Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
sir humbug Feb 9
is a list humming with fraught fragile fragrant delight:
humble
hugging
humility
human
hugely
humor
humdinger


I could go on forever
but no need, the humming infectious
and you are adding you owned version

yes. hu too
  Jan 23 sir humbug
Nat Lipstadt
Do not stand
          By my grave, and weep.
     I am not there,
          I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
     Do not stand
          By my grave, and cry—
     I am not there,
          I did not die.
— Clare Harner, The Gypsy, December 1934
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Stand_at_My_Grave_and_Weep
  Jul 2024 sir humbug
Nat Lipstadt
Some poems never end,
Nor were meant too.
Alliterative phrases, invitations,
Add a verse, a word, even a sound,
An exclamation of delight,
A stanza in its own right.

Unfinished work, forever additive, collaborative.
Modify mine, pass it on,
Free to steal it,
For ownership passes to you,
with your first reading,
And lost when you close it,
Stamp it and release it into the atmosphere.

But some poems do. End.
Unique and distinct,
Pockmarked-faced at birth.
Owned by my initials,
Never to see the shelves of a
Lending Library.

Like this one:

Cannot remember a single day
When suicidal thoughts
Were not heard clearly above the fray
Of jingle-jangled, responsibilities
Demanding my immediate attention.


The end.


NML
  May 2024 sir humbug
Nat Lipstadt
Ineffable (More Tornado Prayers and Such)*


Ineffable:
Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words;
Too sacred to be uttered.*
~~~

The whimpered cries of the dying
in the rubble of Bangladeshi avarice,
announcing we were worthy of life,
to which we think to ourselves,
agreed upon
with our,
a whispery, silent
amen.

The still alive cries of children,
tornado-tormented parents screaming unfair,
teachers body shielding their charges, whispering
save us Lord, from your inventive toys,

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

But here comes the Oklahoma tornadoes again,
now four more dead in Houston,
selecting the innocent, the brave,
logic in any of this, none,
nonsensical at its worst

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

~~~~~
The first I-am-alive cries
of new born lungs,
I have grandson, stain-less, perfect,
recovering in the stainless steel delivery room,
I hear the all babies in the neo-natal unit in unison
pronouncing a Hebrew blessing,
the Shecheyanu...

(Blessed are You, Lord our God, Master of the universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us and has brought us to these special moments)

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

These unspoken poem devotions of adoration
of the sleeping chamber, that cannot
be heard or answered for they're dreamt and
perchance in the morning thankfully recalled,
enough to be transcribed,

to which we think to ourselves,
a whispery, silent
amen.

Ineffable.

A day,
just another supplying an average day
to the mass of average.
Birth + Death = an average day.

I thank a God for the
birth of a newborn perfection

On this day the newspapers report
about silence of the God others pray to,
could be the same deity,
reporting that in his holy places,
Jew spits upon Jew,
Muslims usurp Christian lives,
all for none,
all forgetting in
whose image they were created.

to which we cannot say nor think
anything.

Ineffable.

too sacred to be uttered,
so instead of the paucity of these un-uttered words,
know that each tear in
the reservoir of my eyes
is my unspoken poem prayer.,
my amen.

Instead of answering
amen out loud,
wipe my eyes
with your fingertips,
silently.

An ineffable amen
Next page