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Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
the propulsion of compulsion is indefatigable,
it cannot no more, be ignored, as if it is forming
a holy commandment, number 11, you must
write when so ordered, denial is temporary
i n s a n i t y, and the backlog of nuances be
comes longer and longer by the instant

the provocateurs, them eyes, those eyes,
even the ears and tongue join in to instigate,
the cabal of influencers who peddle no product,
demand no payment but total obeisance and
sometimes low-class instant fufillment, for here
I am in servitude,@ 4:33am, by dawn’s early light
(no **** for real), propelled and compelled by
the creative, the spilling urgency of the need
to expel notions of potions that flit between the

frontal lobe, parietal lobe, cingulate gyrus,
and prefrontal cortex: (I told  you, it’s a cabal!)
all  firing
up neurons like electron spark plugs, and only
I can see the sparks colliding inside as letters,
words, phrases, none lazy, all demand long life,

or the Perpetuity of the Momentary”

it grows lighter by the minute and the sporadic
lights across the bay wink morse code secrets
to the observant, and Noyac’s  tree line has
become a distinguishable and distinctive
land mass to which I crossed last nite via &
upon the South Ferry, when all these conflicting
concepts began a painful birthing delivery,
the coagulation of the flighty, merging and
transforming into my child, in my bed, through
the picture window that has so oft been complicit
in the ganging up on my very, very old and restless
brain

but, uh, this ecrivez, this motion that the momentum
of the momentary desiring & deserving of monuments
to the perpetual
won’t be stilled and hours later, with it’s invisible hands
around my throat, it yanks from within what did not
exist ten minutes prior, but always existed inside me
as a jumbled puzzle, gestating quietly till a swift kick
of birthing pains insufferable accompanied by her
raucous dreams, awoke me from ******* and rhyming
Rem Sleep, to now, this moment, named forever as
4:57am and this noisy newborn, covered in embryonic
fluid (wonderful but disgusting really) is all ready pealing and peeling
off suggestions for brothers and sisters, this arrogance
is untenable, but the babe laughs at me, for it knows that
there are hidden, voluminous files of titles awaiting their
turning time of final conception

no longer nighttime, an early forming day, it too,
covered in its own fluidity, awaits discovery, for
the lights from across the bay have gone to bed,
turned off but the greatest, more powerful
brighter discharges
of the Sun Gods

The Bay’s waters are still, though my woman is not,
muttering, still dreaming out loud, as if she wishes
to foment
turbulence, and desires a boat for safe conveyance
across the dark seas of the night to the searing bright
June summer day that the Greek seers have forecast,
and then that moment, like it’s older sibling, will demand,
it’s very moment of personalized perpetuity, its own
unique naming,
a full recording, a welcoming by the Preservation Band,
amidst the glory of its mother mornings colorings of
palest blues, puffery of cumulus whitiwhispers all tinged
in my favorite, flavored color, creamsicle orange,
and the calming power is self evident for the rustling
back and forth of raucous dreams have ceased, and I too
am no longer possessed by the moment, until soon
when the hands creep slow round my throat by a new
moment, and all is lost, all is gained and a newest poem
is brought from the womb of my ancient past, my currency
of the next minutes and the wealth of words that are
available to us all! demands one of us, perhaps you?
to commit its actualized existence into reality

I bid you a soft adieu, for the chores of existence
those demanding pests of drudged biblical
pestilence
can no longer be kept
waiting

nml
5:21am
Sun Jul 16
2024

writ at you know where…
writ in the “moment”
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
~ for Alyssa Holmes Underwood ~


Modigliani  (1)
deliberately unmasked his Jewish identity,
even introducing himself to new acquaintances
with the phrase “Je m'appelle Modigliani.
Je suis Juif”
(I am Modigliani, a Jew)

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

I separate the words above from mine;
not to divide,
rather, to combine
as a single tissued web.
<>
Designed, designated, distinguishable,
intended to honor them, for they’re
indeed honorable and
distinguished.
<>

Je suis Juif aussi.
I'm Jewish too.
<>

Perhaps,
you did not know?

Or do not care.
<>

There are marks upon my body,
residue of human installation,
bodies are a canvas tapestry,
of human and inhuman
three dimensional
physical actual
cerebral and
invisible
works
<>

forever available
for additions,
paint-overs,
that badly,
sadly
require periodic touch updating
every century,
tho some marks permanent,
some unhappily hate the mark, temporary, and the fade,
yet those are imprinted in thy mind’s eye,
indelible inked that cannot be unseen
therefore, are permanent upon me,
DNA encased, historical genetics,
alive within tissued corpuscles
discardation, erasure, dispersal
continual shedding
<>

W hen
G od created hate,
W e were not consulted.
S eparated by physical differentials,
b y languages, symbology, metaphysical,
for these are the
S paces created to be celebrated,
not hated,
alas,
we humans,
with our empowerments,
and our capacities to
free will,
fell & fail,
fall & feel,
everything
and nothing,
require constant
reminding, necessitating
our specific differentiation,
so I state by defining,
differentiating,
once more:

