Accidentally sprinkled my Japanese maple
with vodka rather than water and now
she’s sino-russo.
Chagall 2018
Archive for May, 2018
She said
the hardest part about love
is the waiting
to be asked or kissed
near the phone, by your side
up all night
or around
the bend, on the news
hand and foot
like a fool
for the other
shoe
to fall
Chagall 2013
If one truly believes we’re a fascist state and
indeed the brown-shirts are coming, why then
advocate for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment?
Wouldn’t this be the textbook context to justify
exercising that right to its fullest to assure
the continuation of freedoms?
Ponder that on both sides of your brain while
you speak from both sides of your mouth.
Love CC
Sometimes I sit on the porch, play guitar
in odd rhythms to inspire the birdsong in
the woods that surround me.
They are really good at the high parts.
Chagall 2018 – remember: not B sharp
and not B flat, just B natural
Even incognito
I could tell
’twas Rita
Chagall 2018 – just for the fun and the sound of it
Finally I had to blurt out: Seriously!
You take that much time to choose an emoji?
WTF!?!?!
Chagall 2018 – pretty much have had it up to here (gestures
to throat with the inside edge of the right hand)
She’d prop up on elbows and lazily say
Did you know you’re my favorite people?
Chagall 2018
Lazy birds sing what sound to be questions,
small inquisitions, diminuendo, trills in five-eighths time,
while hurrahs of wind rush the dense canopy of their home,
like waves on sand.
Erase traces of what used to be.
Beyond, I hear loggers, large machines, mechanical chorales spun,
in odd reverberant Om, mantras for flat-felled forests.
I rush the treeline, run insanely,
unable to draw enough air to support the bellow I envision,
the weight of the howl I want to import, the reply I want to scream,
to the wood pigeon, the grand thrush,
the paradise parrot, the heath hen,
to the parakeet, the laughing owl,
the island rail, the piopio,
to the Kaua’i ‘O’o,
the grebe, and the oystercatcher . . .
My chest heaves, uncontrollable gasps,
like a mourner in the front row,
my eyelids gummy, thick strands of hot tears,
sun-waves diffracted, rainbows sheared on my optic nerve.
I purse my lips and find the bird call within me,
I sing a soulful lament, run arpeggios clean
without glissando, a call to flee,
to fly away, to find places that we cannot find.
But my song is lost to the world of sound around me,
to the crescendo that approaches rapidly, the steady march, a goose step to
erasure.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
When I was much younger
I could find affinity
in the eyes of people I’d meet,
some sense of kinship we shared,
but that has long since gone away.
Chagall 2018
Jet-black hummingbirds stark against the
white fence-slats, hovering madly over the
tiny yellow-wiffle-balls nestled into the
bright-red trumpets of the nectar dripper,
extracting the rich sweet water, then
flying away at mach 3
Chagall 2018
Alphabet City 