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Bus Poet Stop Jun 2018
~for those who will read this and weep~

the quiet ones,
the silent Job ones,
who quote not from the
Book of Lamentations,
but author their own,
based on-the-job experience

localized versions of cryptic elegiacs
accepting the wooden crosses borne,
stepping up to the
unrequested unforeseen,
then buried under, burnt alive,
yet never relieved by dying,
nailed by words, stronger than iron,
promises sworn, promises kept
with no ending date relief,
promises by and to themselves,
but not for themselves!


the wearers of crystal glass shackles,
adorned with decorative locks for which
no key did the maker make,
nor any divine creator
dare conceive an early release,
never no escape contemplated,
for the lock human, unrepentant unbreakable,
a decorative useless metaphor gesture,
a blunt “life *****” advertisement

I compose amidst a
bus pond of mismatched city folk,
a tapestry of ages colors and differing views on god/no god,
none would believe that as the bus sways me,
it’s in rhythm to holy choral music,
hundreds year old,
divinity masses and motets worships,
where one human can hide temporarily
a safe house,
to calm his questioning relentless
from the horrors of no answers,
for when the mind has no solution
to the rough and tumbling lives,
lived in glass shackled confinement,
the poets desperation equals theirs


summon eagles to transport these imprisoned,
but the shackled refuse,
I come to them but they wave me off,
I go crazy for once I was enslaved,
thirty years war that left devastation,
from which so many poems created

so I speak with heightened regard
of one who planned futures for others where his
non-existence was a founding father (ha!)


but the day came and
I was released by my own inactions,
but means nothing until a way to
away found
to release the yet bound early


got a couch, airline miles, hundred dollars
in my pocket and an unrelenting need
to save them, a consumption disease,
the glass shackled, at ease,
won’t rest till all are freed
this my creed
no one left behind

these cyber words do not mock
for they are unbounded, set free,
when
the flesh connects and the needs of the flesh
are stronger for they are in heart conceived
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.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2013
Seven New Poems For Seven Days #3:  Orphan**

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.

7/21/13
Mitchell Mar 2011
Took myself through the darkest streets
Just to see who I would happen to meet
I saw the rains fall on forests unknown
While out somewhere a fat man bellowed

Two ton sisters laughed as they drank through the night
I stood on a corner starin', not looking too bright
Too far are the corners of the Earth to reach at times
As well as my thoughts which float away in abyss

But oh the mystery of life un-lived, unfullfilled
I see faces in the watered mirrors of our streets
I saw nothing before but see everything now
But nothing is nothing if you don't know how to follow
the voice of oneself and a pride withheld

Too long have these times been weighing us down
and the sounds of the vines that swing like sweet wine
the torment of a sister trapped in her disaster
a father betrayed by the sins of his dead other

Torments lost in a fire crackle spit fire manic
Tossing away a heart that was given to me at midnight
Two days passed I discovered it was mine own
Even Shakespeare was a man in the time of his prime

In these years of lust, dust, and broken egg shelled eyes
I sizzle in a world that I know not much of
And perhaps, if I'm lucky, see right above

I talk to myself in the mid-morning light
Maybe to a lover, maybe to my shelves
For the night, at times, is the only friend of mine
A friend that never once asked my soul to begin

Yes a whistle holds its tone if it has lost loved
Fallen in love
Thought or ever entrusted itself to love
A crescent call to the last careening thought of you
A lover that said they'd be and retreated in call

I talked for hours
knowing inside I knew not a thing
All the while smiling at mine own hollowness

All the broken bats I never did swing
Or all the rusted clubs that made midnight maraduer's rub
Led me to a place where I was meant to be

no longer laughing
no longer singing
no more wishin' of a living
of somewhere off in time
Matt Hollinshead Mar 2013
The sand within this holy hourglass does record the unrequested gift.
  Mankind’s mortality contained within transparent boundaries
that fool fresh minds with the fancies of freedom and yet,
like the sand, force us all towards a similar fate.

As Newton’s law prevails I contemplate:
those futures forever out of reach,
isolated by that invisible divide.
Our purpose predetermined.

We only live once,
no more.
Once:
soon to be no more.

Can I fall through the floor?
Can I ascend when tables turn?
Can I escape through fractures made?
Can I exist forever in the space in-between?