I am Lipstadt,
I am a Jew
.
4:56 AM
June 13 2024
7 Sivan 5784

(1).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”
(Henry V, by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)

Morning into Mourning

<>

I speak it softly, for though battlefield is steeped in quietude
of the lively greenery, endless lawns of healing fields
surrounded by multitudinous shades of blue waters,
my eyes piercing , joining in
as sunrising separates the veil
dividing light from dark, new from prior,
a went-before and a
soon-to-be
and a familiar-what-to-be-hereafter,
but a skyed breech it is,
with sun ray stairs inviting my
upright ascension into this newness

Welcoming the exposure of my trembling, though it is not fear that causes my shaking, but the colored warmth barely warming, yet,
stoking, stroking the drape of chill
away, away! from my night-sealed pores

the majestic surfacing of the waters peinture impasto, with its roughened but genteel thick, dabs, dots, swirls, swishes belie the overall atmosphere of calm it conveys, and Shakespeare’s rallying cry of men rises to the mind forefront, for the bay is my battlefield,
the day’s new light the breeching of the sky’s
envelopment of our world, summons to rise and
step forward intimately into the tableau of morning

into the breech, into the unknown,
to lift one more poem from breast,
shed tears of welcome, and death fears banished,
a battle to the unknown from the foretold past,
and, but


you shout
no!
<>
tis a day like all others,
of rectitude sans gratitude
another quantity of known drudgery, another,
“Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup”

The breach is within me,
a splitting of the head,
laid flat out upon my desk,
writing down scrupulously
officiously,
the same figures inconsequentially,
letters deranged, daily merely rearranged,
prison vista,steel and glass appearing with
the same exactitude of every day ever prior,
the sun invisible, the unceasingly unchanging
dark deep of the shadowy of manmade canyons…

speak to us no more of views, vistas,
but the fistulae, the empty places
where interconnected dots and dash’s,
light and ombre blends of dark ochre  
gradations of bland de~gray~ding
are our time’s patchworks of familiarity,
cursed with annualized daily reciprocity,
a *** for a tat,
a woolen watch cap,
a  black Balaclava,
drawn over our heads
lest the drudgery be too readily apparent!


<>
mere mortal am I,
mortal wounded by our disparate
and desperate differing points
of view,
and we split ourselves in two,
hoping for a way forward of
reconciliations,
successful hostage negotiations,
pushing these contradictions,
back inside my heads,
until confronted
once again,
and find new words coming,
to bind me of the divisions between
or even,
to blind
me to the gaps between
my left and right
brain.

for I am both men,
one and the same,
forever
battling


until the morrow, then…
morning into mourning
June 14 2024
tween 3:30 AM ~ 10::00 AM
fitful sleep, fistfuls of vision's pieces
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
Seeds could not prosper without the love of your fingers


what I know of soil and seeds,
is less than nothing, the dirt neath
my fingernails is only evidence of a
presence on this Earth, but no rapport
with the cold, damp earthy plains of  
what feeds, colors and gives forth
fruit

and yet,
you send this concretized city fella,
pictures of the seeds on your agenda,
the chosen ones that will in time, birth
healing to the world in natural mystical
ways, for what I see, what  I know is this:  

soil and rain, by themselves can bring forth
both hardy and hardluck weeds that eke out a
living home in a quarter inch of dirt in the
in~between of sidewalk cracks, trod upon,
but yet!
survivors to the
worst kind of human indifference


but when you plant, you fingers enwrap,
send coded message hid in the essential
oils of human love, for that is what only
certain hands can do…


Your hands much practiced in this messaging,
and peculiar kind of kind massaging
for I have seen your gardens, moreover I-know,
that hands such as yours overflow with both  
the take and give, inherent in only certain
specific humans, at a cellular level
not in my
possess


it takes a different kind of life experience, that
marries different kinds of cloth into a single weave,
that stores what is in your fingertips, nutrients of
your life, singular, homemade, that make
your botanicals
fully blossom




Jun 1 2024
12:50pm
in the sunroom
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
we are all liars.


in the endless combat battle of our internal infernal eternal
wills,

we lie-kid-delude ourselves with futuristic promises,
false pretenses,
oaths and rosy predictions
in bold and bareface thoughts,
all lies, as they pass from the conscious
to the part of the brain where
guilt is stored and storied

our success leads to extensions,
the big white lies we tell others
from shame, or kindness,
and trip so easy off our moistened,
tongue licked lips, that we are continually
amazed
by our ease telling
lies.

