Alphabet City

I lie to the children.
I tell them that the white light
of tracers is angels running
across the sky, and the booms
of the shells are the triumphant
sounds of the onset of parades.

As my parents lied to me, 
and my grandparents them.

cc: Chagall 2022

My mom saved pennies in coffee cans,
copper, zinc, sometimes nickel, and 
those from the war-years of steel;
Martinson, Yuban, Chock-Full-O'-Nuts, 
Savarin, Sanka, and Nescafe

she kept them in the kitchen closet,
beside a stack of coin wrappers 
tied with a rubber band, fifty pennies
to a roll, tight half-dollar cylinders

58 rolls
was the rent

she would rather a home, a garden,
a proper bath, than the railroad
rooms we lived in, I'm certain

slums are slums, and
dreams are dreams,
and years go by
so quickly

when she died we found boxes,
new clothes still with tags on, 
for events not occasioned, small 
knick-knacks for shelves unadorned, 
doilies not placed atop any dresser

in her eyes I see love,
unconditional, never longing

call me when you get home

cc: Chagall 2022

Words, metaphors for knowing,
less rapid than thought, brought on by
a need to convey the inside, out enters
as a lion, preys, succumbs to lams and exits, 
what's been and what will be, a present rapt in bows, 
under the tree when the bough breaks, I will catch baby
or I will catch hell from those who art forbidden in heaven,
from whence the kingdom came, undone will here, 
this time, this earth, hidden within the good word

cc: Chagall 2022

Greetings to you, our family, from Ukraine.
The roses growing in the garden sway with the wind.
Do you recall who is writing to you?
I write this while I sit on the Oak Bench.  
When you were small, many, many years ago, we sat there.
My letter comes to you, now as a guest to you, our Family.
I pray one day we see each other again.

cc: Chagall 2022

Passed writers,
the detritus of dead avatars
puffs without link to any works, 
their site
is no longer, 
a short path
to the point on carbon tip,
the electrocution of ideas
leaves behind the smell of burnt hair,
a single wisp of smoke, a cowlick 
God's spit and thumb smooths down,
poets, though messiahs at heart, remain inert
long beyond the third day

cc: Chagall 2022

snow heavy atop branches of leyland cypress,
until the mass collapses, falls in slow motion,
reveals deep green, fresh, renewed, vibrant with crisp hope,
all the canopy's a stage, snowflakes - mere actors
- enter the world in cold, nourished by the colder,
affinity with the coldest up to the thaw,
spring is a dream we dream from under the tundra,
trapped in an avalanche, who knows which way is up

cc: Chagall 2020

A few years back, Amaya Engleking (Gospel Isoceles) surprised me, made my day - nay, my year! - by integrating a verse I had written, into a wonderfully composed poster, seen above.  

I strongly recommend her work, if you have not already discovered it, here at her site

cc: Chagall 2020

Those who take pride in telling it like it is, 
and letting you know that they’re the sort 
who tell it like it is, and of whom others refer 
as those who like to tell it like it is, rarely – 
if ever – like to be told what it’s like

cc: Chagall 2022

(found written on the back
of a bierhaus receipt,
from the Final Archives, 
where History repeats itself
unbeknownst to Anybody)

Memo: re the Shop Floor
We own the factory
they labor within
low quality
ideas and people 
will come off the line 
this time
quality spikes
our score 
not yet 
six sigma

cc: Chagall 2022