My cries are inaudible through the glass unseen.
I hear the gentle waves of home – white sandy beaches.
My younger years sink into the haunting heap of my history:
incontestable like the gravity that fuels this wholly natural process.
anonymous999 Feb 2014
when your daughter tells you that she has an eating disorder, believe her.
do not mock her, do not tell her she is wrong. though you could not hear her in the bathroom on her knees at christmas or on her birthday or after dinner, listen to her now.

know that after she reveals this and runs crying to her room that she will lie directly on her floor and place her ear to the carpet and she will hear you discussing her declaration like a bad movie, a critic to the fact that yes she still has all her teeth, but you do not know anything about disorders.

when your son mentions at the dinner table that your daughter thinks she may be depressed, do not shake your head. do not continue your meal, do not let her escape to her room immediately upon mention of the subject. do not shake your head, and do not continue your meal.

when you ask your daughter if she wants to see a psychiatrist and she does not say no, take her. make an appointment, do not cancel it. take her.

after an argument, when your daughter refuses to hug you, do not be offended. do not make a sarcastic remark about how she is "really helping the situation," that will not help the situation either. only know that she is hurt, and that she is only sixteen.

when you buy your daughter acne treatment and teeth whitener and brand new makeup and pore strips and she refuses to use them, do not yell. rather, attempt to fathom why your daughter may be boycotting your unrequested purchases, and try to find three things about her more important to you than her appearance.

when your daughter tells you that last night she sat in her closet for an hour so that she could be safe from you due to the way her her heart races and her palms sweat every time she hears the sound of your footsteps outside of her room, please reevaluate the way you talk to your daughter.

when your daughter tells you that she is sick and that she cannot go to school for the fifteenth separate time this semester, ask her about in what ways she is feeling ill, because one does not contract the flu fifteen separate days over the course of five months. that is not how the flu works. it is not likely that she has been physically ill to the point where she will lay in bed until past the time she was supposed to be getting home from school. do not accept the fact that she has a "headache" and do not let her tell you that she is just fine, because she is not.

when your daughter stays up all night doing homework but does not complete her work, do not nag at her. do not tell her that you and her father are "just waiting for her to have a mental breakdown" or to “stay out of your face when she loses her mind” like you know she will, do not tell her for the twentieth time to get her life together. it will not help her get her life together.

when your daughter tells you that she thinks she may be depressed, listen to her. do not fail to notice the words "years" or "finally".
do not simply forget about it, do not wake the next morning and assume that just because she is at the breakfast table eating her cereal that all is well. do not assume that last night she did not make a detailed plan to **** herself and that the only thing that stopped her was a line of a song, and a boyfriend.

when you notice that your daughter has stopped going out with friends, stopped going to practice and stopped trying in school, do not yell. do not lecture. try to predict what she may stop doing next. but do not yell.

do not say things like that she is “upsetting  your  household” statements like that make it very clear in the head of your daughter that the household she lives in is not also hers, and that you do not want her around. do not make careless statements in front of your teenage daughter.

though you may not know that the most common word in all of her google searches is “depression,” it should not take that for you to realize that she has a problem. though you did not see her ask the internet how many of her vitamins she would have to take until she could be sure she would not wake up, it should never have gotten this far.

do not tell her that you are sorry. it will be too late.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2019
the woven intercept

the crescendo soft ascending,
commandeers our riveting,
we do not surrender, taken, nonetheless,
our deference to an elegant wand wave,
combo hopeful and all encompassing, the helplessness

both well understood

the progression higher, steady on,
a rapture going to a defined ending,
concluding voyage occluded, for now,
but the setting sun rays us a plan, a path,
teasingly, soto voce lips moving, “this way”

follow on the unsteady water

restraining resistance failing, flailing weakly,
it is both early morning and late afternoon,
the light warms, but each, a timbre different,
the pitch and intensity tho one and the same,
yet, order confused, still, we are given-in

giving in unwillingly

absolution unrequested, but awarded anyway,
shelter from the storm of safe and warm,
children begin first school day, but adults
know better, beginnings full of risks unforeseen,
the season changes, normalized, but would be refused

if we could

the waiver offered, the woven intercept read,
emotional intelligence so fragile, on and on,
sidekicks, lovers, connected by a dotted line highway,
the space between permitting anything we want,
but contradictories say, wanting everything, impossible

but the viable solution singular

how do we leave it then? we leave it thus, clarified,
separation is a kind of attachment, voidable, when,
kissing comes calling, from all around the world,
the crescendo ends, we each have read the intercept,
it concusses, interpretations differing, yet we don’t care

lying through embracing lips


our tune is a mismatched matching,
a vision ending and yet anew hatching,
this is love, understanding, undefinable, undefeated,
a changeling definition, paths possessing multi-endings,
loving is the unceasingly, desirable imperfect struggling

unique, singular just like everyone else’s

9/4/19 9:07am

nml
(she'll know)
Ayeshah May 2010
I can't....

Can't help these feeling

consuming me as

you assume about me,

presume to understand.

Listen sweetie -


I never had a choice

I wasn't right in my thinking.

In my reasonings left us both with

unrequested guilt.

Unanswered questions , doubted,  

misguided-  non-understanding,

abandoned-  my un- abandoned disgust,

regretfully  mistaken stolen moments,

regret  deeply for not being there,

being  not there even now....


Left a ache inside

for so long-  I still cry,

I cry for myself  too though.

