Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

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

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

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

Saturday, January 12, 2013

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
  

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

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

Sunday, January 6, 2013

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!


From
·       Shambhala Publications  
To
·       josephlamport@yahoo.com
Having trouble viewing this email? View the online version.

http://images.shambhala.com/images/illus/ShaBanner.gif
http://www.shambhala.com/images/illus/dot.gif
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
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Thursday, January 3, 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



*  *  *  * * *  *


--> -->


From
http://wwwaf3b96f5c813ea17d6b3aefd62b32a1c.a0cf56b440c51bbdfa6c56672ace5486.af3b96f5c813ea17d6b3aefd62b32a1c.a0cf56b440c51bbdfa6c56672ace5486.bestwealthnetwork.com/oo_image/F08KZY702NSAZ5Z1ITZ2IGZ1240Z2VR6LZ3JZ178KCVZ3UHSQIOH1GJEFDKOV0E

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


Wednesday, January 2, 2013

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