Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
824 · Oct 2019
Fall Cleaning / Au Revoir
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2019
an au revoir here penned,
man on a cliff doing a spring, fall over cleaning

a few rusty drafts still needy for completely
but you know times up when tide rushing out
and on your leg is a big red rash that wasn’t there
when you waded in a few minutes earlier

tastes changes, like seasonal entrees on a restaurant menu,
seasons come and go, reappearing, but last years dish,
out of style, except for the occasional recalling

the body and the work must together concert,
poetry like a lifetime of lovers, you leave them behind
for loving them too well, using up the verses left inside,
then comes the time when love dries up and the words concomitant

the nighttime scraps will still be kept in that sewing box,
that storage space rented on a 99 year lease
but now for my eyes lonely only, this nub is stubbed,
this last one, at last, succinct

au revoir mes amis
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2015
https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright

well done Mr. Zuckerberg,
but just to colorize your noble intent
with a corollary,
a lump of coal,
for you,
from my colliery,
so too,
is my human right to
disconnect, reject,
if my privacy abused,

not yours to take and trash

my human connectivity far greater value on any scale,
than your smart/good/profit intentions
to expand your product's universe

keep in mind that in my version of the small print,
is writ:

what's mine is not yours to mine
with reckless disregard,
though you couch your takings
so nicely and legal

my right to live free,
to disconnect,
ever present, and oft considered,
for the gluten of life is in the voice,
the real touch,
not in the adverts
so cleverly engineered, to insert


regarding Facebook,
I query daily,
is this time spent of true worth,
the wheat, the whole grains of life
too oft lost,
suffocated by the voluminous and volubly trash,
by the unending absorbing waterfall of
"I didn't need to know that"

for now, Mr. Mark,
just
keep this in mind,
one of my social curation skills,
on my settings tab inserted,
is one listed as
nuclear,
a/k/a

**bye-bye
Oct. 18~22 2015
823 · Jul 2017
half ring
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2017
half ring*

a present, a thank you compliment by way of a poem, for the zealous, tiny, poetess spark who writes exquisitely and calls herself Cynthia Henon*
~~~
strange old night-stands, a stained tan blonde wood
that's going ancient grey, but still handsome in a fitting way,
the front drawer hand painted floral in what I choose
to believe are by Italian hands in Italian reds and greens,
not so fancy as I make it sound, but worn and durable and
not overly functional but two silent, uncomplaining eye witnesses to a ten year ancient, greying love affair

wood ages, human eyes squint, failing to counteract the minute, advancing daily dimming, not paying close attention to the
Richter magnitude of the accumulated changes

the morning coffee ritual as catholic as morning mass,
a straw woven coaster to protect the sun blanched top,
hardly necessary, just a good habit, one of the  rituals that glue,
that couples use to keep the coupling intact

the cumulative subtle changes, the crackling sound unheard, the cracks in everything, even in the human tissue,
breaking, the papered over filler of purposeful ignorance,
cannot forever resist the erosion of the cancer of the
taking for granted

place the coffee cup half on, half off the coaster, un-noticing,
leaving half a ring that will now never disappear, never be
completed, causing her to fly into rage that rips the
complacent band-aids, worn dikes that were holding back the barricaded tears, but the sea~see
level was always rising and though visible, the revelation remained unchosen


later that day, I drive away forever with Yo-Yo Ma riding shotgun,
in charge of map reading and consolation music, thinking
half ring, half ring, half ring, half ring,
an embolism of symbolism, good for a play on words,
and a couple of poems about uncoupling

8:22am 7/1/17
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2014
First posted here on August 22, 2013
~~~~~

Every summer, I relearn a new language.
Every winter, it departs for warmer climes,
And its charms and naked arms,
Its own alphabet,
Clean forgot.

Multi-lingual in the summer's peculiar
One language, one aleph bet,
But mega-millions of dialects,
Know them all cold, know them all, hot.

I speak Woman.

Summer is soft, shapely, sweet,
Clean, bare, lush in a sparse way,
And Woman is spoken thusly.
There are no harsh sounds,
Guttural exclamations, nein!

I speak Woman.

There is no ugly in the summer.
Ugly being an ugly word.  
It cannot exist in an atmosphere of
Sun, greenery, sand, carefree days, vacations, no school.
There are no ugly women in the summer.

I could take this writ many places,
But if you are sputtering sexist or other labeling words,
Could not give a good *******, because in the summer,
There is no ugly, there is no prejudice.

And I still speak
Woman with an almost perfect fluency,
au naturel.

Gym clothes, short shorts, A-line skirts swishing in the breeze,
High, god, so high the heels, flats clip clopping, flip flopping
all over my heart,

But, it is the bare arms and the hints of summer
Cleavage, the short skirts, body hugging one piece fabrics
stretching from here to down there that do not
Hint,
The shoulder strap of the underthings that asks,
That commands me:
Wonder where it leads too...

Even the light shoulder wrap
Casual over bare shoulders slung, at night, mocks me,
Like gift wrapping with a smile demure...a teasing blindfold...

All these say:
Write us poetry in our very own tongue,
Woman.

Will oblige.

I curve with curve of the ***** and
invert with  S arc of the waist,
Mystifying, how it is the designed place
For my hands to grasp, and never fails.

The crayola colors of flesh variations,
Boggle the senses... How can tan and pale,
Dark and Light
Have so many
Symphonic variations?
Adagio, slow and leisurely, a pas de deux
For two eyes, then a
Timpani crash and thunder,
Just as Byron wrote:
"music arose with its voluptuous swell,"
Yes, swell...swell...voluptuous swell

Enough.
My eloquence, no match for my
Fluency.

Late August, and my vocabulary is already
Diminishing.
I forget how to say in
Woman
Without you I am nothing,
With you, I am more than everything,

Tho I can no longer say it well,
It is is still true and
Beyond belief.

August 2013
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
new year notes to self at 4:30am

too cynical
to pseudo-resolve stuff
just because
an arbitrary mark
the calendar affords.

nonetheless,
the mind endlessly calculates,
then recalculates,
rinse and repeats,
responsibility, "success,"
middle class living death

pretend erase the slate,
as if this prologue was not
a sequel,
but the..

the squeeze of guttural noises
stuck in my throat
prevent raucous breathing,
stifle noisy disbelieving,
lest I awake all the babes
sleeping cozy nearby,
trusting in me,
so I communicate
to the others
who are awake
at 4:30am,
offering them but
a plain white lamentation,
cry with me,
"I know, I know."

