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  Mar 2019 abecedarian
Nat Lipstadt
your command is not my wish, Ilion

”give us your entrails of the hidden innocent truths of oft too quiet souls, a soul bearing the realities of who mankind is at its root”   Ilion Gray

it slaps me as a usual unusual,
an unexpected realization thanks to your in-sight,
that all our wordplay is just gardening for life’s lost collections;
out of order, badly memorized memory markers;

one must snout-root around in the backyard for the
entrails and the bones of generations of pets that are
hollowed out hallows,
kept in a sanctified corner crypt rarely visited

a lost treasure of honorable burials with pomp and circumstance,
many Star War figures play-interred by a boy who’s now a grownup, with two children but doesn’t come to visit cause he has man-size responsibilities and his California backyard is so very far
from the ‘park’ of his youth

strange that we hide the innocent truths
that are neither shameless and seamless,
but yet, nonetheless
warrant safekeeping in nearby dirt treasury chests,
lest,  just in case, to see the future,
we need retrieve
brilliant bright flashbacks kept below deck,
just nearby, just in case,
the ball bearings of the soul requiring viscous lubricating

souls grow quieter with age, even as the
grunting of bent-over digging up what is down down,
grows daily more noisy,
as deeper depths require the work of
pluming  and plumbing,
as time adds inches of soil, just as a tree adds an annual ring

you smile outwardly at what you inwardly auto-wince,
as you think twice about
what truths you may uncover, for better or for worse,
too many,
best left soiled encumbered,
for great is the risk of soiling oneself
when uncovering the
recovery of the best buried

but what was your wish dear Ilion,
transmigrates, and is now a command center  of
self awareness, realities, are scars,
some worn proudly and others with unbearable shame,
uncomfortably uncovered in roots of nightmares
watering in the
subterranean subconscious

the dreams we do not wish for,
come and command nonetheless from the way way back of the
chambers of the backyard brain, a reminder that
quiet souls should avoid the trails possibly leading to
grand entrances of entrails,
sadly admitting full well,
one cannot hide from risible, mocking, loathsome,
guilty truths to the surface rising

when I give you of myself,
exposing old roots hastens their endings,
exposed, they cannot be replanted,
not in earth, not in concrete, not in brain cells,
is that old friend,
what you truly wish?
March 12, 2019 8:52am

those of you who react and comment so eloquently and insightfully to my poems, too often seed the next one and the next one! who can claim no inspiration when the commune nourishes me continuously...
  Feb 2019 abecedarian
Nat Lipstadt
being a poet is not planned

~for Gabriella Garcia~

~~

a sixteen old soul says she understands,
being a poet is not planned,
forcing an old mans re-collection of the first time,
he made love to a virginal white
papyrus with muscles trembling,
body bent, chest bursting a rockets red glaring,
eyes marking the sheets with salty drip spots

what possessed the wrist veins
to wrest a cheap ballpoint pen to transfuse pain,
in a semaphore of uncoded ink blotches,
what was he thinking

was he thinking?

that it was an ejection
that it was an *******
that it was a tribulation expiation
that it was a tribute explanation?

that it was an injection
that it was a circumspection inspection
that it was a circumscision surgery of emotional complexion
excising an infection with a written genuflection?

try, but no might, the first is subsumed
by the thousands that followed dutifully
though his one poem  flawless, expertly recalled,
it will always be the next,
and unplanned just like this one too

who anointed his brow, the hair and forehead,
with oil pure, dripping down onto, into his cut cain marker,
who is not answering a query relentless
is this his plan, his appointment,
is this his flawed excellence,
is this his imperfect penance perpetual?

knowing well and full
now

the unplanned is his plan,
it’s his faceted flaws
that refract his coloraturas


~~

upon this he reflects,
praying that
god protect the
young poets
from planning
____
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2893127/unplanned
  Dec 2018 abecedarian
Nat Lipstadt
Her Name is Woman


~for Woman~

The body replenishes, even the signs of decay
that come for reparation,
Positive confirmation
her organism survives, alive,
tree circles yet measuring time,
Till a devitalizing time comes, when,
this cellular process concedes degeneration

Then the wondering shifts; new facts sifted;
now the reckoning is not a calculation of
Mortality but of her living immortality;
dive to divine neath her black cloaking, reading
Wounded word revelations, her own Bible stories,
giving nomination to Woman-name

The long shadows that her souls excavations cast,
costs of her stories individual,
Highwaymen robbed her with glass knives
but each remaining black hole lights a story, lost, but
Burning icy inviting, pulling us into book boxes inside,
compost of sheets of composed white clarity

Care not that each riddling reference is obliged to be
oblique, inexplicit,
Woman her name, all encompassing,
her views codified in lines of faith,
Woman, is that not
a mining, and a manifest,
of hidden birthing,
comforting us in warm shades of
Human courage


12/26/18  5:51pm
For the poet Woman
  Oct 2018 abecedarian
city of flips
he introduces himself
saying quiet, but slipping in, firm:

“something he knows for sure,
no is no”

I, (19, f)

replying, smiling
saying louder, firmer:

“something she knows for sure,
yes is yes”

and he says

“yes, ma’am,”

returning her smile, so shyly,
while blushing, so loudly,
thinking he said something dumb,
looking down at his shuffling feet,
covered in worn out cowboy boots

I like this guy
I like this man.
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