It hurts to loose so much

to have nothing but questions,

doubt

wondering

wonderful  bliss,  mind erased...

blissfully  -

no more thinking,

shaking crying,

blissful aint blessed when I had to forget.

don't speak or talk.. keep it in

deep inside

no one

tell no one.....

I was trapped,

taken,

thrown,


beaten & shaking.....

In my mind....

In my head- i felt no pain...

Lied to myself...  lied about you.... about me....  about "it"......  about US.

******,

*******!!!

Lying to me,  lying to you,

lying   lying    lying  

so much lying....

lying,  drowning,  dying,  lying,   crying,  lying.......

PLEASE!!!!


how can they have lied- liars lying as i laid dreaming....

demons, screaming.....

I cried, screamed, dreamed & longed for this day

Fought & still fight for this day

A day where you'd know!

Where you unsheathe that sword-

Placed-  deep in my heart, deep into my soul...

Did you know?  

Did they tell you-

who I was?  

Couldn't you of guessed?


Your eyes- my eyes


Your hand's - my hands


Your smile - my smile


Your laugh - its me!!!


I'm you

Your blood

My blood.

Didn't you notice  

didn't you see


all me in you?


I knew from the moment your face
looked deep into my face


your shape

my shape

my mirror

your mirror.

Twin yet not  - -  

Mother╰♥•♥╮ Daughter

finally:

One -  Whole

and

Together !


I Always Loved & Love You!

Dear child of mine  -

╰♥•♥╮JANNELL  ╰♥•♥╮

Always Me Ayeshah
Copyrights ©1977-2009 Ayeshah(A.K.K.C.L.N)
All rights reserved.
Queen Bee Jun 2019
Innocent Bystander.
Love over takes many.
Expressions takes places.
Rejected through,
Feelings not returned.
Many agree.
Others taken,
To heart.
When others fall for you,
But you love another...
SG Holter Mar 2015
The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. (Wikipedia)


Songs of prophecy on oaken leaves
Unread; unclaimed; unrequested
Fly from out either of the many entrances
To her cave chambers.

She doesn't mind. Poet or prophet, the
Wind has hands greater than human;  
Words without willing ears wrestle away
Without struggle.

Only they and the wind see the beauty
Of it. She? She doesn't mind.
Guide to the Underworld, she has greater
Things to meditate on than

The Infants of the Universe
In their insignificant sandboxes.
Here; more poetry. Come who may,
To read.*

Who may.
Apollo's twisted payment for her
Pleasures: As many years of life as grains
Of sand in her hand.

But she forgot to ask for youth.
After a thousand years, only her voice is
Left, whispering: Children, all will
Be well. It already is.


It already is.
Dave Shaw Mar 2011
You remember getting out of the car.

You remember the stooped uphill walk, jacket in hand, across the driveway toward the door.

You remember the deliberate motion of your index finger attempting to jab the 4 digit code into your garage door opener, and the seeming disconnect between your visual perception and your index finger's physical place in reality.

You remember closing one eye and aiming slightly higher than the soft padded buttons on the opener, to compensate for their distorted visual placement.

You remember the deliberate 7 stooped steps you take toward the snowbank, after finally entering the proper 4 digit code and waiting for the large overhead garage door to complete its transition from closed to open.

You remember using your right hand, and scooping up a handful of fresh snow, and launching it in the direction of your mouth.

You remember the feeling of what felt like very cold sand compressed in the cavern formed by the impossibly dry roof of your mouth, and your impossibly dry tongue, slowly melting into liquid and affording you the small mercy of saliva to relax your lips from your teeth as you turn and take 7 very deliberate steps toward the now completely open garage door.

You don't remember pressing the large plastic button that closes the overhead door, nor setting your house alarm, nor the almost terrifying efficiency that you displayed in turning off the outside lights, locking the door, pouring yourself a glass of unfavourably luke-warm tap water and proceeding to down said glass of tap water, nor somehow miraculously keeping yourself upright up the 12 carpeted steps leading to your second floor.

You remember the walk down the hallway, toward your bedroom.

You remember closing the door softly behind you, and thinking to yourself that you really ought to get more water or something but elect instead to strip yourself naked and collapse into your bed.

You remember the blurred lop-sided flash of red that you could identify as your bedside clock.

You remember, in that flash of red, reading the time as 33:81 p.m. but you feel pretty positive in retrospect that this is false.

You remember wishing you could summon the motivation to turn on your record player, which is sitting on the table opposite your bed and well out of arm's reach.

You remember the infinite bulk of every part of your body as you lay in the complete darkness, staring in the presumed direction of your record player, as if you could glare it into operation.

You remember your internal nonsensical monologue that provided unrequested commentary on the quickly diminishing amount of sensory input at your disposal, which now included only the sound of your own breathing, and the impossibly bright flashing LED from your camera battery charger somewhere on the floor below you.

