Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Nat Lipstadt Apr 22
the inherent harmony of the Arthurian phrase,
always charmed me, and by it, herein employed,
to wrestle/rassle it to the ground, like two preteen boys,
in a do or die, which prohibits ****** harm but releases
the testosterone that helps them moves them to the next,

Once and Future

stage, more a platform, to leg up further, to the next step,
that will be the once and future reforming, for are we not
always wrestling with our Once, this imprecise but prescient
point when we have arrived, knowing intuitively, it is not
a terminus, but just another way station to I-do not-know,
but knowing with genetic certainty that
when you get there,
that you have reached and met the requirements of what it means
to be, to exist as, to be so noted on the continuum of a

Once and Future

existence.
4/22/24

Tonight is Passover Eve,
Jews have and always will celebrate their exodus from tyranny to peoplehood, and their journey to a land and covenant with their God, knowing the journey
is perpetual, the covenant renewable, as they are instructed to say at the Passover supper service (the Seder)to tell the story of their Exodus,
“as if they were there!”
nml
Nat Lipstadt Apr 21
~for all the old poets,
especially one so denominated, my old faithful friend…~
<>

the
THEY,
emboldened and italicized,

are whispering and whimpering,
even
whining
that I’ve gone
wimpy,
lost possess of mine
facilities and faculties,
no longer able and capable
to command, demand, in hand,
import
a decent poem
from & in the English language(s) to
purport,

lost my edges,
hide behind the hedges
of inconsequential ancestral
and incestual rhymes,

these
THEY
do oft appear as voices in my
now emptied and unemployed head,
but familiarity breeds contemporary
contretemps of contempt,
for they are remiss,
in dismiss when the eyelids
flutter,
the noble temporal lobes
mutter,
’tis thy~thyme ole man,
for spillage of your

FPOTD
(first poem of the day)
thus kneecapping the cancer
of a restless dark hour period
where failures and faults,
of lines
crossed and uncrossed,
bear you to pieces,
bare your lifetime
laundry list
of pulsing, palpable,
fulminating and always ruminating faults
of which penance cannot be bought
by the bags of pennies and sordid assorted coins
that THEY
will find in the back bottom of thine closets,
along with the manuscripts
of the discarded and forlorn,
unloved and unpublished poems that you chose
to have buried with you,

lest you think that
eternal rest
will best
them voices,
they will accompany you
to permafrost of forever dark,
their once and future demise,
a travesty of
justice…

enough.

lists of to do’s;
the exercise of delaying death
for one more day,
by trodding on the treadmill
that postpones the inevitable
that can
always tun longer and faster
and cannot be outdone, outrun,
but
this poem
disgorged and disbanded,
it’s bytes,
will not bite mark me
in the forever future
their bytes are alive now,
free to be chomped and well chewed,
and once fully digested,
be return to our Mother
Earth

where some disclaimed poems
go to be buried
within it’s eternity
  Apr 20 Nat Lipstadt
Mystery Girl
If they had a sound
It would be a can of loose screws
Sitting on a washing machine
A constant jangle of bits and pieces

If they had a taste
It would be sour candy
And a battery on your tongue
Electric and sharp all at once

If you could touch them
They would feel like static
And cotton *****
Unpleasantly soft with a scratchy tingle

If you breathed them in
It would be rubbing alcohol
With cinnamon and pepper
A raw burn followed by touches of spice

But when you see them
You might not realize
A bouncing leg here
Drumming fingers there
Nat Lipstadt Apr 19
Ah, Mesdames et Messieurs!
you 99% who number themselves
in the know-it-all category, the
largest subspecies of human animal,
fail to appreciate the vast eternal plan
that flexes & fluxes with gravitational
pulls and pushes, sunspots unpredictable,
can you ever predict the AM headlines?
have you checked your bank balance today?
always look both ways when crossing a one
way street, twice, just to be somewhat sure?
have you told you loved ones dryly and
routinely of your affections after every text,
emai, and even the most dreaded phone call
(tyou borrowed the car and left the tank on E)?

you’re an A+ student, prom queen, a cheerleader,
a high school football star, till you wrench that
knee because you were too busy admiring yourself
in the reflection of your selfie and didn’t notice
the open grate, the potholes or the orange cones
that appeared overnight, a cause for fright delight,

thank you so much for providing he fodder for this
pink sapphire of a poem, and please continue to
forget to utter your morn prayer to whatever God,
you entrusted your soul while sleeping, cause G. is
smirking at all the fun mishaps planned on today’s
agenda!