I read the words *
factual liberty” in the “newspaper of record,”(1)

regarding some political figures who oft
do tell short and tall tales
with great frequency, are
feel free by taking
“factual liberty”
and so
my
heart

skips a beat:
hostages released,
lies well dressed
and redressed
in prom attire lies well
dressed poems birthed
for the arbiters of
worldwide
propriety,

have granted me
life and the
pursui of happiness,
and most importantly
liberty, from those terrorizing
the
factuals

Sun~Day
Jun9
2024
8:55AM
_in my hometown~
(1) New York Times
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
~with thanks to T. Riddle for the inspiring photos~

there are color photos of budding nascent fruits,
an unexpected delivery to the eye’s inbox
exuding new youthfulness in
variegated shades of green
and

solitary ant traveler on a leafy space shuttle,
making its way, crossing galaxies
drinking from eye-drop seas
living off the land
and

life bursting out unreservedly asking for
no favors, nor recompense but to
breath, drink of soil nutrients,
to live to give back more
than it takes
and

to be chosen, plucked, torn from its environs,
to be the fruit of sustenance and a
delivery system to pass on its
****, tasty, enhanced flavors,
its seeded progeny the
chance to same
and

the ant travels on and about fearless,
its mini-size and sure footed body
leaping leaf to leaf to live and
to be fruitful and
multiply
and

multiple multipurposed prayers multiply,
of human origin, as humans blink at the
new-life miracles repetitious, wistfully
wishing every prayer, could be
answered thusly so lusciously
but

this it cannot be always, so we accept
as best we can, small proofs,
of regeneration, life eternal,
wetting browned, dark
soil with blotches of
salty damp-tears
encased within a
moment~eased
hopeful heart
7:52am
Sabbath Sat.
June 8
2024
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2024
(an email titled, but no body, nor text,
a text, with no message, and followed
by a significant silence and I ask you,

Where does your mind go?

instantly or perniciously, slow  
de elevate to the lowest rung,
and the landing is hard, surface
rocky, disaster sooner to follow
for we rise to our lowest level
of equilibrium
when our
equipment
is needy for a fresh
oiling
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 May 2024
who thinks like this…
as my old guy body
creaks and groans
concerto moans of all
its ow own, ow-ing
a debt to oneself that’s
so overdue, the collateral
collectors, are disinterested,
but a passerby attentive,
sees on the street, my attention
riveted to dollar bills
that went to greet the street,
slipping from my overly full-
crooked fingers-bent, my sad
hesitation to bend and retrieve,
offering their lithe services, but
I pride~demure, internally
reflective, that I need as well,
pilates classes more for my
the cri of the heart & soul,
more than this body, ruefully
bending, remembering, reflecting
that it is powerful pride, the last,
that goeth before the fall…

Fri 5:10AM
May 31 2024
In the same sunroom
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2018
and

you think you are done with it.
but the notion potion returns
with your stolen free will
taunting and tearing, sealing
and then dissolving
the seals

no retirement in this world
from where human means pliable
and pliable means capable of being
twisted; nay, retwisted...

last we left you,
we were weeping on the
concrete sidewalk of
Third Avenue, the police,
giving you a move on command,
as Jean Valjean earworms one into
the incapacity of movement  
because of the audacity to request
to bring him home

such is the sorrow of the lost child;
it comes with irregularity
yet, never failing to return,
the child lost, the residual, resides
within like a violin adagio reaching
the punishing silence
after a crescendo that  pretense
promised momentary relief

we struggle to keep any and all keepsakes,
polished and fed; rust and time,
no polish in the five & time dime
that does a good enough job,
but you buy it anyway

well aware that fate will inevitably
rob you, it’s so purposed

twist you, retest you and re-will you, to never forget until
you have no need for forgetting but the peace of
constant remembering when all on that day
molecules and nucleotides
collide in the atmosphere,
dog licking, cat weeping purrs, meaning hallelujah home

the endless sadness of the lost lad-ness,
dimly grow the recollections of the first word,
the first delight, the confidence complete
that your babe is non pareil;
the violin sweeps you along and the
genteel tide still too string strong to resist

the woman comes into the room;
the reddened eyes no hide
the weeping outside and in the centerpiece of a soul;
why she asks, not surprised for she’s seen it
too many **** poem-times:

my Adam, I answer;
suffices and wisely
leaves me to
compose and decompose simultaneously
weeping weeping forever weeping
even when not

furious eddies rock smashing,
curious they splash me with taunts
"you want for naught!"

but naught is the only possess
that owing it makes one impoverished

perhaps he will email me, ewail me,
does he know I am at the
Wailing Wall, Jerusalem,
insert parchment prayers for his safety

oh my Absalom, oh my Adam, my favorite first born,
come sit next to me on the sidewalk
so close to where you live,
comfort me as in the days of your youth,
now that we are both
so very much older

sleep well all you lads and children,
never mind these unstoppable tearings,
never mind the heaviness,
for it has passed
as the tears ~shed,
enlighten and lessen
my embodiment

7/16/18 prone and alone
for my kinship
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