Jan 3, 2013

.
818 · Jun 2024
East River Spring Morn
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
raw April morn,
daffodils be looking
prematurely silly,

now a May morn,
daffodils no more,
irises blooming

though May itself
a hybrid of twixt
and cousin tween,
coldish morns,
summer afternoons,
evening gusts
winter reminders

yesterday, walked
50 blocks in 80+
Farenhot, sweaty much
and hypocrisy
now reigning,
oh my summer man
you your self,
selfishly forgot,
forgot the other side
of the coin, thinking
hot hot hot Not,
cranky old codger man,
yup, yup, yup.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2015
~~~

"is it just me?"
this habitual guest,
nay, by now, alien resident,
this panting ponderous puzzlement,
so habitual, it has founded a room of its own
in a secluded space
upon mine own, contested Temple Mount

oft it strolls about the premises of me,
arm-in-arm with his pernicious cousin,
a fellow imploding interrogatory,
"what if?"
these thigh-slapping cacklers both, living off in the hollows
of the doubtful spaces they create,
cozy, corner-bounded criers, walk-abouters in thine recesses hidden

today, just one more inflection point in this man's life,
of which your are a welcomed observer,
and if but ******,
then let it be of thy own self,
for well imagine we, this pesky pairing,
that never venture far or away from their companionship
of any of us
friends of friends

I have no answer for either torturous query,
this answer, unsurprising and well expected,
for these visitors from a planet pernicious,
are astronomer-logged in your own constellation,
the dimmed light they shed, sheds no light at all,
having arrived light years after they were first posed

how can I counsel thee, that their risky business
should be routine dispatched fast away to another galaxy,
for here I am failing and flailing, well into my ending years,
yet waking once more in bed,
with this uncouth pair today,
haunting mine well worn, well trod paths

have you no guidance, no solvable words to defer
the solvable drip of doubt with which they tint our souls?


the only defense I am aware,
is to answer-deflect them with
yet another half-inquiry, half-commandment
that resides in the wellsprings
of thine best, supplanting them,
a goal to be,
by asking a twice-harder supposition

how can I,
this new morning glory, 
this new clean babe borning,
be a better human?

~~~
7:01 AM
October 27, 2015
nyc

just another life altering day.,
then begins with an innocuous coffee-spilling,
and from within its puddle,
this questioning poem
born
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2024
“the voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind.”

<>
            
“Even nowadays, most of us have speeches from plays and films jangling around our heads, alongside things that have actually been said. Both contribute to what Michael Oakeshott called “the voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind.” Whether in verse or prose, there are some fictional speeches that, once heard, cannot be unheard. You find that you live with them.”
~from~
Things Worth Remembering: Nothing Is Lost Forever
By Douglas Murray 9/8/24
<>

the quote grabs the throat, a two handed grip,
but gentling, to ensure it does not go forgot,
or to the bottom the pile, or just another
never truly born, or premature to die,
guised as a drafty passing breeze,
a tickle too fickle, impersistent,
to be a poem unto itself

my thots impure, for I see, I believe,
that poetry is the conversation in all
we do have,
those that lyric wax when
one of the five big guys,
jive, sensory excited, the whiff, taste,
licks the visionary
of the need to be a completed
exegesis, a work to be telling
told

but I am old, my powers weaken daily,
the resistance training recommended,
by brain muscle, fiercer resisted

so reach for the quill,
blue lined sheet,
a cute puppy looking paper,
up for the “surprise” treat
just for extending a paw,
these humans so ease pleased,
you see,
here comes a poem
bout
poetry being bout every any,
even, the great creator struggling
to put out fresh daily,
new &  improved work,
after a six day historic period,
that demanded a poem-alll-day entity,
entitled as a sabbatical day
of rest.

Here I too rest as well,
too many conversations need starting,
fires requiring verbal refueling,
and my own voice hearing a,
“get up, get out of bed,
drag a comb across your head,”
talk, and plant those newly fallen acorns,
and let the conversations produce
giant oak trees,
and
a plenitude of poems


9/9/24
douglas murray voice of poetry lipstadt
814 · Jan 2023
Her hands lay gently joined
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2023
Her hands lay gently joined,
her breathing breaching the fortress of a bedroom’s silence

clasped as one, in the very early morn,
her fingers move in motion, wavering, *******
recalling a violin instrument, an unseen youthful memory,
her internality rumbles with a quiet litany,
an indecipherable host of jumbled mumbles,
a cacophony accompaniment to her quietude of steady breathing

I,
study her, as I have done so many mornings prior,
once more, capriciously slipping back inside/beside our bed,
to restart My Sunday morning quiet-like, for as is my wont,
have awoken with the morning dark, treading room to room,
filling my Winslow Homer’s Macintosh mug, with 19.7 fluid oz. of Jamaican beans freshly ground, an instigating odor, a fragrancy
most contradictory, soothing, nonetheless, a steadying, yet a
blaring wake-up call

She, clad my in-her new festive plaid pajama top,
a creamy fabric that begs for my I-dare-not stroke,
is easy prone and that,
pleases me, for I wish to bed beside her, letting her rest
till her mind texts her body, no more! or the mumbles grow
grow nagging onerous and stirring and when her disposition is
well-disposed,  she stirs too,
after her fashion

with a dancer’s grace, her arm slowly rises, resting airborne,
fingers arrayed, splayed and Balanchine arranged, (1)
pointing upwards,
lingering until
the arm falls impromptu, sudden,
as a crescendo striking an apex,
her risen hip-mound,
imitating a bell’s clapper woke reverb,
and she sleeps no more…

<>

Sun Jan 15 2022
in the wee daylight  hours
a true

https://sab.org/scenes/suki-says-part-1-balanchine-hands/
814 · Sep 2015
precisely astounding
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2015
gift me,
untwist me,
unasked,
with kindness, caring,
holiday wrapped,
with a grace
that is
reserved for humans,
that is

precisely astounding

that I need thank
whatever deity that breathed life into
this sinking vessel this morning
for the opportunity to state,
untwisted, unasked,
thank you...
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2019
~for my poet friends who will understand exactly
the nature of our ailment/adventure~

it begins when once poem titled,
which, a first clue, nothing more, a mumbled prophesy,
an arrow to duration & direction home but unknown,
a one-way stop sign neatly lettered in the
smallest sized letters with the disclaimer above

you sojourn to an uncultivated land, not sown.

you travel to places “finding out what you
don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out,”
no guide, no well trodden path, no cultural prescribed woke diktats,
you are,
taken unwilling more than you lead, where endings
surprising, unforeseen, return tickets never offered for sale

pick words, more likely,
they pick you,
the only constant your rapid metabolism,
a winter snow blow, swirling churning, even midst
the most languid, sultry southern summer day

mind the mind.
mind the ground frozen until a tiny tickle trickle verse
becomes a full-on ground melt, wet and soggy,
******* you into a
rice-rock-hard pellet-poem thriving,
you observe your own drowning in a
6 inch deep wet paddy

the bottom line,
the net net, summary judgment
you commenced with urgent hesitancy for the
risks are great now, pen dagger chest pointed,
you, ******, in crosshairs, your own graven idol image

having found out what you
don’t want to know,
having found out what you
don’t want to find out

find myself weeping,
fists holding my head,
communing with floorboards oak hardened,
groaning acknowledging,
this, this, THIS


this discovering, uncovering,
this is
why I write,
this is
why I dare not write anymore!