Is
you zipper open?
your blouse on inside out?
your metro card in the wallet
of your best friend who forgot
to return it?
What! you forgot bout the cheshire
grin on the Biology Prof’s face, when
he said “Anytime, Anyplace, surprise quizzes
are graded at 0, if you should  fail to appear at
your 8:00am class…

ah well, check your sneaker laces, try to recall
why that string is tied to your index finger or
take you chances of random probability that
having read this missile missive you’ve already
messed up and be careful our there, there are
very dangerous natalino poet~prognosticators
out there ready, william and able to take advantage
of  idiots who fail to be properly superstitious!!!

Salt, anyone?
tapping the well
Nat Lipstadt Apr 18
Dig deep poet;
You too reader;

Commandment One:

Both must obsess to possess,
Air the curvature of each line
shape with two hands, creasing and
no ceasing not till the air waves have filled
your flushed face with compressed comprehensions

You weep as you compose!
Good!
The well of tears where hid
the pool of emotions
in cavernous reservoirs
in the center of your
gravity,
needs a daily tapping,
a draining, a purification,
a quenching sweet and
raucous

where you dig, salted water will come

in the soiled, imperial but imperfect body/mind cappuccino,
there are swirls of treasures, sins and histrionics
that need discovery, expiation, expulsion,
when~then, object is surgically removed,
accept surging water will desoil,
and you can revel
in the revelation
of honest effort

Debate Commencement:

reveal, which, what and how
much, how much? how much?
(this reverbs)
what must be shared,
what must be reburied,
what must be refuted,
what must be reconstructed,
refurbished,
and what must be
demolished & deconstructed

ah, but as soul judge,
you hold yourself to a higher standard,
but in all of this but two constraints rule:

the quality of the recalled data,
the quantity of storage space delimitation

do not tease us with rivulets, nor bury
us under thunderous rushes of memories
spilling and cresting with a reek of abandon,
unless, you’re abandoning the memory en tout,
giving us your newly orphaned all innermost,
then, we must accept the product of your labor,
whether it be spoiled fruit or glorious
                            truth

Tuesday Apr 16
8:32AM
(the year of pollard, a/k/a 2024)
inspired by dancers and choreographers speaking about the sources of creativity @Guggenheim New York
Nat Lipstadt Apr 17
the good old nights^

roam the recesses and the abscess of
our too small apartment in the the very
large, very long, very inescapable wee wee
hours of the dark session of the day, lifting
my tablet to inscribe/ reorder/ recorder her/
this one more in my personal history, with
rant, word elixir, a note to our plural selves,
thinking of English gardens drinking up my
water freshly flowing and flying to you, via
nighty nite storm clouds, or your rural falls

and white clouds cumulus do  not return, and I too,
as my mind ***** and slugs but all attempts to
pierce the walled in somber slumber FAIL.

The creative comes besty beast like when I am driven from my dreams to wakealate (dream+speculate with eyes open)
dream of our realities and the tv (she never
remembers to program to shut down), drones
on about some product with XL in the name
that will make the unsleeping walkers feel
so much-better.

but not, not us, for we turn exploratory and
listen to the humming, beeping, tiny little diodes
of Joseph’s colored coat, all the mini stimuli,
the lights that mark the modern blacker hours
of rhythm, even those who can’t dance, can sleep,
‘cept for me, for I am a tune disturbed, needful of
minding, all these a rhythm busters ghosting me,
as a prelude to a poem vision now freshly etched
on my mind and now upon your flesh, an animation,
of reanimated images of ancient statues, ancient
advertisements for fertility, the dream continuum
of our lives, beyond our clearly demarcated time
line, the human, gene based need to outlive our
bodies in-the bodies of our progeny are a recurring
motif…female fecundity,  statues, many cracked or
missing limbs, come to life and move around, wailing
with grief and anger and hope and desire

alas, alas, another ole good time night ramble,
amidst familiar places and new abscesses,
and I wonder, how am I writing this when both
hands cover my face, and yet I still envision?

Tuesday Apr 16
3:08am
(the year escapes me,
for notions of big times
are measured in multiples
of I can’t remember)
^ there was a time in my life that many years I woke in the middle of the night and wrote furiously. Less often these days, but nonetheless, the Devil *** angel ***  Genie comes, to remind me, who is the boss of me
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/arts/design/israel-pavilion-venice-biennale.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Next page