Poet In Trouble - Hello Poetry

May 2014

Third Mate Third

the third mate last,
lashed to the helm,
a punishment, a lashing
for having
read and let
the taste of words unkempt,
hash my essence,
thus pelted,
excised, my flesh,
unto a wearied
death by a thousand cuts

my artistic force bleeds,
I am realistic,
there is no
superman savior,
there is only
life after death,
where dear god,
last wishing, it is a world of
silence perfected

I know I promised no more
on this shopworn, discounted topic,
but I read and I weep
my essence seeps, pores pouring,
tried the ancient cure of ignoring,
but anguished curiosity begs
for bliss
asking,
just try once more,
knowing that ignorance
can never be blissful

confounded, words indelible,
the poems tattooed trite,
with an unheard last sigh,
what makes them think
every stray dog of a thought
deserves sharing

tender each with word
with such selected caring,
arguing back and forth,
and always losing
and always winning
the argument over the
Final Selection,
the process holocausts me,
I am not a survivor anymore,
just an over killed victim

to tattered ribbons sliced,
no seamstress can resurrect what once was,
endlessly they celebrate their flesh's cutting,
they cannot know their words,
alpha beta me to where,
the ink is drained and flushed,
and withered fingers lose their moist urgent,
discomfited composure

and

all the words I know are a plague
upon my shotgun house,
I am bleeding, but that does not mean
my poetic permission lives,
it only means my blue blood
surrenders it oxygen upon contact
with an atmosphere of trite
and I swear to you it hurts to much to

write,
hurts more than breathing

do not write to me of your pain,
write instead with painstaking care
and let me read thy crafted composition
and say this,

*thus I am staked to you,
penetrated in ways ,
that each cut of thine,
ready welcomed
for it is sublime,
a human humidifier,
putting back the moisture lost
by tears shed over wastrel poems

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

Hey Teach! Can I ask ya something?

for my tattoo girl

am admitting,
revealing, believing, expecting,
asking direct,
no inferring, no discerning,
needs answers,
need *more,
need art in my life
need teach in my life,
need teach me
how
what
to ask for more,

when get one sweet answer,
get two new quests,
get two new queries,
need you to teach me
how to ask, how to never be satisfy,
anything else would be madness

Punch counterpunch
http://hellopoetry.com/amanda-muller-1/

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

How to break up by text or email

Check your courage, your humanity, your common decency, your *****, in the cloakroom of pathetic

2. Spend not a nanosecond thinking about how it would feel if it were done to you, reminding yourself how sad, justified, and relieved you feel

3. Debate tween text and email, choose text cause it is shorter, less time consuming, and packs more punch

4. Be proud of your courageous forthrightness in dealing with human problems so directly

5. Immediately (or prior) text all your friends what you have done

6. Make plans for a party so you can begin trolling the field.  Of course not! (invite the ex, that would be cruel)

7. Proceed to smear your ex in person, in secret, to justify how good and kind and used you are and were.  Laser focus on new target person who really turns you on

8. Show around all the ex's break up poems for laughs.

9.  Shampoo and rinse your soul with lye, and repeat, 2 - 3 times a week. If you notice any self improvement, call your doctor immediately!

Happened to a friend (email but sans the cruelty). Then I remembered my ex did the same to me - told "everybody" she was divorcing me, and then had our clergyman call me the Friday before we were supposed to go away with my son and his then new wife, to give me the news. No, I will never forgive her. And yes, she still went on vaca with us but didn't tell the kids till they were leaving.