12/13/2019
so-me-times the compulsion is greater than the fear
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2015
for Nana*

they are of mine

but life and love are powers
with out equal,
bolder than blood,

she inhales their joy of life

and grows younger

and I watch in
ataraxic, robust tranquility,
recording miracles

children making someone younger

though not from her body born,
far better,
from her soul,
gifted and given

look closer

see the transfusion

they are not adopted
but adapted

a rhapsody of gleeful shouts,
hula-hoops rolling,
hopscotch hopping
are integrated as
minor universes of the moment

their inarticulate delighted screams are
stars and comets,
newly born
to populate,
the heavens of this very instant

the soon-to-set but
not-quite-yet
sun
wraps them all in
shimmering glistens of
nature's protective custody

and yet

it's warming heat,
cannot compete,
cannot compare,
with the warmth
of life and love
being created before our eyes,
new soul cells,
all hers
Sept. 5, 2015
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2023
<>

the thought is oft on my mind that all the poets here, I hold so dear,
that if we ne’er to meet in flesh & warmth of physical embrace,
that the nuances of our affections should be in someway marked by a lessening, a discoloration, be it be know then that our colors mutuel
will yet be be enhanced by

the colors of divine light,

this real light,
but invisible to the human naked eye’s limited spectrum,
this light fills the “unnamed, unmanned spaces between us;”

although we may not knowingly vision each other,  
we may envision-know the
sensate glow from the warmth of each other’s blood coursing
blue in vein and artery,  
with the aid of divine light,
trace each others faces with colorizing,
memorizing fingertips,
creating a seared retained memory;

the hues of theses impossible colored, rays that cannot be
optically ascertained, yet, we can understand them, in the same manner we mortals understand the divine presence,
invisible but ever present
in ways more real than, well, as real as any other mundane way
Inspired by Patrik Reuterswärd's 1971 essay, "What Color Is Divine Light?" and the art of Anne Lindberg's installations, both a  response to an
unanswerable question
that yet answers and speaks to me

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_light

What colors are invisible light?

However, there are other “colours” that our eyes can't see, beyond red and violet, they are: infrared and ultraviolet. Comparing these pictures, taken in these three “types of light”, the rainbow appears to extend far beyond the visible light.

April 2023
NYC, Washington, D.C.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2014
****, preferable,
but not necessary.

place your hands upon thy thighs,
the thumbs extended,
left to rest,
to fit in the designed, purposed crevice
between the upper torso,
where the soft belly
meets the legs.

your opposable thumbs,
too short to reach
your private part,
instead, your four fingers
to thrum, to drum,
driven by frustrated compulsion,
beat out upon thy exterior
the internal feel,
a basic rhythm.

the arms,
hard by,
press tight into the chest,  
the birth place of poems,
and squeeze,
as if it were a
Heinz Ketchup bottle.

the tapping fingerlings,
the now drifting yet compulsed mind,
the hard-sided pressure,
voila, words form,
heat-furnaced,
energized from within,
all at once will be extruded from
a poem's birth canal,
the heart.
before attempting this, have paper and pen and tissues nearby,
in case you start to
weep.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
Do you pay your bills (on time)?

Lunar and sun cycles overlap,
interest accumulates, faster than
human cells compounding,
atoms splitting.

time rules inexorable,
it's justice, ruthless,
so many dues to pay,
for clubs I didn't want to join.

do not deny,
I bought much of my own fate,
my heart, my eyes overwhelming
my worn down, common common sense.

even if I pay my bills on time,
time is the only winner,
and what I possess,
becomes a prison, possessing me.
809 · Nov 2024
The Basic Contradiction
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2024
~ following “A Simple Poem”~ (1)

But of course, we reference revelations,
for our brief self-description are guises,
meant to hide, meant to impress, reveal
little, enhance our mystery, preserve our
secrecy. expose and hide simultaneously
within our mid-of-night aura mystiques

Safe behind the curtain, we wizards speak
in voices and tongues, giving up our innermost everything in verse, write of our blessings and our curses, holding  little back while we give ourselves away, hint by hinting, writ by writing, a series of
+++++++’s

I choose, I chose, to dress my chess pieces
in a clear varnish, **** the consequences,
sail towards the torpedoes, heading direct
to meet your eyes, giving up my forest
tree by tree, poem by poem, a leaf and
a branch, only tinkering and fussing like a new parent over each new virtual birthing,

and then once tidied,
once spent,
my secrets unconcealed,
we wonder quick if each
puzzle when connected
to its predecessor is 
understood
as a tiny pointilisme dot,
a speck
and that you are wise enough to
comprehend how each speck,  
lives only unique in its
conjunction,
only tandem-with both the one
nearest and the ones dabbed a decade
long ago, and when you connect  
my dots, I stand before you completely
a full and a naked folio,
one book of a single reveal,
the sum of my totality,
an addition of many integers,  
summing up to 1

So,

should we pass by each other,
our eyes will pierce, each wrinkle,
solving the equation of who we are…
a single human, readily identifiable,
total recognition, via the reconnaissance
of our letterered footsteps
(1) https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4917327/a-simple-poem/


12:50am
Nov. 20
in the year twenty twenty four
806 · Apr 2014
Glowing under the comforter
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2014
glowing under the comforter,
that's high tucked under chin,
but white glow
escaping from underneath it

his electronic tablet,
in multiple ways, charging,
on his chesting, resting,
like a hot water bottle,
the screen warmth,
welcome and dual-purposed

for the poems,
he dream~writes,
now, directly from his chest
nightly transposed from tablet,
passed onto you
raw unedited no disclaimer
revoking writes of rights

when he wakes,
he reads
what he did not know
he wrote

stray thoughts stay
some become old friends
some become farewells,
as he bids and wishes,

fare~thee~well

he knows he
no longer needed,
his matter grey,
no longer matters
Wrote itself somewhere between  Five and Severn am this day,
the woman tells, she heard the keyboard tapping,
though my hands were not moving,
resting squarely outside, above the comforter wall
Nat Lipstadt Feb 18
give me-the bowie knife of repartee,
nothing more satisfying than the
quick stabbing, a good blood letting,
in your genteel face, no hellish
moderated pace, the energetic plunge
of a quick lunge into the woebegone,
long after you count the meter tempo’d
use fingers and toes, but needing to hold
your nose, to include that extra
grace note, that belies denies the harmony
the tules and rules of calling order
to control the roost,  sine-one
is a victim of a
down and virtuous ***** verbal slashing!

count my syllables, never,
let my stanzas run free,
like an African tiger,
with the goat of format
mounted in between his teeth,
bloodied and dripping dead,
the squealing of hyper innocente,
silent after cries of, kind sir,
me thinks thou protest too much!

we can squish and twist our holy words,
into formal tuxedos of cantankerous
arrowed arrogance,
but know this,
roses are read, them
violets, blue, have
turned millions of children to avert their
eyes from anything thereafter that was classified, notarized, canonized, sanctified
as the write rules of poetry

peals of pearls are born with parentage
of a lousy
grain of sand,
the words etched in the
lines upon my hand,
are lifelines of sidewalk cracks,
discarded candy wrappers,
the twisted ends cigarette butts,
used as proof that ash and dust are the
genetic source material of uncommon
great composition, given to those who
love the common touch of leaves of grass,
thstbeneath the heat of the sun that
exposes the nothingness of bitterness

know no one can run from the golden
visibility, of a sun, talent in pursuit of
egoism is a long road to a short history

yeah.
(faster than a speeding bullet)
boring…
805 · Nov 2014
T his Body, T his Breadth
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2014
this composition
(not this one)

but the p r o c e s s

a within discovery
so radicalizing

composing himself
this body, this breadth,
this work, of untangling,
slight light shapes,
enfusing, suffusing,
even parts defusing,
but all a
cold fusion,
of body,
of breadth

some, unguarded, tumbling,
some, guarded, jumbling,
all shockingly emergent,
most shocking
to himself, this
decomposing of
composing,
his body, his breadth,
t his process,
t his work,
t his hymn,
this of him,
body and breadth
Oedipus and Sam Shepard at 2:40AM
805 · Jan 2014
Lost all sensation
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2014
All five

