Apple talk.

My Apple language master
señor spell check,
thus advised and improved upon me,
way back on April 3rd of this year.

I wrote:
"last attempt to make you smile."

Apple translated my ginger finger snap taps
into American English as
"Lactate motto naku smile"

Stumbled on this oath, this midnight eve,
this phrase, duly nated and nested,
amidst our very long exchanges,
which someday soon,
am going to edit excerpt
as one most readable single poem,
a tribute to you, not,
that you, my traveling friend,
you already greedy got

no, just a dialogue
just a par example,
of how friendships are born,
how words lactate from each of our *******,
how relationship are birthed and nutured,
in a crazy place, where language lovers
are the nuclei of a dying breed,
once called the human place

***, back in ancient history,
way back on Sept. 29th
our first communication
tween our mutual alien races
tee hee, me wrote first
as follows

Each individual word,
was a separate message,
for such devices deserved of self-respect,
sometimes want their power demonstrated
on a stand alone basis and here that follows was how
Presented and Conceived

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
This

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
Message

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
Is

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
For

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
You

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
Only

Nat Lipstadt  Sep 29, 2013
Can a man fall in love with a name?


you permissioned me a
multiplicity of yeses,
thus began our star trekked voyage
in the stellar spatial space of the
galaxy of humanity

but part of your new trajectory,
a new orbit in a new spaceship
you champagne smashed anointed as
Mirabel

Now I know you hate my habit,
of slipping in a definition,
making the lazy reader
unself-sufficient,
but I grant, nay, take this liberty, I dew,
while in your quiet traveling disappearance time

Mirabel*
is a female name stemming from the Latin word mirabilis, meaning "wondrous" or "of wondrous beauty"

what ya know, ** **,
nothing could be fina,
than to be in your minda,
nothing more apropos,
than calling your ship in Latina,
a wondrous female beast of beauty

ok I know I go on too long
as is my wont, my nature,
but I could not shorten my course,
in any other way,
Ok,
I
Guess
I
Could
Have
Said
I miss ya terribly*

somewhat more succinctly
but what fun would that be?
Please be safe wherever you are... my Indian chieftess or as Apple would have me write chief tests!
For HTW
Poetoftheway Mar 2015
an impurity
inherent or invasive,
identity, purpose, all unresolved,
substantive, long-lived, minute sized,
flexible, formed, yet more,
clearly shapelessly, so well visible
we'll disguise it
to survive it

without passport, an émigré
illegally legal border invasive,
but somehow more knowledgable
of the unmapped byways within,
more than me - how can that be?

never motionless, indeed,
always hurried, even when energy gathering,
despite it's detailed timetable,
detailing plentiful stops and
interminable unexplained
screeching wailings,
it has no smooth gliding,
nor rumbling grumbling halting,
to a final destination imprinted

this impurity,
a beheaded brainy horseman
searching for what,
I'm not permissioned,
unquenchable questioning,
all I am allowed is
sensory
surceasingly, unseasonably seeking

the undresser,
the verisign
of veritas
eyes mirrored reversal internal,
you can't understand why finishing
this poem is so hard

because you don't want to
confess this
impious impurity,
no étranger, it is but
copious insecurity,
of the all of you,

the ecstasy of
the rushing,
the upsetting,
universal unique to us, you,
unholy, ecclesiastical, catholic,
that impurity is just
the heart pumping the
mottled blood of
life coursing through your words
and out your fingertips,
onto those
stained drumsticks
used
to play the keyboard alphabet
about an
out-of-tempo
impure ecstasy
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2014
So many poems in shallow graves lay,
unremarked, disfigured by inattention,
undistinguished, death by ignorance,
yet all distinguishable,
in merited manner
and winsome way

numerical weight of observations
marks only quantity,
nor is it a critical mass
connoting value, criticality
only idol worship, pop rock popularity

are you genuine,
do you value place
on any handworked lettered trace,
its silver hallmark
even ever,
ever even,
magnifying glass faint?

does the fear, the knowing,
that the greatest poem
ever penned and ever posted,
has escape your inward glance,
laying stillborn and yet
just a click away?

are you truthful poet,
do you imbibe
from the word~waterfall,
poems sky-endless falling,
within which,
by their virtue,
you, too,
permissioned to
survive and be nurtured?

if you drink and think of but
the issue of your own spawn,
see in a one way mirror,
a contained reflection,
see then a limited version of one self,
a half-formed wordsmithy,
incapable of healthy mutation,
a child, unfully grown,
poisoned by reaching for only
only one's self from the bookshelf of
this miracle,
called poetry

integrate your integrity
with integers and alphabets,
from spice islands and faraway places
infect yourself
with dots and dashes
of other's mind,
thus your own composings,
healed, improved with injected
doses of vive la différence!
a verbal literary interferon

are we all laureates? no
are we all kith and kin?
assuredly yes,
assuredly no

Vive la Différence,
the only commandment,
the ruling motto,
sup with me

once I was a young man,
a younger man than now,
unaware the road less traveled
the veritable choice of the chosen few,
vanity from the page
reflected falsely upon me

I learned to be not~me~poet,
in the company of
scribblers and scribes,
who strove and tried,
some better, some for worse,
all enshrined

once he wrote:
***** your courage to the sticking point,
Begin to write then with reckless courage,
Unfettered abandon, make a fool of yourself!
Scout the competition.
Weep, for you and I will never surpass
The giants who preceeded us, and yet,
Laugh, cause they thought
the same thing as well...^


so these souls
to thee I do commend,
it is just the first snowfall,
I am buried neath drifts Minneapolis deep,
so help me,
lend me thy scalpel eyes,
thy tiny toy shovel,
six feet ain't much,
dig we must,
alert me to the names of
those who
must be uncovered, discovered,
rightfully celebrated
Spend too many hours reading poems.
I am a free heart giver, a list keeper
of the names that stumbled once upon,
I am instant devotee

lest I offend by absence decided to keep their names to myself,
but I crown their efforts with this poem and my unfettered
desire to bring them to your attention

^ http://hellopoetry.com/poem/379313/do-not-put-a-poem-here-until-you-have-bent-your-ear-to-shakespeares-sonnets/
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2020
once again the fog draws me in,
speaking fog soft,
“of me, of me, you must,”
so write-birthing,
I am mustered out,
permissioned,
commissioned,
so ordered.

