Alphabet City

In the next life I'll be better,
bigger and stronger
and richer

I'll make the right turns 
the next time when 
the road bends

I will sit comfortably 
square in the seat of me,
pensive and deliberate

My profile will be enabled
to leave you smiling,
light of heart

Our life will be 
white wine and soda
over ice

A beautiful lilting song
one whistles through
softly pursed lips

A velvet kiss,
a stroke of a fingertip
where you need it most

I promise to be better
the next time

cc: CC '22

I wanted to hold your gaze
for whatever time remained,
immerse myself in the spark
of you, aware in your eyes

I shall never know what was
behind or is now before them

The memory of your voice is a tone of joy,
a persistent peal to pull me back
to a misted place that stands 
for all of our times together

Essence is a glimpse to serve,
to remember, a fragile spark
atop the wire

cc: CC '22

From my vantage it is not clear
whether she grasps at a star
or offers a petal to heaven

cc: CC '22

All of my exes
are different
sexes

cc: CC '22
Hee Haw!

The tiniest of gnats
who have shown up
lately around my sink
have no capacity to warn
one another, so I kill them 
all in rapid succession

cc: CC '22

It is said the sun
must be 
at your back
in order to see
a rainbow

Overhead 
arc all of the colors,
your neck's nape
is warmed, and 
your shadow is 
there before you

cc: Chagall '22

She opened and closed 
her book of life,
each chapter a year,
each page a season,
each paragraph a month,
each sentence a day,
each letter an hour,
each space a moment,
the unwritten - all of her 
hopes and regrets,
tucked away till forever 
on a shelf

Whither burrows the worm?

cc: Chagall 2022

So, when is the NAACP going
to change its name to 
the NAAPOC?

cc: CC '22

If I were an artist,
I would never wash
the color from my hands

or from my smock,
or whatever it is that
artists wear

I'd parade around,
a festival, might even
adorn myself with lights

and I'd hum, and I'd sing,
and I'd whistle, clap and dance
up a storm

say artistic things in made-up
tongues, you'd get the gist
despite the words

at night I would dream of rainbows,
and waterfalls, and time gone by,
albeit in monochrome

for dreams these days
are not what they used
to be

and in the morning, I'd rise,
choose colors for the new day, 
while coffee brewed

yesterday's colors would 
fade of their own, without
intervention on my part

my skin, my mind, my life,
is both palette and canvas,
today I create what I will

cc: CC '22

One-and-done She,
comments and disappears,
hit and run, casual asides,
engaged to a point, pointlessly,
a dance for two en pointe,
the sun in her eyes, the grass too tall, 
the cat has eaten her homework,
excuse the excuse pile, the detritus about,
the art you will find intermingled there is
merely a quip, single entendre at best, yet 
her breeze still blows high over the canyon,
lost aerie where an eagle once nested,
taken advantage of for the ages, 
by those who shall do no harm 
...pretty and witty and wise...
where sandpipers and New World warblers fly away 
cast in silver echelon, to seek the lost universe,
a spiral in time, now an aged lady spies
the youthful nymph amid cascades of color,
still vibrant, imbued with that day's sunlight,
its pomp and its circumstance, its radio waves
continue yet to travel outward from the planet,
watch it fade to gray, too black, but somewhere 
along the way, two moody in indigo

cc: CC '22