Yet
Write on
only in the mind,
where my senses
are even keener

see?
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2020
~for those who can’t sleep, and know why~

you say “how much is too far?” and I think yes, more scars,
a man surveys a lifetime of errors and cowardice,
my soles, scarred from nite-walking new york city sidewalks,
days of haven’t slept in years, weakness is my prejudice,
tally sums-ups as no forgiveness, the pavement paying is a
continuum of  paying on, there is no atonement for wasted life,
the concrete cracks wedded to my body, stepped on each one


marvel at the disastrous disappointment that I’ve engineered,
how creative in disguising a life of accumulated self bruising,
applaud my season’s greeting card, 2020, me meeting me,
in a laptop I am contained, global boundaries thus defined,
crumpled coffee cups, emptied wine glass, zoom loops of repetition,
still I wonder why, every day, how, so many missteps, wondering
not at the lackluster will that carried me;  every minute sorrowful


so much hidden begs for revelation, murdered souls, theft, jealousy,
but the punishment is brutal; a conscientious conscience continually
punishes my blackened hours and there is no retrieval, retrial,
just a grounded plot with neither headstone and grass,
for I’m marked by no marker, and the wounds inflicted are my
afflicted leavings, my bones+soul confined, and the hallelujah
word excised from my vocabulary, forbidden me, justifiably so






————————————-

Mr. Tambourine Man
Song by Bob Dylan

“Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me,
I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming...

And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow”
4:32 AM Sat Dec 5 2020
803 · Aug 2024
40
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2024
40
,000 drafts of poems proposed,
some but a bit, a title, a bob,
some wondering why are they kept
in suspended animation, the fire of exiting
from placenta to screaming baby, most,
patient waiting, over the undivided divide,
the Cumbersome Attention Gap to cross,
to the state of hallelujah completion

this race should be an Olympic one,
it is unwinnable, but only open to poets
who willing to go the unlimited distance,
every finished oeuvre, spawns bornes two
more, so you, fool, even a fifth grader,
intuits the higher math of you’ll never
catchup, but rise invigorated to meet,
greet the wonderous sunrise challenge…

and the promised ones, “next one for you,”
the unconditional incompleyedy poems
so overdue, the muses send an armored truck
to collect just the largesse of fine fines…
as my old West Village friend sang, you poet,
“might as well try and catch the wind”

this leads me to observe a new day’s first
birthday, even as Leonard sings Yom Kippur
hymns of mortality, and all the ways humans
can pass thru the gap in the morn clouds that
is the passageway to the Higher North…

you see, this is this poems day of naissance,
one day, one candle, now extant, but sooner
to be a not, one more poem sent heavenward
after a  brilliant brief coexistence with the
innards of my mind…
803 · Jan 2017
my morning mass
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2017
~~
for Danel Kessler^
~~~

in the early morning
of one's youth,
going to synagogue,
quite regularly,
a fabulous, honorably believing,
father's sole request,
more than a half-century ago

time eroded,
the fallacies of organizing a public meeting time
with a deity who seemed unavailable,
when most needed

instead we chatted
in the late of night of the early morning,
a time and places of my choosing,
for human fools do like  a setting regular,
comfort food for the divine spark within

rising/writing for early morning
poetry mass,
was a noted feature of the twofold meaning
of my latter years

where and whence, now and thence,
irreverent dialogue
tween the invisible one,
that would be me,

(can you see me now?)
and the visible one,
the you-know-who-
maker-of-custom-suited souls,

(can "you" see me now?)

*had become  
quite the regular artistes salon

witty repartee, elegiac conversations,
the residuals, in a rain drain trapped,
products collected by the light of  the early dawning,
apres skiing of an all deep-night long mournful body scoring,
poetic raconteur-ing

heaping spoonfuls of two-way mutual chastising,
paeans to the divinity in human-inherent,
regular debate team features of a
contested dark bedroom,
lit only by tablet light bright,
one if by land, two if by sea,
which the shining path to be taken by
itinerant signal comedic essays,
crafted aboard frigates and kayaks
voyaging on turgid, turbulent rivers,
mean city streets, 
swath cut by switchblades of greed,
exploring stories of the dying lands
of an aging man
fed by the streaming videos tubing down
the veins and arteries of an aging poseur

so in the sleep hours,
when I did not dream,
instead nail bled from my hands
words upon  a cold sweaty screen
from fevered fingertips,
diatribe prayers of hope ever after,
after every
dialysis of the arrogance of human nature,
removing, diabolical urea of our tainted beings,
replacing, with granular molecules of wishful thinking

then it stopped, for unknown reasons,
unbegotten creativity, chilling like
***** and champagne layabouts,
on the upper shelf of a mind's refrigerator,
always ready, just in case,
say
a new borne terrorist atrocity,
a seasonal wistfulness flu,
a cold virus blue through the heart,
love came and went with nary a
how-the-hell-did-that-happen,
even a new born babe joy
to the family est arrivé,
comld torch that heirloom/heritage seeded
inert patented creativity
into anime wakefulness

so here, so hear, I paid-pause,
conclude-delude, at 4:44am on
January Seventeenth of Two Thousand and Seventeen,
winessed by numerals white on a blackened background,
of a digital alarm clock with time, temperature and
the lunar phase of a madman
who twice was Christ told
would be a poet/story teller,
like his mother

a bountiful clock telling,
precision information detailing,
a tale that tells about nothing about a man,
who no longer requires
an alarm reminder to attend
his own moring reborning mass,
on a regular basis,

for his disheartened verbs,
runaway convict adjectives,
con-nouns, whimpering exclamations,
all on the loose,
nice sounding,
but of no earthly use

his lips like (the book of) Ruth's,
move in silent prayer,
only two can hear,
but the low priest observing,
disbelieves, thinking the piety of the poet
is just drunken emotion, not devotion,
kens not the broken poems
of the morning mass service no more,
but for
this one, irregular,
unacceptable exception
5:18am 1/17/17

^
I don't think I can write a storytelling poem much better than this. So happily gift to Denel, who serves the gods of poetry and our works with devotion, and who wrote this and inspired me

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive...

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2013
4 day weekend Yay!  
Black topsoil fertile? Yes!
Poetry planting...


Did I get the 5-7-5 right? Only have one hand and can't take my shoes off at work!
799 · May 2016
if you are up at 4:10 am
Nat Lipstadt May 2016
join our company,
the erstwhile, ne'er do well,
itinerant lunatics,
the no-sleep freaks
that hallway haunt the passages
where these passing-by poems
on the fly, go by, like raindrops,
crawling up, against logic, on a window pane

be comforted by the fact
that tho alone in your own writing castle,
I am looking over your shoulder,
wider, older, maybe wiser
and yet still can't
answer the question
we are unitary posing,

can we handle the nighttime seasons of our lives?
a generic night haunt at 4:10am in the ages of the distant present
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.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2015
a gift for the poet
a sky full of stars,
whose poetry, when well read,
brings, leads,
souls to their knees
satisfying with quiet desperation,
satisfying with noisy aspiration,
unto the best places poetry,
can airlift the human soul,
to a sky full of stars
~~~
so many pleasures to pick from:

the summer's first awakening taste of
comforting cold vanilla in sugar cone
upon the lips,
reading Whitman and Poe,
in my sheltered poet's nookery,
watching my woman chop
summer fruits, cranberries, berries, mango,
into the salad of our lives

but one pleasure olden,
yet evergreen new,
rare,
but never aged,
like the occasional
pink potpourri sunset of  gold bluesy hues,
this ancien accidental tourist stumbling
smack dab
into a new poet whose excellence
force~asks you to say,
while he breathes intake/expels
noisy airy,
how~wow?