You remember the involuntary twitch of your leg that reminded you that you do, in fact, still have a leg, and are not, as you had somehow began to assume, a disembodied set of eyes, ears, and lungs.

You remember the girl with lip ring, your buddy's crude joke about the black belt, the new number added to your cellphone under the name Tessa, added by girl whom you recall being pretty sure was named Jessica. You estimate the chance that you will ever actually call this number at roughly Zero.

You remember contemplating a time that you could ever feel good about your night by the next day, as your eyelids scrape against the linen surface of your pillow, with a sensation that you could only liken to a very sparse broom being pulled across a concrete floor.

You remember wishing for anything at all to just happen.

And that is it. That is all you had.
Mitchell Jun 2011
Maid you made the building shine
Like a pine burning through a fine Spring rain
Broken teeth broken shoes
What money you need to get you through?

Lay your hand to the ground
Loosen the grip to the horn which makes you proud
The blonde moves with a mystery that I can't see
Each light here makes me miss her

Heard of you through a rotted grapevine
You talked with vigor but your sheen was unseen
Tapped your heels like you had a pair
You spoke of poetry as you thought what to wear

I knew the time before you knew yourself
You packed your bags as I packed your shelves
Imagine the world without you here
That's what I did to get you outta there

The building holds words which were written
For men and women who felt that had been bitten
I saw it in the papers as I flicked away the capers
Wheezing beside me was the grim reaper weeping

Attention to the mystery privatizes the trees
To see such a thing made me question to believe
Now the concrete is trying to sneeze
But the books are clean as I guess they should be

Paint filled walls lined with 150 million dollar prizes
You got a soul? We probably got your sizes...
A shout here is not allowed so lay mellow
Cry here for the vagrants dying far down below

So strongly so hastily these triumphs spring up unrequested
All of it seems like an attempt to get bested
Come to the window to see the life not inside
Street filled wishes un-granted is the ticket to buy
Taylor Marion Oct 2016
Unrequested,
Cloaked figures surround your little bubble,
Poking and probing your armor.
You shriek every time they attempt to penetrate
And they shriek back at you, startled and confused.

Unsolicited,
They follow you around,
Picking up your footprints just after you
Mark them on the ground.
They drop petals of dead roses behind in your place
To show that in the end, you can leave behind beauty
If you so choose.

“They’re actually quite pleasant,”
You think to yourself.
You look back at them on occasion,
And they simply mumble amongst one another in a lull murmur.
Content.
Like nomads without destination in mind;
Like dreamers without expectation to find.
“I wish I could be more like them…“ you ponder.

Finally,
You’re near.
You see the edge getting closer.
The vastness of the ocean crashes against
The stone walls beneath your feet.
You wiggle your toes aloft the sharp edge,
Just enough that you can still keep your balance.
You notice in that moment the figures are finally silent.
You turn around
And with complete composure
They bow their hooded heads in sympathy,
And you realize then that your thoughts
Are not a secret to them.

Throwing your arms in the air,
You let the breeze caress your every pore.
For the first time
This nakedness doesn’t feel defenseless.

You smile at your friends
As they wave goodbye,
And fall backwards toward the water just as you would a feather down bed.
You watch the sky expand above you,
And the figures free whatever petals they have left
into the wind like doves’ feathers.
Aaron E Dec 2018
Searching for a monument to build,
to my stranger nature.
A display of living purpose,
but it's paper,
A failure to surface,
when the current spills
my hopes out to the maker.

I'm breathing toxic calamity like a vapor.
I'm receding, firing soliloquies over faders,
and waiting for it to taper.
The baser instinct to sink into
to a shape conforming destiny's favor, amazing
but it's death in a manger.
A gift of unrequested breath
to levy questions of our nature
impartial but starting to loose
the fruit for us to play with

Don't play with your food
the canopy vines can't seem to stay in the mood
when amity cries
just as we bite another layer
and hope our spirit affords an existential favor.

The corporeal farce of the mortal coil
Where I'm going, what I've done,
who I am, who I have to become

Who am I to give a ****
about what has to be done
will I be actualized
if I inhabit the gun
will I be dazzled to find
that I should never have won
that all my fevers of prayer
were only threads to be spun

I am the definition of survivor's bias
clamoring for comprehension to a writer's silence
buying into lines reverberating in my mind
and all the while I soak
in revelation of the killing kindness

an absence of a unique purpose
a lavish elusiveness revealing
time as worthless, when I dig for deeper meaning
but seemingly informed by enduring
anguish in a world to test which
axiom I'll push the furthest
my reluctance to lift the curtain
My redundancy in spilling refusal
sooner empty than truly certain
My abundance of energy
filling the room
I bask in knowledge
Honoring the right to never learn it

And so I paint
I drape the walls and fall into
the sordid echoes,
calling through the mist.
Simple soothing bruising lips
They whistle darkness
move your hips
I'll leave a mark

I'm through with this.
Everyone wants to find that connection between their spirit (soul, self, being) and the rest of reality. That's mostly what this is about, with some tangents. Getting things out and in stone. Exploring, building, creating our own purpose, or finding the value in the purpose others have created for themselves in an existence that can seem bleak or meaningless at times. There's more in there, but that's sort of the broad strokes. Enjoy, and thank you.
Beinghonest Mar 2016
I don't know how we got here...

