Alphabet City

Every day
I glue
the worn heel of
my shoe
back on and
(r)amble

Chagall 2019

Gray sharkskin pants beneath moth-ridden knit jumpers,
the attic trunk creaks at the hinges, old dust puffs
like drags on cigarettes stolen from Mom’s koochie purse,
the pant’s crease oddly still sharp in runs along the peg
to what once was a lively instep atop dance floors no longer,
in the pocket a twenty dollar bill and a ticket stub from
the Surf Ballroom, the night before the father, son and holy ghost
departed the planet, Dion the Bruno Mars of then,
the money meant for a cab we never took, but now
I reach high in the air, on my tiptoes, to ease the attic door
back into place, intentionally leaving the light on.

Chagall 2019

It’s the last day, all the pieces away,
the board packed up, damp paperbacks adrift
in time, on shores, pages stuck together
like wonton wrappers, floured fingers pry
each paper-thin layer loose, like a scab
pulled from the ages, the times when
summers’ lights warmed barefoot girls
dancing ska, dark rums and tabla
keeping beats that only seers felt.

Tornadoes the size of fists grabbed at us,
sprites from nowhere, pixies to beguile
even the most steadfast non-believer
among us, temporary lapses in sanity,
slow to vanish like the aftermath
of bright flashes, instamatic power cubes
before digital, when low light meant
wide open apertures and long shutter speeds,
avoided shudders that would disrupt the flow
of light to film three hearts on the mend.

I rest my chin in my hands, coy there prone
along the footlights, casting a large shadow
on the back wall, a Chinese lantern,
a lava lamp, a strobe, dancing shoes
hanging on a peg, on the wall above your bedside,
powder blue silk ballerina, how you’d slide,
glide on dust, on chalky planks,
spin, and toe, and hold, arabesque.

A kiss in total darkness, where the self is all,
on a flat plain, lower than the highest peak,
arching and craning our necks to the sky,
modest in majesty, purple prose and monotone
gypsies sing in distant choirs,
reverberate in the canyons around us,
while spectral howls rise high above the timberline,
and each drop is sheer, straight to the point.

This is the moment we talked about,
before the re-entry, after the last time,
promising one another to remember the other,
there was no way we wouldn’t once beholden,
but that was then, before the inevitable
disappearing frame, where it’s harder to find
perspective, unlike the clarity we hold
in the interim, at the way-station between beads
we pluck from the string across the canopy.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013/2019

To creatures of the quantum state
we are the observable universe
expanding till we recede and
our light no longer shines

Chagall 2019

I don’t lyke typohs.

Chagall 2019

Always tired, what I thought was fatigue
was instead a pervasive sense of “I”
amalgamated in my central brain,
balled in hallucinatory mucous,
wadded, waiting, willing to do our bid

I’ve since dispelled that charm,
released the intruder,
regained life’s energy

There’s now no me

Chagall 2019