I don't read the words of
this solitary kayaker,
no, I drink till drunk
on mine own tears,
angry that I'm late to the party,
once again

nine poems glorious,
this poets meagerly provides,
reminding me,
a few master treasures,
oft outweigh the many

me, a thousand and more,
yet struggling to hone
my dulled verbal skills
to take true flight,
most o'mine, suffocate stillborn
in the torrential waterfalls of
never ending misleading
gold plated
trite

nine (!)
poems only,
bring this old soul
to his worn out knees,
in humbling fresh-face humility,
he thanks the muses for
gift-granting knowledge of a
blackened velveteen night sky new poet star,
to his eyesight keening,
sad in the knowing that so many more,
shine
but remain undiscovered

this new poet

"writes a little,
just soul scribbles mostly
not wanting to be anybody special,
an evanescent dark star; season's change"

give me more,
this old man demands,
for each of the nine is a

"single delicate petal cast off,  
like a party dress fallen
in a beautiful mess
upon the puddled wooden floor"

her invitation, I accept, I accept
on bent knee eagerly to

"Come swim within this restless silence
the raging river inside beckons

the cadences we hear
are the heart's untamed waters overflowing ,
eroding this heart's shorelines ,
leaving the thrummed edges wild
swim within this restless silence
the raging river inside beckons

the cadences we hear
are the heart's untamed waters overflowing ,
eroding this heart's shorelines ,
leaving the thrummed edges wild"

as always,
I wax too simp,
too long,
while the new poet waxes
simply eloquent,
hard knocking down his old soul
to the ground
with memories
of days when with first morn blush,
two three poems,
he provided
to greet the honorable dawn,
after searching the night skies,
for new and
Undiscovered Poems

She
(for must be a woman, I just know)

"colours this heart's blank pages
rapt in the poesy a joyous ecstasy ..,
enrapture with rainbow's candy taste"
Please follow this poet, lest you miss a new star..
The lines in " and italics are all hers.
Been awhile since I wrote a Read the New Poets.
Please follow her
796 · Jun 2014
My Night With Paul Simon
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2014
On the night train, the red eye plane,
flying home to NYCeeeeeeeeeeeee,
from the city of Los Angeleeeeeeez

Feeling flush, dropped some cash,
got me a seat in extra large first class

Seat 2C, plenty of room for my toes,
to wiggle, to dance, lay down some poetry tracks,
pretending I'm a **** jive,
bad *** from the
make-believe west coast

A short guy, with fedora down low,
an older man,
looking about nine years older
than somebody I might know,
hiding his eyes @ 9pm
neath some excellent Raybans,
slip slides into 2D,
gives me a smile,
and says Hi, I'm Paul!

I look once at his face and say,
listen Rhymin' Simon,
I'd know you any place,
no worries, your secret,
with me is safe,
cause dudes in row 2,
gottta stick together, be cool,
we're riding first class,
over the land of the free

What ya do for a living he asks,
a little of this and a little of that,
all of which, ain't no **** good at!
so I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

He said that's cool,
I like to do that too.
guitars on planes
drive passengers insane,
they take up too much
overhead compartment space,
I just scribble me some rhymes and
let the music come
when I got two feet
on the ground in the city
we both come from.

Paul:  
You got any stuff writ
on that yellow sheet,
or just pretty blue lines,
a big pad of nothing?

Dude:
Man you may got diamonds
on the soles of your shoes,
but pay me some 'spect,  
you talking to the man who penned
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland
on Hello Poetry, gad ****!

Paul smiled and said
you can call me Al,
and if you feel like blowing some lines together,
we got five hours till we can see
the house that Ruth built.

Dude:
Hit me with your best shot,
I'll show you what I got

Paul:
And she said honey take me dancing
but they ended up by sleeping
in a doorway
by the bodegas and the lights on
upper Broadway,
wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

Dude:
Just cause the union of the monkeys
in the Bronx Zoo done gone on strike,
don't mean the lion ain't
still king of the hill,
roaming free,
inside this New York city jail

Paul:
And the sign said,
the words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
and tenement halls
and are whispered
in the sounds of silence

Dude:
A home-grown poet.
I am
soul enslaved to words.
the alphabet - my oxygen molecules,
I am both,
addict and dealer
a  ****** poet
******

Paul:
You don't need to be coy, Roy
just listen to me
hop on the bus, Gus
you don't need to discuss much
just drop off the key, Lee
when get yourself free

Dude:
Contact with the atmosphere
makes self pity die,
blue blood turn red,
the TNT tightness in my chest exploded
I got no place
to store these words,
the cops think I'm
some kind of verbal
terrorist

On and on thru the night,
riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
single words and elegies,
free verse and a lot of fking curse words

It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ

You may think this story apocryphal
which is another way of saying untrue,
but I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
to this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
it has never since that day,
left my grasp

June 5, 2013
First posted on HP exactly one year ago.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2014
T'is a far far better thing I do,
to write tributes to new poesy chicks,
when seldom sufficient is heard
an encouraging word

than repeat yellowed ancien
tale~tell stale revelations
of an ole man's
forgotten glories and
never ending
tribulations

research uncovers a single
tributary,
a common origin, an irony river,
for their source,
tributes and tribulations,
one and the same

herein, this aging
tribune
defends the new poets
even as his own defenses
erode ever faster,
daily the surf takes him,
granule by granule

thus, t'is more urgent that he
construe and
contribute,
formally and officially,
attribute
the old guard's passing mantle, cloak,
making no
tribologies

frictions tween young and old,
fictions tween old and old
reconfigured as pretend new

this the natural way,
this luminescent fractious friction,
gives birth to
an Einstein~energized
triboluminescence

heat and light
the by-products of the
tribe
of poets
Real words. You could look 'em up....
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2014
rest-less,
my erudition was insufficient solution
to soul my worries into a somnolent condition

"Put you head and tresses
on my hairy chest,
listen to the rising crescendos
of a symphony of this man's
labored heart,
heaving and breathing!"

did what was asked,
nary a whimper or a sound-at-all,
and thus, I found myself
overslept and late for work

now, the inhibition
(never wake a sleeping woman)
is in sedition,
and the Times reports,
the end of Prohibition,
so when I can't sleep,
I'll wake her sleeping head
to put upon
my chest and
soul to keep

so informed, she stated and I quote:

"Anything I can do to keep you,
happy and poetry-free
from midnight till the **** crows
and slumber trumps the restless words
that will wait till morning born,
and the kingdom of poetry, awoken,
comes alive
"
another true story from the bed. Better poet, she than me!
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
The Nighttime Skies have altered, altering us…

The nightly showing of twinkling heavens, fulsome,
brimming, as can now be seen but only in a planetarium
program, always was a delight to our ******* citified  
visitors, who received this free reminder of Earth’s  
non-centric role in the universe, happily, for it jived
senses with common sensibility, confirming an assumptive
reality with yes! my-eyes-can-see-it proofs, that many city
folk only hope & assume are yet true someplace  else
‘out there.’

Night light pollution, a life feature just assumed as
a costless cost of doing business of our modern
population distribution, has horrendous mental
consequences for a generation of me-me-me
young ones, who lack the lessons in real awe,
not by way of a video game, but by never having seen a
Milky Way,
constellations and planets
that were so necessary to
critical cortical thinking p,
human beliefs,
re the totality of
existence a mere
two hundred or
so years ago.

