I can’t break away from this burning desire
to feel – to touch anything – to stay immersed in color and sound.
I can hold it
but then . . .
I slip,
something slips
gears, such a drag
to always be in retrospect.
© Chagall 2014
Category: Music Set To Poetry
He told her that he designed with intent
to look disingenuous – after all, Machiavellian.
She nodded, let her gaze linger a moment,
licked her lips; he sighed.
Acrobatic swirls of fancy, intertwined
in the lattice between them; arabesque.
A couplet and a wine, vintage Elizabeth,
portrayed grander, yet conceived modestly.
I am still convinced by the heave of her bosom,
compelled by the breath of her air.
© Chagall 2014
Without each loved one who passes
I’m forced to face the eternal,
to ponder again that stretch of days.
Endless seems uncertain,
something must intervene.
Within, I assure me
that forever never comes.
© Chagall 2014
The clouds inside of me
rain on the outside.
© Chagall 2014
When you realize you’re style
the rest comes easy.
Then it’s just you
being you.
How not to upset
the apricot.
Or burn one bridge
before she’s been crossed.
I smile, blow kisses from twilight
whenever there’s love.
© Chagall 2014
Peepers are still out this time of year
though their song comes earlier in the eve these days,
fragile, almost not there; easy to listen beyond and miss them.
The foreground caw of a big bird, the bark of a dog
on my backstage, panned far left, a flashing beep
of some truck backing up, overhead gaggles honk and recede.
In echelon wildly, we ride the updraft, dip and soar,
aerialists cum acrobats, spun but poised nonpareil, sans apparatus,
relying solely on wingspan and pin-sharp charisma.
The V is impressed with its own formation, looks down and spies itself
in the placid face of the water; a solemn unified beat of blood-pumped wings
cuts swaths in mid-air, affirms partisans aloft in the primeval current.
So many songs harmonize around me, twelve-tone hymns and patterns,
colors in sound, or maybe more like touch – the voices about and within,
caress me more than paint me; ephemeral sounds, timeless embossing of our hearts.
© Chagall 2014
Light #1
I’ve a string of white bulbs that run up-along-down the wide wall of my porch
where I sit sometimes with my back to them wearing my glasses;
their image reflects on my lenses from behind, photons in the metal rims perhaps,
making everything appear as if staged through a proscenium arc of white neon walking beads.
Light #2
I was in my neighbor’s garden last night
right at that time when solar day-charging outdoor lights
kick in. In the middle of the patch was a small
electronic elf on sky-cycle, pedaling gently, emitting ice-blue pinwheel sparks
there among autumn sunflowers.
© Chagall 2014
I am made so very lighthearted
by the sight of my neighbor’s light.
© Chagall 2014
Ecclesiastically contested.
Unceremoniously censored.
Perilously pared.
Piquant?
Perhaps.
Illuminatingly metro.
Respectfully nuyorican
(not – as the spell checker has suggested – Corsican).
Aggravatingly a salted one.
Flighty, from too many stairs in buildings too tall
to mention in one breath.
Cheesy?
Maybe.
But as I go,
asiago.
© Chagall 2014
They were the first people
to leave the first child
on the moon.
© Chagall 2014
Alphabet City 