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

Where all Poets Go

Heaven, Where all Poets Go

dedicated soully to Kripi Mehra
who unknowingly commissioned this piece
with her love and feeling for those who
dare to fare on just words, only to
sally
forth unafraid and unashamed
~~~~~~~

to the conclusion cut,
not knowing how we know what we know,
       knowing that of this cut,
this one,
as real as anything worth writing about,
not knowing how but demonstrating a modicum of erudition

yet,
clarity this time no stranger,
no remonstrating, endless debating, easy
come, and even easier go,
all poets (and lost-to-early children) go to heaven,
even the bad ones

stop with the teasing give us the reasoning

nah nah nah always in a hurry to get to the
bottom, move on, write yet another,
restless young'uns, girls and fellows,
even you old, small ones, who still can't spell
your own name
or rhyme, those slow mo yokels, national symbols,
the ones that seem never to ever catch their star,
the mothers across all oceans, who need childlike tendering,
Indian girl chiefs, boat captain historians, word magi-bus-riding hallway eavesdroppers, **** British girls, nurses, wonderers and after-life lusters,
burnt baby healers

learn that this self seal-selected profession
is an endless deal, profession rhymes with heaven,
you need to luxuriate in the long journey,
pink patience before you raise you glass

but OK, just this once,
the secret you have may have already read!
pass it along, as it was given to me
by one of us, poet laureate far better than I ever could be

Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
     reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
     reading "Keep Off." ^

that is what poets do daily with each ecrive,
each line of metered musique mystique,
and with stanzas lighter than air,
a piece of you breaks off, floats upward,
and when the day is done,
the struggling striving breaking apart,
be now over,
all poets go to heaven to collect themselves,
their entire pieces of writings, called their collected works,
all the pieces reassembled,
you are at last, at last, at rest, whole, satisfied and undenied,
where poets, brave soldiers of all ages deserve to be,
heaven resting

Kripi Mehra: "A slogan- Always remain a fool
I wish I could write a poem on the title " Let's Convert Hello Poetry Into Heaven"..."
But you did, you did....

^ see http://hellopoetry.com/poem/600071/the-sounding-foam-of-primal-things/ where Mr. Sandburg is credited in full

"So raise your glass if you are wrong
In all the right ways, all my underdogs
We will never be, never be anything but loud
And nitty, gritty, *****, little freaks
Won't you come on and come on and
Raise your glass!
Just come on and come on and
Raise your glass!"
Lyrics by Pink, "Raise Your Glass"

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

I am circumcised, therefore, I enunciate...

I am circumcised, therefore, I enunciate...

circumcised: to purify spiritually

On the eighth day,
from my nativity,
circumcised,
as is the custom of my
wandering tribe.

marked thusly,
perma-identity carded,
thusly begins the path,
a pink-bricked road this one,
not to the Mighty Oz,
no phony curtain pulled aside,
where anyone goes to get
spiritual purification
for a price

Ah, you suspected something else,
something explicit,
not me~style,
give you honey,
road provisions,
come along for the observing his
clickety clackty clock

Ready?

For where we venture there is only
one exit,
And you are so not ready - I am who I am and I am
not ready too...

every line an enunciation,
every stanza an annunciation,
Angel Gabriel, a solo duo, unlike
Beyoncé and Jesus
we be on our way to any kind of purity,
poetry can buy

who knows what awaits us,
could be catholic, universal,
even the uncircumcised
get a chance to enunciate.

let me offer a clarification.

proclamations and sensations,
conditions and exploitations,
brown eyed girls, and surfer boys,
functions and malfunctions too,
abbreviations or adjudications,
conjugations in the congregation,
exhumation, the final excommunication,
I shun none,

I enunciate this:
false starts and junction boxes,
too many so so tired,
when can I lay down my shovel
and cease the decreasing deceasing of the body

this day nears complete,
and soon to eat
the last meal,
and still I ask

when can I lay down my shovel,
when will purity be mine,
my spirit's circumstances
repeat the commercial,
I am circumcised, therefore, I enunciate...

forgive my abstrusion,
my metaphors always offer perfect laxity,
choose the interpretation that pleases most
and my drift is toward the end of days,
when will my brow be a motif of
anointment and crowning head birth?

This is my Enunciation.

I cannot yet lay down the shovel,
and this writ is as of yet, still uncircumcised -
completely incomplete, it will be finished
when the spirit says
you are the purity,
the trinity of two hands holding two others holding two others holding two others and the chain is perfect because
it is broken perfectly, a forever repetitive respective handle with care
process

Forgive my visionary words that
give little clarity,
so summary due you,
This is my
Pronoun citation
I am
I am circumcised, therefore, I enunciate
on my way to the purity of spirit.

It just happened on the way to sitting down to supper.

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

In the end, where is the courage?

In the end, where is the courage?
~~~~~~

a festering poem~notion
that can not be kept down,
in the making, long,
in the scrivening, short

even the simplest life,
the most ordinary,
cannot ever avoid the question,
where is the courage?

this journey, near complete,
packages delivered, dust and mud,
a canvas of the well worn, conceded and deeded,
nearly done, in the corner almost all that's needed,
a scrawled illegible, encircled set of initials

but never mind that,
for that doesn't obviate, or explicate,
what is important, no matter where and when
you are GPS dotted on your particular travelogue,
the quest, the question that does not come or e'er go,
but permanent, like the dimple, given at birth,
where is the courage?

