it’s a shame that I don’t drink
got whiskey to spare
it’s a shame I don’t smoke
got plenty of rope to burn
it’s a shame that I don’t binge
got food and streams to wade
it’s a shame that I still yearn
don’t got you
Chagall 2020
Archive for May, 2020
yesterday’s breeze
a beachcomber faded blue
memories of Emily I recall
too beautiful that summer
in Kaboo’s old Chevrolet
dancing shoes and give me some time
she loved Fogelberg netherlands
souvenirs part of the plan
heat waving boardwalks and sand in sandals
shared sno-cones and all things turquoise beaded
I thought her lips were sadly luscious
puffed and peppermint-wet delicious
so necessarily hers so readily there
I would sometimes catch her peeking
though my eyes were always closed
(but then how could they be)
she of gorgeous aroma and scented oil
sadly I’d leave wanting more never less and less
then September the month that brings endings
September always rolls around
Chagall 1977/2020
I feel it was just Monday,
I feel like it was,
though seven nights have come and gone,
I would swear it was just Monday
I feel it was just April,
I feel like it was,
but we’ve traveled around the sun one more time,
wasn’t it just Spring?
Monday through Friday, deep in the thick,
till the weekend rolls around,
June, July, august marches through years,
summer ends, autumn, and then…
I feel it was just lovely,
I feel like it was,
didn’t you feel life was lovely too?
I could swear that it was, just now
Chagall 2020
Raising her head and gazing about, she asks,
“How did we get here so quickly?”
Tearfully, she says to me,
“I thought getting old would take longer.”
Chagall 2020
Through the belvedere
breezes blow filled with moonlight
remnants of stardust
Chagall 2020
today’s sky is the same sky
into which my dad once threw
high fly balls, small pink
rubber dime-store buys – that I
would run under and cradle proudly
at the bottom of their descent
the same sky I gazed at over the ocean
when my mom rubbed lotion over my back
to protect me from the sun at the beach,
eating scrambled egg sandwiches tucked
in tin-foil, seasoned with salt and pepper
and finer grains of wind-blown sand
(how small I must have been to be standing upright
while she sat on her towel, still able to reach
my shoulders and neck)
the sky we saw when flat on our backs
on the big rocks of Central Park,
where kids still float boats on the reflecting pool,
not far from Alice, Mad Hatter, and White Rabbit, opposite
Hans Christian Andersen, bronzed, reading his tale
clear and blue as the dome over the southern tip of Manhattan,
where Liberty’s torch burned for those coming through Ellis Island,
pick a day, pick a year
I want this to be the prototype,
the model, the absolute reference,
for the last sky I ever see
Chagall 2020
here at this window, its pane pressed
by dying blossoms, I find the shapes
I design my words around
attempt to snare the wisp that is idea,
a hint of what could be, if only
held fast, it becomes slow, easier
to grasp, illusion made real
by alluding words
and yet so elusive – comprehension,
words – unlike music – create suspension
in a much different way
diminish the mood without sad sparkle,
suggest the tonic with more subtle drop
this morning the world unravels in beautiful extended harmonies,
tensions unleash bittersweet reminisces,
the higher partials of regret,
the intervals of near-misses
the parallel chords that ascend almost to heaven,
but stop short at the threshold for yet another verse
all without the benefit of time to provide a straight line,
cars piled up in queue, each rear-ended,
such is thought without time
a jumble, a swirl, a violent eddy,
a vortex that massages us into complacency,
incites us to roar against the drowning, the deluge,
water that quenches our thirst from the inside out,
pressure implodes us at large
and we are nought but fodder for little fishes
that swim about, wide-eyed gazing in at the remains
here at this glass, its pane pressed
by their gaping mouths and scaly fins, I find the shapes
I design my words around
Chagall 2020
I discovered again today that clouds are real,
not in the sense that they exist,
but as the things they purport
to be
one, a dancer with her back arched so,
her breasts thrust forward,
her face turned starward,
as she travels the sky
the wind dissolves her such that
her chest sprouts legs, her features mutate, and for a moment
she is a minotaur till she is overcome by stretch and breeze
and disproportion, ultimately to fade away
another a trio of ducks, I name them before, after and ever-after,
singular as a fluffy ball, suddenly they are turned
looking and waddling the other way, mashed to become a large white rabbit
for a moment, until they too are gone
now there is nothing but sky, a straight-shot of blue
to where the atmosphere of the earth ends,
where all of the gases press on heaven,
like glaucoma on a cornea, the inside
push of air I blow into a balloon
I discovered again today that I perhaps am also real,
not in the sense that I exist,
but maybe as the thing
I purport to be
Chagall 2020
and I have nothing to say today,
at least – my friend – nothing old
nothing to calm or sedate you,
no tried nor true bromide to take twice today
a new recurring thought
grinds its gears in my mind
ceaselessly whispers
there beneath the garden’s din
bids me to enter,
its finger to its lips to shush me
furtive glances about
to assure no one is watching
a doorman at a speakeasy,
the guard at the shooting gallery
an open mind is the password
that enables entry
once inside you find yourself
outside, everywhere
in every face,
every flower
oddly, there is a wind that blows even here,
at the speed of gale force, carries us away
erases us, despite any desire on our part
for it not to
Chagall 2020
love is a prime number,
divisible only by itself
and One
…security is implemented
through keys derived
from high order primes…
yet I feel so insecure
about love
that old dilemma
of loving versus being
in love
can one
love being
in love?
can two
be in love
with loving?
can one love
without knowing?
can two
ever know?
sometimes two never know,
fail to discover
love is also
divisible by zero
imagine that
Chagall 2020
Alphabet City 