Alphabet City

In the glass backyard tabletop
I see airships but I don’t look up
and so they go away.

Chagall 2018

I gave her a pound of shortening
so she wouldn’t think I was trying to butter her up.

Chagall 2018

Humbly I walk the wetlands,
goldfinches spring from sere red leaves
into trees stripped bare primeval.

Ancient caws overhead sing
the timeless, the space of gray
I am in.

Drowsy rodents at hollowed knots,
woody sworls where broods
await winter.

A stream of water diverts to run
the clearing at the eddy’s edge
where the last leaves alight like Giverny water lilies.

Points of light touch my optic nerve,
for a moment the world is inverted
but I’m upside-down so all’s righted.

The air hints impending,
upending each moment
till the next until now.

I scream inside, cry outside,
I ache to grasp the is,
the all that isn’t.

I climb onto a low branch,
a vantage above ground,
my back against trunk for balance.

First small birds then early snow,
alight on my lashes, till I am consumed
in feathery frost.

In thaw I am the vernal pool
that reflects moonlight in
the faces of thirsting deer.

From me erupts the eternal
smaller than life as we know it,
divine, grander than anything not.

Chagall 2018

1.
I awoke this morning,
no one was home, but
the coffee was made,
which is odd since I live
all alone.

2.
At the edge of the roof
I espy a graf zeppelin;
at the end of the line
I assure we are
all aboard.

3.
I think in the end
I will realize
I was actually here
all along.

4.
The face of the
Almighty.

Chagall 2018

Nowadays, when people leave, say We’ll see you!
I no longer know if that will be true.

Come, let me embrace you, enfold you, keep you safe forever.

Chagall 2018

Early draft; we’re liking it thus far, hope you do too
Headphones preferred

By Carlos Chagall and Seb Greco

Considering whether or not to buy
stock in cannabis companies, or
invest an equivalent amount of money
simply in cannabis.

Buy low, sell high.

Chagall 2018

Above rooftops and clouds I soar,
a hunt for abstract sublimity,
chancing the cold rare air found there,
a wish to wander where stimuli gather,
a grand-ball hall for synapse rather
than seeing them die on the vine.

So many doors lead elsewhere,
some have no knobs to turn, no
hinge to swing, no
transom glass to
usher light.

To wait is to succumb.
To fate! Too late
to extend a thumb,
I hop on The Bus, sip
droplets from stalactites,
salty pours the tongue.

Keeps me young.

As a child I dreamed I could fly
if I jumped high to overtake gravity,
I’d enter the flow of a wind barb,
stream myself lighter-than-air, to elude
the peril of mazes and dreamscapes.

But nowadays firm on subconscious ground,
defiant, deluded, I face the night macabre,
without flight or fear, still searching
for the rarefied.

Chagall 2018

Snow-blind;
red barn,
hidden.

In time.

Quiet
frozen fall;
a sullen robin.

Chagall 2018

1.
My limbs do not succumb to gravity
and so I cannot sleep.

2.
I asked, “What the hell do you know about Buddhism?”
She replied, “Now, never you mind.”

3.
The longest fall is a teardrop’s journey
from lash to cheek, jawline to tile.

Chagall 2018