The star’s disappearance for so much of our population,
reenforces the notion of our own centricity, get it?

A world centered on the city.

The truer star studded sky knows not
of gender neutrality,
racial disharmony,
through a
“I am not the universe “ perspective,
for in this large than life realer than real
exterior externality,
which why, by the by,
is mega black and white duopoly,
makes who is bigger no better than smaller,
for all but magnified speckles
all now more of a minor
irrelevant relativity.

When all the worlds are watching, not just the world, but
a Universe of unknown worlds are judging, studying us,
and maybe our lives are mighty picayune,
but amore humbled and yet precious, do we not need to be
always on our best behavior?

the fact is that we who are but 80 miles from nyc’s borderline can no longer sky-testify, be reminded of our planetary’s liveliness- uniqueness and our proper place on the largest tapestry
of the always, of the forever, of the
majesty and harmonious coexistence.

I am naive and a proper fool, and I do not know if it is the new smoking of the planet, spread of the seemingly innocuous
city boundaries encroaching on our rural existence, or a new physicality condition that makes our nights a pungent blackened cloud, and that so many can not say of the awesomeness
mystery above us, and think
with humility
our destiny,
our alignment
                         “is in the star’s.”

Alas poor Yorick, even your creator, the poet William Shakespeare, who understood human frailties too well, conceded that,

”it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

But the again,
he could nightly gaze
upon them,
and we cannot!

He also conceded, to attempt to balance
the imbalances of our
visual scales,
and magnetic moral compasses,
writing,

indeed!

”there are more things in heaven and earth*”
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
The Night Table

The night table, the night stand,
Too small for all it must yeoman hold,
Something keeps falling down

Lamp, bottle of water, a single tissue, partially used, a clean corner held in abeyance for future tears when poetry writing, writing tablet for when the impulsion strikes, lamp that goes on n' off when it so chooses, a straw-woven coffee cup thing to keep off the stains of liquid time, a watch that tells you the time only when it is falling over on the way down to hit the ground, a picture frame of mother and child from thirty years ago...

if there was more room,
this list would be longer
but I already told ya,
this night table is just too **** small
which was told to you twenty years
when you bot two of them!

Re-decorate, she replies
A single word
that strikes
terror
In the heart of a
grown man.

Good thing I am still a kid
And don't any need any of those grown-up things
Listed above.

Keep those night tables babe,
Perfectly serviceable and a metaphor
For two kids like us,
Cuddling in the bed those night table stand astride,
Guardians of the place where we tell each other tales
of twenty years ago...
(I told ya they were too small)


June 1
6:54 AM
"a straw-woven coffee cup thing to keep off the stains of liquid time" - could not think of the word - a coaster, turns out that it was a good thing....
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2024
this semi-seemingly sad refrain~reflection, more truth than
one can even understand,
for my physical self slowly
disappearing, diminishing
though no visible pieces
as of yet,
gone missing

few of you have come to visit me
in NYC, so you cannot be sure of
anything you’ve been told, for the
great liar claims, the internet bleeds
disinformation believe this
if nothing
else

for I’ve been a dream from my very
naissance, a vision imaginable by
those who contemplate my whereabouts,
my visages, we bemused, while
you imbibe, tongue |taste
mrs
written bouche amusante

well,
if you want them pieces & parts,
poems in the fleshes,
seek outa one eyed guy patched
by a rivered walk path,
see a troubadour on his soap box
amusing the real peoples
who pause to reflect
cause
them
give respect to his peculiarities,
listen to his truths bout
himself and them
selves too

if you can’t camp this far,
then believe in your dreams
cause my come and go,
fly out the window
and have reached as far as
the Phillipines, New Zealand &
the Land of Oz

I’m their break from the news,
indeed call me ‘the new news,’
which so cool, makes us laugh,
cause there ain’t no much new
by this foolish OG, ‘cept for the
rhythm of and blues, I spin, the rhymes
that they fet/met/net me with dollar bills,
loose change and half used joints in lieu of cash-is-trash

So I dream, they dream,
together we scheme,
each of us composing,
in separate and equal
prepositions preposterous
and share all who to be heard,
especially those who wish to also
have their dreams be
seen
790 · Jun 2014
Seat 12C, My Return Flight
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2014
an aisle seat,
my choice,
I get to watch
Noah's children
board one by one

it is a miracle!

I swear the plane
expands
cause no way
we young fools all
fit
in this
silver cylindrical sliver
chamber of
aliens, skinny jeans, needy for haircuts,
wailing babies and kids

the captain says its time
to pull away from the gate,
pull together, hold hands,
pray for our deliverance
from turbulent winds and
mechanical malfunction
and the sundry ways fates
render us asunder

when next we see safe port,
dry land, nobody knows,

but this ship, a prayer,
built of titanium prayers,
this ship is earth bound
bringing home the lost children,
our return flight,
pinging bright
the signal of our existence,
to ease the brow of those
who mourn our premature departures

the stewardesses lead us in prayer:

"Georgia, Georgia,
No peace I find,
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind"


this is my happy ending,
this, my happy days,
I believe with perfect faith,
you and I will be reunited
on a dock by the bay,
perhaps even the one
beside my real name,
the hour when the ship comes in

June 6th, 2014

NML
This is my mystical sight
that sneaks into my brain,
stakes a place,
when love and sad fuse
and my fingers fly
as if -no- because I am possessed
by the greatness of what humans can do, be, see,
and believe

for those who know for whom it was writ,
I dedicate and wait with perfect faith for
that homecoming game when all are victorious

in the meantime I kayak the bay looking for signs...poems...anything...
789 · Feb 2015
Stem Cell....Words
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2015
stem cell words
from the cellular wall of the
poem birth canal
narrows, twists,
even double helix's,
doc-prof diagnosis
with perfect, absolute uncertainty,
denotes the presence of
stem cell words

"all your writes,
gestating make-believe,
word smythe
premium cocktail concoctions,
gospel soul post-viewed
rocked and roiled
still and always,
unflinchingly personal

singing and simulcast
the unique
internal combustion,
that removes the pollution,
of your
unflinchingly personal..."


mother necessity
delivery of a
Caesarian cut-them-out

says me
cut, excise them,
take them,
them newborn-baby stones
give them
a good home,
my DNA upon them,
my only Jacob blessing,
that they get
goodly tented taken

let them spawn
more and others,
will love them
better just for knowing
even never seeing them again,
still and always,
whatever they
write on,
still and always,
I'm in them,
they will be,
unflinchingly personal,
even if signed by
another's name....
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2016
This poem is dedicated to Steve Yocum,
author, poet, and soldier
farmer, father, grandfather,
man exemplar,
whom I honor
and honors me,
with the noblest title in all humankind,
friend.

But above all,
I honor him most,
as a tireless, truthful, harpooner
of the examined and the unexamined life

~~~

"Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into
crinkly eye-lined smilers."