I'll be honest,
I'm sorry that we're always fighting,
That we don't see eye to eye no more,
And that twinkle in your eye is gone -
I'm sorry,
That our love is withering.

I'll be honest,
I miss when things were rosy,
When you and I just made each other blush,
And our lips were inseparable;
When my hands couldn't keep away from your soft skin,
And we were acting lovey-dovey, ignoring the unrequested attention of wandering eyes.

I'm scared, when you scream and yell,
I'm heartbroken, when you cry because of me,
I'm debilitated, when you won't let me hold you,
I'm stunned, when you don't accept my apology.

I miss,
When you and I,
Didn't care much about the label,
We were good friends that's what we said...
But soon later you wanted more:
And you got it...

Then
"We",
Started becoming an underused word,
The bonds formed by mischevious nights
Shamelessly crying on one another's shoulders,
And divulging of blackmail-worthy, jaw-dropping secrets,
Starter weakening, separating...

Is there any possibility that things will get rosy again?
That you'll stop getting mad at me and I'll stop hurting you?
Is there a chance, just a slight chance,
That the girl I fell in love with will come back...
Or, have we... Have I killed her?
Maybe I'd send this to a gf when she's fighting with me :3
(but I don't have one right now :'( )
-just being honest
ogdiddynash Apr 2017
Mr. Condiment Man

he arrives around 10:30am,
after the morning rushers and multiple malingerers
have surrendered to the clocker's red glare stare,
the little dictator of time that rules lands far and wide,
and the lunch crush is but a restauranteur's faraway dream

most days, to the last counter stool, he beelines,
the most least desirable seat in all of diner-land,
adjacent to the noise of kitchen,
and its associated higher risks perilous,
a two way swinging door "entera-ance,"
a residency to be avoided most studiously

though hardly a corner for one to go unnoticed,
by virtue of its iffy existence,
unless one likes the increased chance of
being a  victim of a crashing accident,
Mr. Condiment Man goes in and out, silently unremarked
but very noticed

in our land of spacious skies and amber waves of plastic,
customarily any "regular" is happily accorded a
rousing Sousa welcome, but that mistake now twice made,
is a historical hurry up-to-be-please-be-forgotten incident,
and the Condiment Man's cloaking invisibility second only to the
NYC's Famous Actors seeking breakfast amidst the common people

no words are passed, no pleasantries are planted,
the rule of incommunicado silence, for both sides now,
most happily observed, like a UN peacekeeping boundary

quick appears Cream of Tomato soup accompanied by
ever multiplying handfuls of packages of Nabisco
crackered packets, freshly fracked, with a ketchup Heinz handy,
a soupçon of five iodized salt shakes in the soup then interred,
salt released from the prototypical glass shaker whose universality usage seems to be a Federal law o' the land

the meal in silence arrives,
silently but oh-so-slowly-consumed,
it's extenuating circumstances lengthily enhanced by intermittent deliveries of additional cracking crackers,
and an occasional lip smacking,
and an unrequited unrequested unremarked
  "topping off" soup refillament,
this one act play presented daily
with a free tall glass of water in red plastic also refillable,
as needed

a play with no official ending,
no white topped, green lined, ripped from the ubiquitous diner pad, scribbled, billing ever presented,
but the loose change precisely, scrupulously counted then
upon the counter left, materializes by the hands
of the unacclaimed Mr.  Condiment Man,
which he sources from pockets various
in places where no pocket rightfully  belongs

you can set you watch by his timed departure
at five minutes of Twelve, he is no longer,
the play thus ended, the audience to feet leaps,
relieved and appreciative of the quiet man's drama
and his most excellent silent soliloquy

some strange human need satisfied and pleased
for all parties concerned, when the New York Times
revealed that this C.C. man left a 50 million dollar estate donated
to Meals-on-Wheels,
a fortune amassed by speculation in
condo's (ha!),

there was no shocked groaning,
only some perfunctory observing that frugality has its place,
and that this fantastick show, now closed, would be
sorely missed, for it had become a
condiment itself
a spice in the lives of so many


~
O.G.D.N.
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2023
Lay My Body Down

Sunday sipping my Hawaiian java,
the world’s end is hallmarked this weekend,
like hash marks on a old fashioned
wood ruler,
and unrequested and unbequested,
heady voices demand a retelling,
even a tallied
recounting
of 2023
the year I almost blew it.

took some pics, even a video,
of my-internals, and pronounced me
nearer my god than thee,
I was precisely, scientifically,
97% almost dead,
said the occultist
said see you tomorrow
for a haircut and a nip and tuck
upon thy heart

strangely,
I was of good cheer,
not fully comprehending my walk on the edge,
and
strangely,
never gave it too much thought,
which for a poet,
is just plain weird.

