Archive for July, 2013


Dominga Samba

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She said her name was Dominga Samba,
a Castilian, her family went way back,
the sixth century, Kingdom of León,
after the Romans, the time of the Moors.

She spoke this lispy, crazy Portuguese,
sprinkled with what she called Mozarabic.

I mainly listened to her eyes and lips,
and the tight geometry of her curves.

She danced to pachanga like a Cuban,
Galician spirits moved her, she swooned,
head thrown back, knees akimbo, she’d mambo,
son montuno, like the natives used to.

She’d rise, make love astride like a goddess,
hypnotic, offbeat lunges, then circles,
lightly, hovering, just barely touching,
interlocked rhythms, deep and full glides home.

She was rapping time on my cencerro,
would have made Arsenio Rodriquez proud.

I think of her now almost every night,
she has since moved back to Salamanca.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

Thwarted

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I’m scheduled to die on this gorgeous day,
the window open, cool breeze, blown curtain,
knowing the morning’s about to begin,
life in and out, crossing paths on the way.
So much poetry that I’ve yet to say,
so many places that I’ve never been,
encircled there by sobbing next of kin,
the priest has just arrived, it’s time to pray.

I stop them before the sign of the cross,
“Today is absolutely not my time,
too much sunshine.”  So I ask them to leave.
I shower, I shave, I brush, and I floss,
I dance a jitterbug, compose a rhyme,
jot the names of those not showing to grieve.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

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Here, eternity works a little different:
it’s forever for some, but not for all,
like those at the parapet,
standing watch for the rest.

Here, death is not quite the same either:
if you grasp the nature of the energy,
and your mind’s in the right place at the touch,
nine times out of ten, you’ll transcend.

A breath here, a swallow there,
a promise, a beacon, a cold-hard stare,
life’s the clarion call.

Get your riders up!

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

I reblog this for a specific reader who is under the delusion that I am someone she knows. Dear Mine Meld, or Mine Map, or Mine Field, or whatever your handle is – I am not xradxx03 – stop hounding me in the background. Have a good weekend. Keep writing. —–Chagall

Chagall's avatarAlphabet City

Hello.

I am not writing about you.
I am not writing about anyone, let alone anyone you might know.

I am vamping, riffing, making it up on the fly.
A matador working the cape, entangling the horns as they come.

I am a romantic, a raconteur, a fabulist.
I parry in rhythm and rhymes, in sound, guttural, enunciated.

I do not know you, dear follower. You do not know me.
I do not know me. If anything, I write about the people I know in flesh and blood.

I am inspired by those who have been at my side for my lifetime.
They are here with me now, living the day-to-day, the grind, with love and commitment.

We sweat, laugh, sometimes hysterically until we cry, aching good, chest to chest, cheek to cheek.
Your comments suggest you think I am alone on this planet; au contraire, my life is bohemian…

View original post 155 more words

Spaldine

Thinking about my Dad. A reblog from March 25, 2013, in his honor. —–Chagall

Chagall's avatarAlphabet City

The 60s, Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan,
my dad, in khaki slacks and black Ban-Lon,
arced his frame, unleashed a tremendous throw,
straight up, launched a 50 cent stickball
far above the rooftops, o’er tenements,
it’s pink receded to a point, a dot,

hung there in perfect blue noon; hangs there
still.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

View original post

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At Palisades Park, the salt water pool,
as a little kid, I strayed too far,
into deep waters, over my head,
I began to drown.

Underwater was a beautiful turquoise,
golden with afternoon sun,
I could feel my lungs begin to burst,
I was helpless to emerge,
get above water.

Yet I still caught sight of him,
there in the world
on the other side of the diffraction,
a fun-house version of himself
in the wavy lines,
trotting along the pool’s edge,
approaching.

Then he was there underwater with me,
a torpedo coming,
black hair, floating tendrils,
blue eyes wide open
soaking up the saline,
bright, shiny,
he – surrounded by bubbles,
a latino aquaman.

I broke the surface in his grip,
a tight hug to last forever,
sound and life all about us.

The amusement park’s
closed for many years now.

I gave him wet kisses,
and reveled in the rough sandpaper of his cheek against mine,
until I fell asleep in his arms on the bus-ride home to Port Authority,
I kept saying: you saved me Dad, you saved me!

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

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You are very pretty,
dancing there,
while I’m dancing here;

we should be dancing
together.

I’m going to work my way in close
to touch, eyelash to fluttering
eyelash, a breath
on your cheek, so light,
like a fleeting glance, without breaking
stride from a glide.

Sweep you slowly,
oh, to kiss you deeply
across the floor, again
once more.

Whirl-twirl you
like hurricanes hitting
land with the beat of the band.

That’s the way we dance –
sabado –
that’s the way
the nights flow.

Hold your count,
I’ll meet you where you are,
when you turn, lock-
step, step spry.

Eye-to-eye.

Funny how these things can go,
sly sambas.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

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A slow dance,
Friday night,
hands on hands,
thigh to thigh,
shadow me,
as I slide,
to the left,
stutter-step,
reverse right,
you got it,
feel the beat,
hold the sway,
rock the hips,
shoulder pops,
small circles,
tight rhythm,
subtle rhyme,
you whisper,
Portuguese
in my ear,
in our veins,
on the floor.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

Final sale, as it is, no returns, everything goes.

Flowers for the olfactory challenged, chefs for the palette-less,
capes for the powerless, mimes for the blind, maestri for the deaf,
love for the heartless, bullets for the poets.

Short-sighted seers, cynical romantics,
this week’s legend, vision-impaired leaders, heartless holy men,
bounded skies, fleeting eternities.

The now, the then, fad diets, the Zen-Dow-Tao,
bailouts, screw-ups, lock-downs, love-ins,
reality TV, social networks, anti-social behavior,
after-school-Saturday-night specials,

little blue pills, orange barrels, black beauties,
white lightning, boogie-night-red-yellow-terror,
cougars, panthers, housewives of any state, altered states, brotherhoods, sister states,

in-source, out-source, to the source, find the source, reveal your source, take off your mask,

the spring-summer-fall of despotic regimes,
the winters of our crusading discontent,
in the name of (fill in the unspeakable reference to your favorite god),

state-of-the-union-jack-off-color-remarks,
political correctness, gender buy ass,
diversity, exclusion, cancer, protrusions,
MOMA, DOMA, SOMA, coma, arrivederla Roma,

retakes, rejects, premature ejaculate, real estate speculate,
mortgage fraud, Sigmund Freud, sigmoidoscopy, hard copy, soft copy,
soft skills, skill sets, non-stick skillet, sodium, more sodium, most sodium,
nitrates, nitrites, bull fights, olestra, the last straw, the last waltz,
the final curtain, finals, ritalin, vitamin K,

date rape, court date,
meat grinder, quarter pounder, pound your meat,
a pound of flesh, salt lick, rock salt, pound rocks,

on the juice, on the take, on the lam, on the grift, graft,
knick-knack paddywack, paddy wagon, tails a’waggin’, asses dragging,

on the stand, on the skids, on the street, on the money, on the nose,
nose bleed, bleed out, down and out,

down low, low down, a new low, a new high, high and dry,
down and dirty, low riders, cut throats,
cut-rate, my cut, my take,
take me down, beam me up.

© Chicheme, 2013

Haiku For Real Divas

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Maria Callas,
the real thing as divas go.
Bastardized language.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013