~~~

these mine words writ many years past,
dusted off phrasings,
on dusty shelf long lain,
mined from notes,
decades steadily collected by steadily diminishing ears and eyes,
gathered most from self-taught lectures
and self-deceiving dances,
garbed and wearily grabbed
by the addict-strong
 observational need,
persistent and perpetual,
to pay off fresh debits,
renewables owed
to the lovely,
to the loopy,
inhabitants who excite and inspire
my so far, rebirthing, youthful,
yearling heart
who provide the special crazy that
justifies existence

just men,
connected by a bond of sonship,
kinship crowning kingship,
blood types as different as an
A is to B

both shall weep in one blood,
I, as I do now,
while midst the nascent commencement of this sonnet,
He, at its commencement,
for a good friendship has no
beginning or end,
but is a circular track,
a loop,
familial by repeated runnings,
yet never, coursed in the exact
same manner or speed

this thought,
this knowledge,
bring a smile to this crinkly eyed composer,
that the metaphysical
will always surpass the binding physics of mortal physical,

that two man,
who have
never met,
race side by side,
not in competition,
but in the mutuality of composition,
each a candle holder,
both writers,
observing the dark illusions,
re-making each into a carrier,
a shedder of light,
each a debt giver and a
debt holder to each other,
hosts to all the loopy,
comfort caressers,
to each other
and to all
who too,
are light-bathed by being in possession
of the title
*friend
March 20, 2016

the verse that gives this work its title
was writ years ago

P.S. I am pleased, amused and astounded,
that I find it within me to so be freely inspired
by the many good friends I have mined
from the veins of poetry
787 · Feb 2015
For Eli
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2015
a fine nine,
an eye feast,
boy of man,
a man in his
prime boyhood,
a creature-so pretty that
invokes eye smiles,
auto-no-hesitation

mop of hair
even the day
after his haircut,
wise and hungry,
an adult,
a child,
in a fine nine year old
boy body

spout, no,
his child-like wisdom
adult easy steady and sweet,
easy in and easy out,
a long strand of a sensible
sweet spaghetti softly shared smiling

this special child,
no kin of mine,
and my words
can not capture
a sweetness so sane,
so brilliant, I wonder
why to try

yet here is this
wonderful child
on a freezing cold
Orchard Street night,
surrounded by hipsters,
hugging me good night

he does not question,
does not break away,
let's you drink him,
and takes freely
what you want to feel,
a creator,
birthing companionship in gentility

days later you limbs burn
with pleasure of his young arms
kind sweet tea,
the taste mint,
on the tongue of your soul,
the brilliant sanity
of a nine year old boy
who is quietly love-perfect

wonderful to hug
a gift to me
makes me want to live
longer

in that winter garden,
we bite each other,
our Adam's apple
from the tree of knowledge
newly fallen,
each sharing a secret,
mine - you need never fear;
his-  you have done ok

and  await our next rendezvous
to exchange new learnings
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2016
"Want to wear words,
like clothing, a tailor and an editor,
am I not stitching,
threads into a finest tapestry,
then the very thought to blog,
bogs and constipates desire,
leaving me to log the frustration
on paper pages to cook up ideas of which
the Best of Which,
have simmered away...
but I taste the air above this write of yours;
it restores the delight,
to write for others,
briefly log my take and give on life,
thanks for the encouragement,
ha ha, more, more"...
Ottar

why write praise of others,
when their own words
do all the work

bring your pen and quill,
he says,
and the hands
by them employed,
perform on the Pantages Theater
in Tacoma

put your toys aboard a
kayak
peddle paddle the Columbia,
blade one in Washington,
the other, propulsion oriented to the Oregon side,

he in the cockpit,
wonder wandering reflecting
what is the life story of a
beggar man
with so many, already,
steve-adore friends
in ore-gun,
who all can carry words
from their ships into shared knapsacks,
all for breaking
the fast
that men's soul
sometime suffer

words given each of us,
free and given freely

better have the wisdom to hear the best,
finery
in them
and this man's soul work, simple,
record, record...record
and share

the finer, better,
finery of yours*

free
three of three of poems, borne on a Sunday morn,
from thoughts and words of other poets here...
786 · Sep 2013
How to advance in life
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
Turn around.
Extend your hand to the slower,
Lift up the weaker,
For he who shall be first in life,
Will always be last.
786 · Jun 2015
little boys catch me fast
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2015
"the guppy letters,
swim spring river current fast,
like little boys catch me fast who run past,
they cannot be caught and easy captured"

From "You, Your Best Poem"
~~~

the duo of little boys in my life,
a small percentage of my size,
yet,
somehow they are
Superman~adept
at getting past my grasp
just when I need to
precision tool them,
hug them air tight,
way way beyond just right,
conspiratorially whispering our
Socrates secrets

I cannot capture them,
for they caught me
a priori,
from the very inception of our
commonality starting line

yet when little boys hide and go seeking,
their diminution is ammunition
for their evasion and disappearance
from mine eyes
that  lust for their touch,
their-skin-so-soft-it's-a-miracle

but persistence is an adult failing,
seek and ye shall find little boys,
giggling their passwords
under dining room tables,
the ceiling skies of the top bunk bed,
safe house places of young boys

take them home,
for a life-in-prison,
in the prison of a
adult's love for little men,
discontented by their never ending
growing up,
serial escape attempts

as they grow up,
and I grow down,
think that some day,
I will require
these skilled speedsters
(and their associated older sisters)
to

"little boys catch me  fast"

happy in the knowing
that they,
now, trained so well
in the art of hugging,
will catch and capture
me
yet again
when I need it most
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2016
"Taking It Home to Jerome"**
by David Kirby


~~~

In Baton Rouge, there was a DJ on the soul station who was
always urging his listeners to ‘‘take it on home to Jerome.’’

No one knew who Jerome was. And nobody cared. So it
didn’t matter. I was, what, ten, twelve? I didn’t have anything

to take home to anyone. Parents and teachers told us that all
we needed to do in this world were three things: be happy,

do good, and find work that fulfills you. But I also wanted
to learn that trick where you grab your left ankle in your

right hand and then jump through with your other leg.
Everything else was to come, everything about love:

the sadness of it, knowing it can’t last, that all lives must end,
all hearts are broken. Sometimes when I’m writing a poem,

I feel as though I’m operating that crusher that turns
a full-sized car into a metal cube the size of a suitcase.

At other times, I’m just a secretary: the world has so much
to say, and I’m writing it down. This great tenderness.



---


A professor at Florida State University, David Kirby is the author of 12 collections of poetry, including ‘‘Get Up, Please,’’ which will be published next month by LSU Press.
784 · Aug 2022
Vast Eternal Plan
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2022
TUESDAY Aug 9 2022

05:59AM

(for you)

silent alarm trips me up into a dawning at with a five o’clock
wakefulness, (‘woke,’ cancelled) that comes with morning daylight,
this is the likely culprit~catalyst, for the sky is traced,
blending multi-palest shades of whitening blues,
crowned by toppings of baby orange + pinks of faun~sun arrays


an hour prior, my 1st day-view,
is of mine eyes popping corn open to Peconic bay waters,
waves moving actively, not yet rascal-frothy winded,
meanwhile the woman


an hour later deep dreams of what I know not,
but rumbling and mumbling
and noisy shuddering combinations course through her frame and
whatever turbulence she’s experiencing is plainly nothing good


my apriori
training kicks in and a tender embrace and the be-not-afraid caresses work quick, restore her own waves to a comparable calmer current


now, she sleeps peaceful, breathes in easy quiet as I, writing, memorializing the moment, all else can wait, and Tevye’s prayer~
memory comes pinging, re the powers of it who makes all via a

  “vast eternal plan,

crinkles my smiling eyes and my fingers begin to radio-receive the signal of dash dot dash of words you currently are reading/imbibing

something unknowable raised me up
amidst the all-quiet of the first watch,
thus I, was snap ready to ease her troubles, at the very first moment…

<~>

now I am cellular~level conscious of witnessing and feeling
each of the trillions upon trillions of minuscule defractions

of light bendings that will populate, articulate,
the entire world’s rolling day,
give them to me, please,
the causality source of millions of minor miracles that will go unobserved, unrecognized and unrecorded

I rise from the bed needy, urgently seeking them,
your adventures, their earthquake interactive tremors,
the raw minerals of what will be all the future poems of our lives,
but, first,

coffee.