But this Sunday,
as I lay my body down,
thinking about “deadlines,”
all missed,
and are all still, cursing me,
residuals of 2022 & 2023,
which are carry on baggage
for the next trip through the
door of
2024

and these words come jumbled and
we are out of time to sort
them better than this,
but
as I lay this body down,
one last time,
on the ruler’s edges edge,
the last hash mark nearly touched,
and almost
equidistant from this year and the
unmeasured blankness of a clean white sheet
of Next!

<>

a good ole saying, a good ole lyric,
“lay my body down”
invokes image of spring water
a brook wash~flowing
over the shell of man
clothed in white linen shroud,

water of clarity crystalline,
taking a tour~trip with an itinerary
of (must-see!) sights,
cracks and crevices,
slats, slots and slits,
apertures and orifices,
groans and worry lines
accumulated this nearby past,
my body’s own poem

<>

but I recall W.H. Auden’s words
about the revitalization quality of water,
and I decide to
baptize myself,
like recommissioning, retrofitting
an-old ship

(though I am a serious jew,
who knows nothing of this rite)

But fortunate seemed that

Day because of my dream, and enlightened,

And dearer,


water,

than ever your voice as if
Glad—though goodness knows why—to run with the human race,
Wishing, I thought, the least of men their
Figures of splendor, their holy places.


<>

in some places, you can follow the dotted lines,
on my physical container;
man-made marks from
exploration of my body,
now understanding these lines and holes
are a schoolboy’s
long division’s remainder,
(always annoying)
bits & pieces of him,
looking for a surety that one can
yet call it home,
one more year?

<>
my interstices,
tween the manmade decorations
of medical foreplay
and the cri de coeur
of my mental anguish,
are life reminders,
I am
alive and still hurting,
BUT

could be worse.


enough.
Aug 22 11:44pm/Dec.31, 9:50am
2023
Aleska Servian Dec 2014
I'm scared
my mind transcends my body
I'm scared
of the empty spaces left inside
Because it only takes
a few drops of unrequested pain
to make me believe I can wash my sins in the rain

I'm getting tired of burning bridges
when I can see your shadow on the other side
People give away their lives for so little
and spend the days running away from something divine

I really don't mind
having a heart of glass
that will be broken so many times
drinking my sorrows in a wine glass
So I will speak my mind
and run away so fast
then I'll leave my fears behind
while I break life's hourglass

What happens if you finally choose to stay?
I should've built higher walls to keep expectations away
A flash of images, but I don't know what to say
I had gone a long way
it gives and takes away

I really don't mind
having a heart of glass
that will be broken so many times
drinking my sorrows in a wine glass
So I will speak my mind
and run away so fast
then I'll leave my fears behind
while I break life's hourglass

I want to be judged by my mistakes
maybe there are some you can relate
you'll be aware of how it aches
to put yourself to sleep every single day
Dave Robertson Apr 2021
When the tiredness came
sad eyes regarded it as nothing new
in hindsight she’d always made space for it,
an unconscious pet bed

the lack of shock
as it crept to her was almost nice
fingers on imagined fur
she felt her edges numb
retract from the screech of daily headlines
and dumb fingered scrolling
that sparked electrocutions

pacing in slow circles
around the blue pulse of her core
it settled unrequested
and pretended a defence
while forever she reached for rest
Ryan O'Leary Sep 2018
It is a line from a prayer we learned
by rote in childhood Ireland.

I expect, our ability to recite poetry
is based on this form of mindlessness.

Hail Mary, Hail Cesar, Hail ******,
Hail to thee blithe spirit! (Shelly)

If you are doing nothing different
you are doing nothing.

It is this from of repetition that keeps
us in check, unrequested surrender.

We writers of life’s observations have
an obligation to the short form readers.

Condensing is a consideration of which
we must be cautious in calculating.

