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Nat Lipstadt Jan 2014
Reworked and resubmitted, and this time to stay.
Anything you say can and will be used...


excited utterances,
acerbic witticisms,
utter stupidities,
elegant inanities

can and most assuredly
will be used
evidentially, eventually,
about you
in the court of poetic
justice

as inspiration,
original source material,
proofs of our collaboration
with the enemy,
whom Pogo
fathomed long ago, is
us

a Vermeer-vectored light ray
will reveal with luminous clarity,
all that you have spoken,
been secret-thinking,
template of colors for
future etch-a-sketchers,
inspiration for future poets,
far, far better than
me

this dishonorable, low repute,
poetic eavesdropper,
poet-as-recorder:
revels in the smoke and ash of
absurd, common sensible
trash,

the trite and tragic,
the pith and prissy,
the calm and hissy

all your lovely revelations
of human frailty
and asininity,
most adorable,
(except for those scarface
treatises I despise as
never justified
self-pity)

that you n' I are blessed
to have combinated
in a manner most
curiously original,
now recorded in my
digital memory,
proving positive the unique,
discreet charmes de notre
humanité

Even your silences are
most curious fodder,  
the sighs you sigh
so hard
and yet again, even
harder

unfair game, mined as
veins of golden material
for my aquatic scribblings,
as I float downriver on
currents of compulsion
to promote vicariously,
our joint disjointedness,
our grade A, prime choice,
recombinant and genetically improved
absurdities

Rembrandt will honor us,
we as the Comedic Elders of the City,
paint us upright
avec expressions most suitably gravitas,
but see the poetic jester,
funning underneath the table,
in manner most levitas,
out-sticking his
protubered tongue,
like a common geni-***,
a la maniere de
Einsteiny
and he will be
the one
future generations recall

when I cross over the Styx,
limbs turned to
potash, dust and trash,
my blush transferred to earth,
to color the good earth red,
my body eradicated yet,
our body of work extant
a written record of us,
our very own
Dead See Scrolls,
shall be an amuse bouche
for our loyal satrapped
retainers

Let the scholars

dicker and obfusicate,
delve and explicate,
each turn of phrase

write tomes on the
catacombs, where in
jar and cracked vessel discarded,
these Poems and Catechisms,
the collected processes
of our mutualism,
your edicts,
pronouncements and verdicts
captured as
dots and dashes,
zeroes and ones,
wait most patiently
for shepard boys to find  
in the year 2300

you err most grievously,
if you relegate
this note
to the dustbin of
simple ditties.

take these words
at plain face,
and
look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am
but a tragic,
empty vessel
for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet poseur~extraordinaire,
street urchin,
word merchant,
all my verbally,
wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  
where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly
unattended

Mock me not,
for anything
you say to our chagrin,
will be fully attributed
and recorded on the Web
of long-lived
embarrassments

A fevered dream
you might say,
rumors and excuses of a
vision of drug induced haze?

a theorem most plausible,
but the redacted versions
will not conceal
that all my words
were Indo-rooted in
a dialect called
collaborative

this I pen
partly as apology,
partly thank you note,
written notice,
subpoena served,
for as long
as you emote,
my fingertips
will gleefully record
with love abundant
in their artful device,
your mutterings, putterings,
and in-cahooting

right here, shall be,
wrought and wrote,
treasured and kept
anything you say
that can and will be used...
to express our communitas

Written June 1, 2011
Gregory Adam Apr 2016
You died 4 years ago and I never forgot the feeling
the feeling hoplesness I felt when they told my that the cancer inched its way to every pure crevice
until you were as weak as my knees were to become.
I remember falling
not literally but figuratively
falling into a hole where the light of god was absent
and all I had left was my inner light
The day you died was the day I stopped believing
You and I prayed every night and even though I don’t believe in God I still pray
I still speak- The bare definition of a prayer is
a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to a being or audience that cannot respond
So here I am
In front of you
Screaming
Begging for another conversation with you
Grandma I’m sorry I lost faith
and I don’t intend on ever regaining faith
but I always pray to you.
before every performance.
I beg that you listen
and that everyone else listens
I don’t believe that my words go unheard
or I wouldn’t be standing in front of these people today
Grandma I love you, I love you, I love you
And I will never break this life-long conversation with you.
Grandma this poem- this prayer- is for you.
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
So many lost ones, can you find me now?

Resubmitted for your tender consideration.
It fell between the cracks of us, but I love it so,
remembering its birthing, like it was but a moment ago.
~~~~~~

Multi-tasking multi-sensations

kissing your eyes,
sensing the tickling
of your trembling lashes,
between kisses and breathes
someone utters word-wisps of
love poetry.

right hand strokes thy chest,
sensing/sending heartbeats
upon my palm to the
forever to keep part
of my
treasury memory chest.

all the while
my left finger indexes,
it mesmerized, it memorizes
the curvature of the face
to be stored in the
never-forget-always place.

my tongue
restless to participate
goes whatever it feels like,
for the tongue is
the only body part
with a mind of its own.

my eyes, my eyes,
see only the
totality of this moment,
when mastery of multi-tasking
becomes
the single best poem
this man ever penned
with only
his entirety.

May 19th
Edited Nov. 17th.
Dominque Rodello Apr 2021
I am simply not okay
Not today
I have been left in dismay
Spit on my grave
Resubmitted for flowers
Held against my own power
Survived only so you would not sour
So you could sit here and call me a coward
Somehow hold my life
Until I die
Ignore my cries
To have a better night
We pass alone
Our bodies turn to bone
Get a headstone
And we grow into the unknown

— The End —