06:49AM

Shelter Island, N.Y.
Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof fame sings:
“Would it upset some vast eternal plan God,
if I were a wealthy man?”
784 · Sep 2013
She came to bed naked
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
So I took my hand,
And at her waist,
Tried to saw her in half.

Did not succeed 'crept to make her laugh
At my silly notional ineptitude,
At my usual lack of "handiness."

Seems in this instance,
Tho I failed, I proved an important principle!
The sum of the parts are greater,
Especially where the tickling is along the
(Mmm what rhymes with greater...ah!)
Your celestial equator.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2014
If you need my love
hand delivered
then
******* a kiss,
wave it
from your lips,
send it airborne,
upon arrival,
greeted with smiles
and an obligatory return

It will be returned
FedEx,
in the biggest box,
you will ever see

you will require
both our hands
to open it,
Yours,
from without
Mine,
from within
Ebb n' flow
no idea where this came from....
in the air I guess...
783 · Jun 2013
Now You Are Ready to Write:
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.
Muse's hands choke my neck.
Fluids released from organs!
5-7-5 obeyed


In the files, hanging about.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2015
~~~

for Sjr1000
and his proffered invitation

~~~

delve and dive,
smack lip tasting each line we drop over the side,
as if it each worm is a new word
first time heard
or ever  écrit

explicate and parse
the shape, the portent,
looking for the double mystery,
the wisdom and the plaisir of two minds cojoining

our poems, indeed,
every one a  product of a stainless steal shiny can of worms,
so strikes me when,
that fishing trip day est arrivée

the worms will be of the glo variety,
whom when pole dipped,
will be like chocolate treats for catching poetry fish,
to rapture capture new reciprocity recipes

share and delight,
comparing size,
whose is most luminescent, tumescent,
whose poems will taste most délicieuse

men fishin n' writing male bonding, stainless steel strong, a men friendly completion competition,
you bring the worms in a cancan,
I'll bring the cannes à pêche^

they'll accuse of being heinous poets turned into
collaborateurs,
to which we'll laugh responding in unison,
for sure, bien sûr!
^fishing poles
~~~
SJR 1000
This really got me thinking, a couple of immediate responses. On the prospect of reviewing, the image that comes to mind is standing in the bathroom, when you can line up the mirrors, one in front and one behind, until our reflection finds infinity.

On our attempts, though written about fishing, by applies to our poetry as well: The joy of fishing is
the pursuit of the elusive but attainable, a series of occasions for hope.

Your volume, thick or thin awaits, stories told by a knowing soul.

Go for the gold, Nat. It'll make all the neuroses worth it.
Sjr1000
ReplySjr1000
John Buchan wrote the quote, the charm of fishing...an opportunity for a perpetual series of occasions for hope...
Nat Lipstadt
ReplyNat Lipstadt
When we going fish in' ?
Nat Lipstadt
Reply Nat Lipstadt
That is a famous image of the post war French existenialists; Camus Je pense
Nat Lipstadt
Reply Nat Lipstadt
Can't express enough how much your caring and delving deep means to me.
Sjr1000
Reply Sjr1000
We're just going to have to open one more can of worms.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2015
~~~

sometimes I type in the search mode a
word unusual, offbeat,
of my own choosing,
let it lead me to the nuggets, the truffles of others
resting waiting knowing that I
will be rooting for them
at the base of their trees deep in their
author's forest
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2024
a quote of Al Pacino

<>
it took/takes
a lifetime to get close
to where the answer
possibilities  don’t river
rush past, and each eddy
seems like that’s the one,
the definitive affirmative, 
 jump in and all you get
for misjudgment, is a
sopping wet
for your troubles

but you keep on jumping
from job to job, roll from
role to role, cause
even if the
last one is not
a fulsome answer, it
is in possess of the
creative release,
the high that satisfies
till you need a
new hit, another hint,
of tapping into
the vein of creation
that enlivens and
declares, I am purposed
for this,
no matter
how long it takes,
and or the
errors of mistooks,

me I’ll keep jotting down
jumbled jimmied words
in new combine
until such time -and rap,
I can say well shoot
that’s a wrap,

eyelid hints at
a rest but at
the same time
it gives forth
a sloooow wink,
that best poem
yet to come
won’t likely arrive
until it
comes forth
in a last gasp,

a final exhaustion,
exhaustive expelling
and even might be
highly satisfactory
breadth of a last and
everlasting breath~taking
****! just got
t a k e n




nml
11;09 am
Oct. 14, 2024
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2014
dedicated to Robert C. Howard, composer, conductor, musician, poet
and maestro...*


city of confusion and disorientation
exists not in pixels or imagination,
but in full color absurdity

close upon each other,
we hear remotely adjoining living lives thru thin walls,
humanoids of ilk and kith,
yet say nothing volubly lest we
discomfiture confirm each other's existence

there is much sound, noise, confusion,
masquerading to cover an agreed upon
profundity of silence
between every living individual,
even if blood, bed shared

all silently hum the city's song,
perhaps, hoping someone will hear us,
proving us right, or wrong, or extant,
this being not a credo, but a creed

if no one hears us,
no matter,
we hear our own machinery humming,
loud and clear,
for awhile,
it is sufficient
"I love...to scribe about
the city I love
where I was born,
schooled and fooled in,
by many a woman.

The city where I named
and raised my children.

Will probably die in
this city, and when
I am long forgot,
my name never uttered,

you,

as my designated
rememberer,
will think of me
whenever someone says,
he was such a rascal"

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/604844/yes-i-am-a-rascal/

~~~~~~~~~
a conversation, an inspiration:

Robert C Howard ›  These are my proofs. (I am not pixels)  13 hours ago

I love this. I was riveted to the page (screen) from the first line to the last. It reads like an existentialist credo. I couldn't help wondering if New York makes one an existentialist. Where else in the world can you live so alone in such a huge crowd.

Reply Nat Lipstadt
so true, so, so very true...why we hum silently to ourselves in hopes someone will hear...
~~~~~~~
July 23, 2014
11:11pm
779 · Jun 8
flee, feel, fail...
Nat Lipstadt Jun 8
rearrange.

fail flee feel

that! feels more write.

we fail at 90% of out endeavors;

we flee to the recesses
and the excesses;

we feel, most keenly,
our sense of loss,
and yet the inner linings of our
cells, once more greet a Sun-day that marks a mild fresh-ness and our involuntary ****** muscles bend
intro to a small smile,
and once more,

we breach the day with right hooks of positivity, warmth, music, and begin  to
remember  to
    feel feelings, assorted,
and we minutely reborn and the fluids of birthing are wiped away

and coffee seals the deal...and a hopeful day begins and forgiveness
and forgetting is the clean start clothes we dress ourselves within,
and with out, comfy jeans, well worn raggedy t shirt that you refuse to obey, expressly forbid her

to descard,
(not a rypo).
and you annoy her
with twenty kisses,
cause you don't want to spoil her,,,
too much
8;49am
6/8/2025
8:50Am
Next page