threescore and more and therefore puzzling,
what matters now this solution in need of resolution?
this easy to provide the clarification notification,
perhaps you are young and the future looming large,
courage in ample supply, for when and where
life requires resuscitation, even enunciation,
you easy answer, here, within,
below the surface, just underneath,
at the ready, in service, a call awaiting when asked,
where is the courage?

the sword of mine so oft drawn and bloodied,
my exploits, I unashamed, but yet new war cries recirculate
and they call out "give us the veterans,"
whose courage spoke of and tale recorded,
let them lead us once again to succor and success!

they cannot know or be told,
my chain mail armour, my heart's amour,
rusted and weakened, and battle memories
too well recalled give me not wells to draw upon,
but wells to be drowned in, fears of fear of it,
it cannot be done again, the supply all drawn down,
the well overused and dry, history revisionists
cannot bring back what once was just by asking,
where is the courage?

the temple in Jerusalem sacked and burnt,
but the Israelites returned and rebuilt,
in ages and days when miracles were a dime a dozen,
no one could not imagine exile permanent,
but it came and lasted but tho many,
ceased to believe, a hardy few knew the answer,
when the the quest, the question that does not come or go,
was flaunted both to and by the fearful, the tired~souled,
where is the courage?

here, within, but this time dig much deeper,
under grime and desultory historic rhyme, it be buried,
just sip and sup of it, but a taste will reignite hope hopefully,
of
what is only dormant, but never gone complete,
that is what they whisper, in my one good ear,
but I know better, tho eyes dimmed,
my heart replies, the inky dark answer
that I hate but recognize as truth,
when it inquires
where is the courage?*

what matters where,
when, when,
there is no choice,
you know what to choose,
choose the pretense in hopes
that the muscle memory will return,
and restore what was once yours,
and must be yours, yet again
and if you fail,
fail well
for that will be you at the last, and the
lasting medal of courage tendered

Nessun dorma, None shall sleep.
This I know all too well,
you cannot leave or retire from the struggle
We call life, and
Tho my chin upon my chest weary rests,
Nonetheless, it my fingers under yours,
Under you chin, raising it up,
For that is what I have left,
That is what I do.

Feb. 3, 2014

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

"This filled a need I had no name for"

just when the bitter
is not on the edges
of my spoiled food,

but my repast totaled and complete,

just when the heartache of living
infects the legs the head even
the fingertips I abuse leaking all I fear here

when composing,

just when I read another 1000 daily new tryings to say me bad sad utilizing
moon June eyes scarred scraps of love and pity-me broken rants,
cants of can't,
trending my deep desired purpose of delighting and inspiring
you into the thunderous waterfall of never ending poetic oblivion,

and I wonder what the hell am I doing here
(spending countless hours, draining personal  batteries)

then you tell me that some words,
words they say I wrote,
apple-core me
pushing momentarily out/aside the fear, the embattled hubris,
the anguish, the desperate wishes, you tell me just this:

"This filled a need I had no name for"

I am weeping only, ashamed and unashamed,
redeemed, you used my coupon, and spent it
on redeeming me
in a manner unknown and here I am composing once more having sworn I am done here,
only now to decompose myself in privy chambers for my dearest ones,
for too many words come to me, telling me of their hurting,
used up by overuse, crusted cliches,
drowning in images that no longer reflect in any mirror,

and you tell me that just what I felt,
wrote down precisely that,
one must  always
ask for more than you can give,
my communication into your sensations fulfilled a need,
some thing that

"filled a need I had no name for"

and it occurs me this is the precise atomic second
to put away my deckling paper, put the pencil down,
lock up that old sewing box, pink and white striped, where the pained and joyous monthly storage fee needs payment due,
where are kept yellowed poem-papers that they won't hesitate to throw out when cleaning out my last effects,
needs shutting down,
the last episode of this personal reality show,
"breaking __" (fill in the blanks with un blanched original sounds)

what more needs doing,
I inquire of my narcissism,
capstone, the keystone brick preserved,
what more could ever be achieved
having tendering myself raw and distinct, fine and finished,

there is no more I could ever write, or need to,
and I am contented in a way that my I ego
happily announces it's surrender and the end is not lacking in finality,
for this is the way to go out,

for you have given me something
weeping only, ashamed and unashamed, at last,
at the longingest at last,
filling a need I think knew existed and now no longer,
for who cannot say I am not whole,
holy satisfied after seeing this gift,
for you have all gifted me something I dare not,
even, did not know to how ask for,
nor know that I could ever give,
out loud and conscious,
and now need never ask for again,
but give
again and again
and again

Thank you Emily Rose of Texas.
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/593181/ask-for-more-than-you-can-give/

Poetry by the numbers (in too many ways) diminishes me.
I cannot cease to write., but I paint by the letters, not by the numbers. These numbers corrupt, so now I must learn to be oblivious, and not obvious.
This poem is me exiting stage right-aligned, but not left.