Therefore, I urgently request of you, my
captivated audience, put a capital s in title!
please make magic out of moments forgotten under footsteps of hungry giants seeking protection from the gods of tyranny and natural states of synchronicity
under the protection of benevolent forces you are free to breathe your own destiny into being
situations are suggesting that your soul families have become determined to develop and support the unfolding vision arising from the depths of your devotion to life
if you agree to receive an indeterminate amount of unrequested support and a loving increase in your creative life force you will be instantly and irrevocably infused with your solar angel’s heightened frequencies
time and space will be transformed into a breathtaking display of radiant energy released symphonically from the coronal ejection of your electromagnetic field in synchrony with eternity
having considered all possible outcomes what is likely to occur is not the most probable outcome but the path of least resistance to reframing all reality
independent of consequences unforeseen all reality is truly a dream being dreamt by an eternal being with a keen interest in preserving this dream’s integrity
having become one with the knower of the seen and the unseen knowing has become the sole means of interpreting an ever-evolving stream of continuous incongruity between the linear and the non-linear weave of interconnectivity
a tantra of inter-dimensional proportion cutting through an adamantine aversion to illusionary being is perpetually stretching my perception of infinity
letting go of a deeply ingrained resistance to the persistence of the experiences playing out their frequently repeating scenes
we are self-generating machines capable of tasting our own inner ecstasy and creating a destiny for our children’s children driven by love’s simple complexity
Left Foot Poet Mar 2020
<>

she raw whispered, edginess deep in her throat,
combo of delighted annoyance coated in
wary weariness of she-wanted-wonder,
what he wants that I can keep/take?

my untold secrets he knows how?
needy aches unsatisfied uncovering,
his knowings creates unfamiliar needs,
accentuates secretions of secrets discovering

did not ask for revelations without no resolution,
how dare he tense me in private places hid,
my properties aren’t his, my neck, eyes,
tonguing my senses is crazy senseless

this schema, this tracing of a figurine,
braising my body in his, its own sauces,
while perfume of mine unrequested are mined,
taken away in railway cars to his treasure houses

left utterly gagging and gasping
to hell with him, unbounded gone,
to heaven by him, I went bounding up,
giving me that everything I never desired

but only knew him as the my-mysterious,
tales unwritten yet tensed in the familiar,
poems elucidating, all that I didn’t
write, knew,  but never uttered


now, now! all are freely spoke aloud,
outed, foundering, highlighted and now
decomposing me, I’m honestly betrayed by
what he calls the sense, the knowing of the unknown





Friday, March 6th, Twenty Twenty,
2:47am
Nat Lipstadt May 2020
an unrequited, unrequested poem title that nonetheless,
(a fav. word, so economical) it’s a burr, an *** splinter,
festering, pestering, and it’s just easier to write it, cause
triple antibacterial ointment never cured a finger gone poem-
infectious

had two beers for breakfast, not my usual,
don’t care if you’re a Baptist or a Hassidic Jew,
I’m an ecumenical sorta guy, be informed that,
one was a long necked Corona (light), the other
a Pabst Blue Ribbon, which means I’m a ******* anti-Trump
globalist.

ain’t yet nine o’click, already had two fights with
my woman, is toastier a word? I took the negativity
position, but my heart wasn’t in it, cause I know me
words, was feeling muy ornery combative, a morning existential
verbalist.

the other was too infuriating, she asked for ten cherries,
after checking the calories per, which I knew and told her,
but she’s gotta check hit herself, so I brought a bowl uncounted,
annoyed, she anti-overage, threw the extras rudely on bed, she’s a
precisionist.

that I listen to music pretty much nonstop, even in my sleep,
and my fav. lyric of the late John Prine is from Montgomery & goes:
”But how the hell can a person, Go on to work in the mornin'
To come home in the evenin', And have nothing to say”

Amenist.

The German^^ dishwasher maschine summoned me near round
2 AM, TO INFORM ME  (vich is how de Choiman appliances speak)
without apology, that it was done with its multiplicity of cycles,
needy for emptying bowels forthwith, because that’s the way it is,
and wasn’t I gonna get up anyway, there are poets in Manila and Mumbai, waiting to speak their minds, re burning issues of life and pentameter, ah, them wisdom and wonderful people, all answer
seekers!

cause I’m an economist by habit, drink cups of coffee in trinity clips,
cause it’s efficiently economical, one less trip to the kitchen, and
anyone  who doesn’t drink at least three simultaneously, cannot be
redeemed by the verifiable angels in charge of saving coffee-colored
souls-tices.

my tempo is ironic, write poems too long for you attention deficit
disaffected teenagers, but haven’t read a book in years, cause
reading a poem is all I can manage nowadays, cause I’m a ****
attention deficit diseased old man, justifiable, when you got few days
leftist.

yes, I could go on, and on and on, but I hear your skin crawling and
sighs and moaning, enough already, while I don’t really care cause
every word I ever writ is a South Sea Pearl of something excellent,
truth is God has his ******* foot on my neck, whining way too loudly, “Jeez, enough” echoing your guttural cultural groaning, youse
alreadyists.

so I’m quitting here and letting y’all know, that I authored
the lyrics to American Pie, the longest song ever to be No.1,
the Don stole them, but as you can plainly see, it’s my style,^ when
we were drinking whisky and rye and told him it was copyrighted,
he laughed & said, I’m gonna copy them right down, ain’t that the kind of truthful ******* that drunk writers say because they think they are
“artistes.”

that’s about it for now, gotta do the breakfast dishes, so
Auf Wiedersehen, meine guten Männer und Frauen!


