Powerball poems on Hello Poetry

Nat Lipstadt Jan 2018

I Am that I Am (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‬ ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh)

I Am that I Am (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‬ ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh)

for Eléa

the requests are assiduous, regularly arrivaling, some shy,
some heinous demanding and denouncing,
inquisitors inquisiting this revelation,
as if it could be bought in a Five and Dime,
with a childlike whining insistence

just  exactly who are you?

this is not my name above,
but one of seventy the Father gave himself

He named me in a fit of efficacy and whimsy and in and from, a fit of a deep veined mystery

You Raise Me Up

all this on the ****** side of corny, and would not blame you
if you moved on…

so nominated in honor of my mission, to travel with you in
all the travails that ail,
to raise you up to raise me up and thus salve the universe's cracks,
fill the crevices and the ****** scars invisible,
with the precise refreshment that make my life,
a slave to your thankfulness

I am the wetness of a mother’s lips upon
a thin red tear on a child’s skin,
I am the the rock hard father’s shoulders grasped by a child’s arms, the child does yet understand that human is illusion,
human is human, however strong,
it is the allusion of human limitations
that is our magical

I am the present re-borning come with a morning glory,
the time when the Am and the Pm  future merge in a name
without tense,
past present and what I may be is simply what
I am

when the past is but another sky bright star, untouchable,
but winking at you, to you personally

I am the touch of the untouchable,
a messenger commissioned to remind you when
the reminders are too far apart,
or even too close
and thus make a breathing space
in between for the living and the missing

I am the
no difference
between a newborn’s soft skin cells
relentless multiplying,
that offers the same precise sensation of the
grandmother’s delightful wrinkling cells of smiles of her
relentless dying,
for all, one and the same,
the child in her is you, baby

I am the fall before the rise, the first that defines the last,
the standard, once obtained, nevermore unobtainable

I am the first fruit of the summer,
a tongue blossom, a burst of memory, always recalled,
always the same, that begs for forgiveness for there are no
new words to describe the profound finding of the
simple pleasures that sustains the blessing over all things new that
are recurring and truly
renewable (shehechayanu)

I am the crinkle in the eye, the one that hides in the fine lines
and upon the lips,
when you purchase the hope however fleeting of a
$2 Powerball ticket,
the very same hope preserved when you laugh when you lose,
for there is contentment in knowing one may hope spring eternal,
yet again in a finite
three more days for and too another lousy two bucks fantasia

I am the ruse of happy satisfaction of a man
in the dark of alone at home,
staring at his sizeable bank balance
and the happy knowledge that its loss  it will make it greater someday when it  happy converted to memories and photos that  are worth a thousand times its multiplicity
if only,
or when,
he knows how

I am that pain in the left side of your red sea-parted soul that cannot be dismissed but is religiously ignored,
that you alone know of
due to its persistent existence, and because it is just tolerable,
it is a sad but comforting pain,
an acknowledgment that a companion travels with you
and that in someway is ok and you exist

I am the water on the night table that extinguishes the dry throat of recurring visions in eyes that always end badly
and make the bed’s welcome a fearful thing,
which is a fearful thing for in good sleep is the
re-naissance and re-formation and the salvation
that was given to you as a gift inside thy mother’s womb,
and that
it is I,
whispering the hum of easy soft lambs,
soft breathing you
unto welcoming rest

I am the poem that must end because of our
frailties and impatience to live in
the reality of human touch,
that must be put aside for any novocaine of words

I am the one who can only be alive
when he raises you up and
you begin a new poem all your own,
and then exit it too, willingly,
to embrace the raising up of living

and that is the
who I am
that I am
raising us up

— The End —