"It is not how you start, but how you finish"
Not done, just private.
To a new standard am I held, everything new from now on must
fill a need we had no name for...

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

Poet In Trouble

See please, if you have not yet,
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/594328/this-filled-a-need-i-had-no-name-for/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

got myself in trouble,
found me a problem
all of my own making/creating,
all my own to solve,
all by my lonesome

put/found myself
in a room with no exit at all,
only bookshelves upon the wall

with bookshelves full of
great poets who when they wrote,
they filled a need that had no name

said to myself,
how am I going to
get out of here,
or
find a space for me on that bookshelf?
or both?

this new standard, self-imposed,
discovering, exposing, sensing,
filling the aches and hopes
with a new satisfaction

it occurs me this is the precise atomic second
that if, can place the keystone,
then, can build the edifice,
floor by floor,
room by room,
poem by poem

so, trapped in this electronic/platonic youthful room,
a room with too many words,
but none mine,
my problem begins

so I have begun to solve my own one-problem,
alpha bet, word, line, stanza, poem,
one at a time

and never post what never meets the highest
standard of mine own creation,
fulfill
*the need you did not know needs filling

I have drowned in the geyser up, the waterfall down of too many poems. I have decided to post less, but hopefully better. I will read more but say less.
I will be among those anonymous reads,
of whom, oft wondered,
who are you, you, who read and move on
with a nary a moment to comment or like, or dislike?
Look for my messages tho, for via stealth technology, I will be present here.

To write special, and leave special on the table, my goal now.
From here on, I write for me and to the highest standard, expecting to fail, hoping to succeed.
Knowing this:
I define success when I put the pen down,
having left breath ,tears, a poet's and a child's dream, and sweet perfume
as the residue. Those of you, the readers, who come along, treasured but fewer, share my meal and leave the table satisfied and tell me too,
that you too write to me,
you will fill a need that we did not know needed filling,
One poem at a time.

*“Get yourself in trouble. If you get yourself in trouble, you don't have the answers. And if you don't have the answers, your solution will more likely be personal because no one else's solutions will seem appropriate. You'll have to come up with your own.”

"society is much too problem-solving oriented. It is far more interesting to [participate in] ‘problem creation’ … You know, ask yourself an interesting enough question and your attempt to find a tailor-made solution to that question will push you to a place where, pretty soon, you’ll find yourself all by your lonesome — which I think is a more interesting place to be."*

― Chuck Close*

Feb 2014

Nat Lipstadt

Ask for more than you can give

read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance is the only concert
the imbalance is the the only constant

how do I know this?
what are my credentials?
you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know of this matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred
thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient
then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move
off

and begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation

tired of love poems, especially my own. Saying I love you is like reading a newspaper.... A constant of new stories....that are discarded for constant recycling ~ you better be writing a new story constantly or whatever.. But the audience of love druggies is huge so the ****** keeps on coming and I wonder what the fk do they know

Parts of, maybe all, of this poem inspired by this graphic which says what I tried to write...

(¯`v´¯)
`·.¸.·´
¸.·´¸.·¨) ¸.·¨)
(¸.·´ (¸.·´ (¸.·¨¯`♥

Sometimes you may notice that your heart has unexpectedly started to race or pound, or feels like it has skipped a beat. These sensations are called palpitations. For most people, palpitations are a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence. Others have dozens a day, some so strong that they feel like a heart attack.

Most palpitations are caused by a harmless hiccup in the heart’s rhythm. A few reflect a problem in the heart or elsewhere in the body. Doctors can be quick to attribute them to anxiety, depression, or some other emotional or psychological problem. Although sometimes that’s exactly right, it’s important to first rule out harmful heart rhythms and other physical causes.

A palpitation primer

Palpitations are extremely common. Different people experience palpitations in different ways. You might feel as though your heart is fluttering, throbbing, flip-flopping, or pounding, or that it has skipped a beat. Some people feel palpitations as a pounding in the neck; others as a general sense of unease.

Some palpitations appear out of the blue and disappear just as suddenly. Others are linked with certain activities, events, or feelings. Exercise and physical activity can generate palpitations, as can anxiety or stress. Some people notice palpitations when they are drifting off to sleep; others, when they stand up after bending over.

— The End —