Archive for February, 2022


Baker’s Dozen

The photo distinctly showed fifteen cookies on the plate.
When they asked me what happened to the other three, 
all I could say was, "Fhoock oohf I no."

cc: Chagall 2022
Please know that Carlos Chagall does not advocate
talking when one's mouth is full.  
The cyclopetrist today told me
I needed trifocals, which is cool 
as I have been developing a third eye

cc: Chagall 2022

Requiem

Anna had said she would
call us all by name, but
the list was removed and 
she had nowhere else
to look

Listen here

cc: Chagall 2022

Goodbye My Love

The cardinal knows it was too much risk,
too long a flash of red in sparse woods,
he lingers on dead branch atop limestone,
now prime within the hawk's cross-hairs, 
his tawny mate safe, fled away to the distance

cc: Chagall 2022

I've never read you say
Eye Drop, yet you are 
the Eye, and I would
have thought it an
apparent play on words,
to describe a dessert, 
or a soup of yours or a 
wrestling move, maybe 
a syndicated column about 
society scandal, but no, 
you have yet 
to write it

cc: Chagall 2022
I remember one day, when I was smaller than now, 
my grandmother received a large envelope,
ribboned with foreign stamps, par avion

She weeps when she opens it and looks inside

I ask
Grandma, why are you crying?

In her broken English she says
From Bachory, Ukraine, моя сестра

She hands me the photo,
a young woman, holding a child
in front of large thicket aside a thatched house

On the back, in cursive Cyrillic, it reads
Noisy are the rustling groves
Glance sister at this photo...
Memories are there

It is signed
With Love
Kateryna, 26, Ivan, 2 (1910)

cc: Chagall 2022

Crested

Strange how falling out of love
feels so much like falling in.

cc: Chagall 2022

Sound Byte

Used to be 
do what you want
as long as it doesn't 
impose or harm me
and loved ones 
really, I don't care
what you do, but
as soon as it starts
to spill over that line,
well then...right? But
what does that really
mean at the end
of the day do you pray
for guidance at all
for one and none
for all, and justice
is a word, just as it was
in the beginning of 
this verse which is
really a round like
you row your boat 
3 sight-impaired mice
or my favorite of all
Kookabura

What was I saying?

cc: Chagall 2022
"I know what's wrong with this sentence", she said.

This has been a Poetic Service Announcement from Carlos Chagall.
If this had been a real poem, you would have been advised to 
seek reference in your nearest guide to punctuation and style.

Love and peace for you all. 
In the warmth of my home, from behind my window,
I watch the young sparrow lift off from her branch,
to come fly directly at me, actually to me - for she sees me,
she trusts me, I have fed her and her's

I have seen many birds die hitting glass,
I am helpless to shoo her away in time

Instead I punch with my bare-knuckles, swing from my hips,
maintain rock-solid deltoids, the pane of glass shatters shards, blood, 
my feathered friend scatters not exactly unscathed, but safely broken 
through to my side

to alight on my dwarf lemon tree

cc: Chagall 2022