This fog is personal, in your face, changing by
masking/unmasking street and bay, slow burning,
this one, revealing a tableau, like a theater curtain
rising to audience applause for the set before them,
so unexpected, eye-delighting, pleasuring perspective.

why should you care? what matters this to you?

your fog likely little different, in the Cascades,
Everest, the California coastline morning burning off,
not costing anyone’s life, the Blue Ridges smoking meats,
the Quatse River saying, follow me to the Alaska glaciers,
(in the Midwest, some states, use rivers as boundaries,
so they like the fog to keep the ‘neighbors’ on the other side),
the twin Ghats, or mourning steam rising from the Ganges,
or the Zambales Mountains, guarding Manila Bay entrance,

all mine, here too, so slow retreating, gifting a quiet, wider
bay vista tween two islands, one Long, one sheltered.

so wrong, it matters so, none beyond compare!

these mountain or river comparison, white or gray,
listen friend, look closer, see my face, my words
fogging your soul’s view, full of carryover affection,
so deep, they borrow West Virginia coal miner~heroes
to dig it out, a different kind of mining,
but,
nonetheless,
mine.

so it is here, I see your multi-colored faces like
light flickers shedding clarity to these troubled times,
troubled waters, saying here we are, we are!


we here, outside your window, on waters calming,
see us dancing, but it’s so hard for me spot you in
the mists, for mine eyes are clouded, misted over too,
glasses fogged now, **** these **** tears.
8:53am
Jun 18th
Year of the Mask
You know where...


Eugene O'Neill

“The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt ****** peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.”


― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
July 3, 2011


These were the orders of the day,
issued by admirals
who monitor the lanes surrounding
this sea island and that now include
my desolated, desecrated, heart waves
that wash ashore.  

With beacon searchlight,
high powered, prowl,
be a coast guard on the bay
of humanity, following wakes,
intersecting misaligned paths,
undoing crisscrossed roads
on a plane of water,
forever search,
permissioned only
to never cease, tasked only to:

Save the young ones.

For there is no cost
we will not bear,
take our mind's light,                
our speech, the music from ears,
the fiber'd essence of
our tissue-thin life's weave,
but let us be, leave us,
to save the young ones.

Leave us not becalmed, baffled,
broken, discovering
what sound we make
when our throats are
grief engorged beyond bound,
so leave us the young ones.

When we fail, what it is,
I do not know,
how to name it, cannot,
for I am forever
star gazing, star lost, confused,
with every breath ruptured,
my own value to wonder,
and on and on to ponder:

Is there no end to the reservoir
of tears that accompany these
spilled and spoiled thoughts,
stained kisses on paper
where ink and saltwater connect,
and lay upon the surface of
memories that can't be blotted,
never be replaced or,
cry out, cry out,
be added to?

How many sad poems.              
must yet invade my fingers,
ripping my mask of reason off,
making me unhappily familiar
with jagged edges of the sea,
each drop - a tipping point
into places I wanted never know,
a rendering reminder of
these days of disorder,

Save the young ones.
How I used to write...hundreds of poems in dustbins, but like this I right no more.
fearfulpoet Oct 2019
these hard words

are the only fruit my hard-rocked soiled-soul produces,
my alliterations secrete no beliefs, quench nothing,
the poems I don’t write are my most successful,
the songs that comforted, now find no-entry orifice

skin cold wet clammy sweating unsuitable for tilling,
my horizons natural, felled, underground swallowed,
replaced by the man-made barriers, guardrails of words
leaving body, utterances shoutout, exiting non-permissioned

lurch from one guilt-carrying, black leather-straps wrapped,
round my arm, to the ones strapped around my temple,
honorable acts owed, responsibilities fear foundering
unfulfilled lists, griefs, signs of cowardice, badges shameful

deep sighs, open groans, me mean asking questions of myself,
laughed off, city noises turned off, silences of colorless colden,
the sirens loudest inside reverb endlessly, still give nothing away,
a final exam, an all sided, annual checkup reveals nothing but


these hard words

7:48am 10/15/19
Reign Nov 2017
It’s tempting almost taunting how it lays waiting to be touched

Forbidden but almost permissioned to be grazed it’s a daunting rush

Is this a test is this a reward decisions I wish not to choose

The intellect, whit, and wisdom can’t save me from the destruction I’m bout to choose

Your glow, your power, & mystery is the scent of pollen to a worker bee

I’m caught trynna figure what’s what it’s  almost worth to see

It’s like a man has your body and I your heart so who’s worth more him or me

It’s almost to tempting to walk away not knowing curiosity left astray

Criminal to an artistic mind believing even chaotic body has a beauties face

Enough I’ll touch it the lights start to flicker

The rumble from the ground I can feel the earth start to shiver

In a flash happiness and pain don’t exist

But not for nothing...

At least we all got to see the effects when you push the RED BUTTON!

— The End —