A Moment of Vast Richness

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Finding

The key 

To a treasure room

Is never easy

Because 

Invariably

You forget

What it is

You’re looking for

But suddenly

There it was today

Eureka 

And it just happened

To be one of those days

When I remembered

Which key might fit

Into which door

I was in a CVS

Drugstore in fact

By the cash register

Suffering from

A bad head cold

When I found

The very thing

I was looking for -

A package

Of Kleenex

For the long subway ride

I had to take
Out to Brownsville 

But the plastic wrapped

Package cost ten wipes

For a dollar or

Ten cents per tissue

And I felt poor indeed

As if I could barely afford

To blow my nose

And then

I remembered

What I’d intuited before

About fabulous

Wealth – that it would

Only arrive for me

Concomitant 

With the moment

When money itself

Had become 

All but worthless

And I realized

Well here I am

Well on my way

To attaining such
A vast Net Worth

Words shared with a Jazz Messenger

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I wrote this poem after chatting on the front stoop for a while with my downstairs neighbor, Mr. Victor Lewis, who it just so happens is a very fine jazz drummer and what's rarer yet, an ultra-fine specimen of a human being.

Words shared with a Jazz Messenger

Like the shape
Of a drum solo

The words of a poem  

Come and go

And sadly 

A good one

Sometimes slips away
No longer accessible

To RAM or to ROM

Still it might

Come back to

Get written down

One day because if 

An idea or riff
Is persistent enough 

It will manage

To be reheard eventually

And that’s how we know  

What it meant
In the first place

The Digitant

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What exactly
Is a digitant
I sometimes wonder

My best guess being
It's something of
A hybrid like
A Chimera
For modern times

A cross between
A savant and
A dilettante
But with a little
Digital flair

And just like
The Chimera
I recently encountered
It's meant to be protective
And not in the least bit
A threatening beast

A Chimera recently encountered

Short Ode to the Poet's Blog

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Let’s face it

This poetry blog

Entails a little

White lie

At it’s core

These poems

May sound as if

Lampoet is addressing

An audience of one

But why blog

If not intended

For someone else

No matter unseen

Or unfelt beyond

The usual entry

On the user log

Mattress Meditation

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In the passage from  

Man’s best friend

To first or second mate

Falls what shadow or pile

Of Alpha Centurion dust

Of such stuff as we
Are made of
With knob in hand

And poem in mind

From beginning to end

Swirls the cloud

In a pattern

Of love and

Distress

Meditation in the Parking Lot (aka Dashboard Buddha)

Sitting in a parked car

The Dude and

The Zen Master

On my lap reading

A passing reference

To the Sixth Patriarch

And quite suddenly

I realized yeah

Everything

Is connected

In a Kevin Bacon

Sort of way 

Here at the intersection

Of Hollywood and Divine

That's the charm

Of American Zen

Where entertainment

And Enlightenment

Become almost

Interchangeable

With The Dude

On my lap here
In the parking lot

From Sea Hunt to

To Huineng

It's clear as far
As an eye in
A parked car 
Can see
  

Looking for Signs

You can really
Drive yourself nuts
With the business
Of looking for signs
On the streets of New York

For instance
That white blotch
On the sidewalk
Over there

Does that mean
Some giant pigeon
Has come to roost
Among us or perhaps
Something even
More auspicious

Spampoetry for Greater Mindfulness - IV

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This is the fourth poem in my Spampoetry collection. This one was occasioned by a bit of higher caliber and more mindful trending spam I received from Shambhala earlier today.

Happy New Year and

Please come celebrate

Greater Mindfulness with 30% off

Reads the subject heading

Trumpeting various new titles

On walking and eating

In a more mindful fashion

So happily there now

Comes along Shambhala Press

To help me jumpstart

The New Year in the best

Way possible at least there's

No need to pay full price

And still make AD 2013

The least behindful year yet!

Happy New Year! Save 30% on Mindful Living titles!

Hide Details

From

·       Shambhala Publications  

To

·       josephlamport@yahoo.com

Having trouble viewing this email? View the online version.

Happy New Year! The start of a new year offers the opportunity to reflect on what we find most meaningful. It's a time to contemplate how our intentions have manifested in the past year and how we'd like them to manifest in the future. To help inspire your journey, we've put together a selection of titles with guidance from a variety of perspectives on how you can become healthier and happier in 2013. To help you start off the new year right, we'd like to offer you 30% off all the books in the e-mail below—and on all the books in our Mindful Living category. Just enter discount code NY2013 at checkout. Valid until January 31, 2013.

Spampoetry - III (From Howie Mandel)

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From Howie Mandel

Or not I suppose

I’ve just received word -

Congratulations -

I’m a contestant

 But I knew that

Already didn’t I

Though I’m still

Waiting to collect

Some uncertain reward

*  *  *  * * *  *

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‭⁠‪⁠‪_‌Joseph - You have been selected to be on Deal or No Deal

Show Details

From

·       ‌_‪⁠‪⁠‭Howie Mandel  

Congratulations! You have been selected to be a contestant on Deal or No Deal.

Please Click Here to confirm your invitation.

Memo Sent by the Poet to the Publisher

Many years ago
One business colleague
Or another of mine
Some elder statesman
Though I've long
Forgotten which one
Impressed upon me
The importance of
Bearing in mind that
Everyone reports
To somebody else

The Deacon to the Minister
Even the Board of Directors
Reports to God I suppose

Except here am I
A self-styled
Self-published
Epic poet
Beholden
To the Word only
A practitioner
Of the freest verse
Imaginable because
As I versify
I report only
Beyond myself to
The broad open skies

Spampoetry - II

This is the second poem I think might fit in my new collection, Spampoetry.   This one was inspired by a piece of spam I just received from Facebook.  

Since when did it

Become OK for

Facebook to email me

For the purpose

Of saying that some

Friend of mine

Real or imagined

Has recently commented

On their own status

I mean really

What kind of

Bullshit is that

And while you’re at it

Can you also please explain

The difference between

Stand-up and poetry

In a disposable culture

When all of us

Are busy scribbling

Nothing but

Throw away lines