It was me at the window that morning
Running my fingers along the lace tat
Watching you walk away so gracefully
Of that day I remember so little
You turned, I ducked, I saw you blow kisses
You waved, I stood, at the corner you wait
I wait
You’ll come back like you always do
Chagall 2015
Yesterday the sun will shine as it did
the future kinetic sky-blue yearns for grace
peaceful children yawn, kiss daddy
steadily my friends are falling everywhere klaxons toll
let them float one last time dear God
(burn my throat with tears I can’t feel
brace my lungs with rage to howl)
to alight on sunlit beams
splayed across the Hudson
Chagall 2015
I revealed myself, infinite forms
numerous as stars of the sky
in the moment, to which he sought
sanity weeping, begging for me to cease, he’d seen enough:
thus I bestowed wisdom and peace upon young Arjuna.
Chagall 2015
Had my face into the berries
shaking the ripest free
minding my own business
when a bee took it upon himself
to sting me, obviously not aware
of the relationship I’d fostered
with the ecosystem around, a newbie
(if you will) who didn’t get the pecking order,
so I sat him down to say:
Hey listen, around here we live and let live,
species means quite little, your kind and I
are tight and while I don’t like to play the Queen card,
trust me – I will!
He buzzed understanding, landed on my nose,
looked me deep in the eye in the eye in the eye, to which I puffed
out my lower lip, blew my breath upward, sending him aloft
on his way.
Did I ever tell you about my electric-blue damselflies?
Chagall 2015
I fall in love
too often for I mistake sorrow
for the amorous
Perhaps it’s my sense
of being atop the chain
striving to deliver the lonely
their fair due
So I would die in your place
loving you more than myself
mistakenly standing
the world on its end
Chagall 2015
On my back barely beneath water,
the soft sand molds me to form,
I’m dense, settled in with full gravity,
heavy human-molten, I dare myself to breathe
in the liquid as at birth my lungs
accustom to the wet, I relax accepting
this will end soon, I smile
at diffracted rays of sun, the final light
I will see this time around; this drowning
is not so hard, it’s more a state of mind.
Chagall 2015
Just jiggle your eyes up and down
like you swing when you sway when you dance
Bilingual so cunning we lip-sync till vibration booms flows
like monsoons in a trance
butterflies flutter by
hmm . . . wonder why?
rub-a-dub scrub in the tub small circular backstrokes in front
more nimble then able my horses they fly, saddle one babe bubble-up.
Chagall 2015
Instinctively she knew
the dholavira symbols
were incorrectly ordered,
she goddess of the Indus Valley.
Chagall 2015
With certainty I sense what’s timeless
so therefore I am, aren’t I?
It’s a light that shines forever,
a tone with no break for interval.
It’s the moment of you, the thought of you,
the underbelly of you upon my shoulders.
Within that light play fine shadows, disturbed
branches windblown in time.
The doppler of the carousel horses rise then fall
round and rise then fall again.
It is this mere one lifetime with you,
the incessant farewell of moments.
At any time you’ll be here.
At any time you’ll be gone.
Uncertainty senses this timeless
alone, aloft with no tether.
Chagall 2015
When she was a child we played a game
we pretended to be high on a cliff at the edge
losing grip on our footing we’d plummet
down off the bed as if from Everest
at the last minute grabbing hands in mid-air
in outstretched rescue every sinewy muscle
straining to hold onto life. She writes
that it’s readied her well for the fight,
she loves me, it’s time to let go.
Chagall 2015
Alphabet City 