Alphabet City

Bi-plane pulls a banner
across graying skies, says
All you can dream!

The moment is
an aberration in Ordinary Time,
extraordinarily so, unlike all that’s come or will.

I am mass, resonance, shape and design
breathed through glass, spun backwards.

Figure is ground, the toucher touched,
trapped in surface tension.

I see through the mist at first so pervasive,
inevitable as time and space, life, death, love and rebirth.

I waltz with myself in a salty room,
broom-swept but no worse for wear,
still smelling of summer, I samba
on sand from beaches I conquered, on
bleached plank floors carefully about broken glass.

I mist the room of petals
to keep them opened wide
alert to the sound of oceans;
dance-darkly waves, froth-sexy
whitecaps warm in bare moonlight
rush about ankles.

It’s the last day, the pieces away,
the board packed up, damp paperback pages
adrift on shores, stuck like wonton wrappers

Barefoot girls
dance ska, dark rums and tabla
keep beat that only seers feel.

On this day of reclamation, nocturnes
for atonement pipe through vents
that rim the sky.

Murmurs I can’t distinguish
clearly, the words incanted,
more than prayers,

I think perhaps formulae.

Chagall 2013-2018

See that hand
waving up from your waistband?

That’s me
via your pajama leg!

I’ll just loll here a while
let my fingers moonwalk
up and down your belly

index
tapping on your navel
a little bongo

scurry like
a cat on a mouse
on parquet

triplet raps
middle to thumb
add the ring for
straight four-four time
end with all moving
cascades and flourish
like Vladimir Horowitz
full-hand five finger
quintuplets

ah, so you’re ticklish!
well, I’ll just blow raspberries here . . .
and here . . . and . . .
okay, enough? cry uncle

Tio!

Come on, get dressed,
we’ll go have breakfast.

Did I lie,
wasn’t the sleepover fun?

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

tied up and twisted
a spirit turns to a wick
to burn, but not endlessly

Chagall 2018

If you can’t cut the mustard
you will be forced to play ketchup

Chagall 2018 – asleep at the pantry

The Buddha took out a small ad
in our local wellness magazine.

No one noticed. Nobody paid him
any mind.

Chagall 2018

Morning at the old wood gate
warblers peck for breakfast
excited cheeps for each
spider in the dead bark
of the mailbox post they find

Sweet pea blossoms
like caramel sugar on the hot
steady breeze off the pond
where the fattest cattails grow

Meadow katydids chatter
while fuzzy bees bump and buzz

Ankle-top hoppers pop
alight on bent-grass
sway there asleep at the tips
until sprung again

I chew wild sorrel while I wait
lemon zest on my tongue
glorious as the day is breaking

Wavy heat
off U.S. 9
along the hill
by Neary’s field

That’s the way you’ll come
with your dad
in his old grain truck

Your head out the window
Ike with his Camels
unfiltered and smoky

He tousles my hair
says I’m a fine young man says
you and Elizabeth have fun

Lately he shakes
a marionette
fly-away arms from the palsy

But he holds me steady
with steel-gray eyes
reflecting sky like fender chrome

Says expect him back around supper time
on the return trip home from Granary

One long wave
all the while he leaves
he smiles in his side-view mirror
beeps twice at the turn, and he’s gone.

The road is quiet
except for the sound
of settled dust
and ancient rock compressing

The summer is ours
and ours are days
of endless morning

Together forever
as if in dreams
we vow

To touch –
never to spoil

Carlos Chagall, 2013

A year ago you asked me
to grow goji and I did.

And now that they’re here
you’re gone.

Chagall 2018

Right up front
before I begin
I would like to preface what
I am about to say with
a few opening remarks, but first…

Frankly speaking,
I’d rather not say, but
if I may be direct,
only circuitous routes
for me from now on

Chagall 2018

Mediocrity
is overrated

Chagall 2018

Heard a bird today
I think it was a pigeon
Whistling Clair De Lune

Chagall 2018