(yeah, yeah, learning German from Herr Bosch, the dish washer-man)
down by the levee? nah, Levy!
whew.

Tue, 26 May 2020 = 3rd of Sivan, 5780

10:30am
Wk kortas May 2018
The girls all made it out, though they’d scrambled:
Some wearing only the slinky tools-of-the-trade lingerie,
Others slightly more dishabille,
Clad in no more than a towel or men’s shirt
Offered up by a client in exchange
For not being caught in flagrante delicto.
There’d been no doubt who set the fire;
The boy had been right there the whole the whole time,
An had copped to the whole thing
(Without any prompting, extraordinary or otherwise)
To the sheriff’s boys on the spot,
Not that he would not have been first on the list of suspects,
As all and sundry knew he’d been barking mad
Since puberty had ambushed him,
With no one to mitigate the volcanic shock
Yoked upon his mind and body,
Each littered with thoughts and clumps of hair
Both unrequested and unwanted,
Mysteries he bore the burden of alone,
Not dreaming to inflict them upon neither mother nor father
Nor the preacher at the hard-shell Baptist church
(The boy invariably in the front pew,
Alternately scowling and leering as the preacher
Railed against liquor and cards and fornicatresses.)
The sheriff had, frankly, no clue in hell
Just what to do with the boy,
So he’d kept him in the county lockup
While they decided whether to try him as an adult,
Send him to the boys’ school out near Valmeyer,
Or just send him back to his parents
In the hope they could knock some sense into him,
But he’d hooted and howled and pounded the walls so much
They’d sent him to the juvy bughouse down in Carbondale,
After which he’d pretty much disappeared to myth and memory,
Save for the occasional regretful opinion
That he should have burned the house further outside town
(What with it being no more than a glorified barn,
Plus the girls there were a decidedly unclean lot,
Having continued to service the Cardinals’ minor leaguers
From across the river in Keokuk,
Even after they started to sign black boys)
And the story, though its veracity a subject of debate its ownself,
Of how he’d masturbated while the house burned,
Spilling his seed onto the burning embers
Until, seeing his flaccid, doomed member in his hand,
He’d broken down into a fit of inconsolable crying,
Beyond hope, beyond any possible reclamation.
Well, yes, she and also me were the unforeseen ones who used to walk past crossroads,
with the gladly given hands unmistakably glued together, but that was then, or should we say, way back then, when everything
still smelled intimately of hawthorn, red roses and valerian,
and, all of this in a sharp contrast to the stench that spread
the unrequested farewell, as it was unbearable in fact, even a little comparable maybe to a too heavy box filled with precious metal on the poor back of the lame, as you could call it also something
like an all but proverbial mistreatment that split the notion
of a misunderstood love in half, as it even mirrored what happened to that innocent elm in the forest of life, where a zealous candlelight that spoke of love was suddenly put out
by the wrong hands, but, yes, it was perhaps the hand
of this or the holy hand of another God that forgot us not in syllables of the un-blue,
when we see, now, how we possibly made it through...in the ending story of another me
and another you...


So, I guess nothing is actually what it appears to be,
as sometimes, yes, sometimes one better doesn't has to try
to believe in something like a realistic reality,
"unless very briefly, but in a fleeting moment",
a murmuring voice spoke softly to me,
when I saw how an outcast nomansland became the for us, by pulverizing time, elected destiny
in the no longer waltzing and worn down cliches
of a 'to be or a not to be' in a Shakespearean way
when the love that was ours slowly leaped as, yes, then, we both saw how it went away~
emzee Nov 2023
Ever searched for treasures?.
That have an infinite value,
Thats all above what can measured.

Some treasures cant be found.
Some cant be owned.

What in our life which is outnumbered,
Those treasures who appeared.
Those who lives in our core unrequested.
Those FRIENDS who never disappeared.

I named them
The Living Treasures🤌🏻
The love bugs.

Love is like diabetes you have it and live with the malady
taking the right medicine but is not going away.
When a man falls in love, he thinks he is in heaven and follows
where love takes him until it dawns on him, he loves
a person who doesn´t love him or pretends to love him.
Whether she leaves him or he leaves her, the pain is equal.
It has no cure only a lifelong sadness that like a shadow
is always with him, if he had been more caring, she might
have stayed, but he knows in his heart it is not so.
Those who care about him say, if you stay at a bus stop a bus will
stop, but, it isn´t not going his way.
Unrequested love is like diabetes he has to accept and go on with
the business of living, after all, sadness makes a person more
understanding to other people’s problem.
ymmiJ Jun 2020
streaming information
unrequested intrusions
filters seem futile

— The End —