She couldn’t
remember which
we’d said we’d want
so she brought both
calliopes as well
as kaleidoscopes how
wonderful they went
hand-in-hand
Chagall 2016
Category: Writing
Keep moving
we must follow
every drop of ray
must fall – alight
make truer yet
the glow of our skins
we are all
beautiful people
in sunset
tomorrows
wax deliciously
like sunrise – all new days
that’s what hope
looks like blind
faith keeps coming
long the day after
angle me so
I can watch
the last fade
of the light
Chagall 2016
She started to fall so
I tilted her back to the wall
– just so – that way her heart
wouldn’t break
Some water?
I offered
she gazed through me numbly
a beam between two pairs of eyes too deep
had nothing to hide
she proffered
Is it love
or affliction
she whispered
and isn’t it just
the truest of times?
Chagall 2016
Not many left who remember
Fourth O’ July
weekends
Semper Fi, 5th Marines Spearhead Division
Iwo Jima
Chagall 2016
The forecast missed her small tornadoes
she of far beyond uncharted water
right-side up the least preferred way
to travel, she’d grab my cheek to help me
to navigate warm currents among shallows
where safe is illusion cast by shoals
luminous looming jutting crags
on sky as ground, with God as witness
her hand held up to Nowhere running wild
through tiny cracks in our being
Chagall 2016
Must love be a foregone conclusion
that precedes the need for dark-chocolate cherry cordials
or do those magnificent trifles warrant a daily place in our lives
independent of any lofty notions like love?
Chagall 2016
How stupid I was to think
that initials carved lower on tree trunks
were by definition made younger in time
Chagall 2016
We scream at each other
we are art – some say
Whisperers
I hear you
Beat me purple baby
till I’m plumb
Just a kiss away
we’re whisked away
some cabaret
I stand
corrected
I lie
in and on and about
green meadows
Till we fall
softest of all
about them
Chagall 2016
So adept her foiling the mesh like that
snared prolific beneath too many stories
nearly bad endings
Some torque at the hip wrenches her thrusts
she needs to invigorate tightening tendons
to stretch wider slowly, more lazy laterally
So all is forgiven though all is so lost
also and again yet again
I watch her in profile, breathlessly arced
above her off-shoulder, a continuum of rounded
embankment, her body cut luscious
arcades where we play bathed solely
high windows tint green
afternoon trees, warm breezes
the eve of special days
Chagall 2016
How did we get here – do you know?
I asked uncertain of the blue
in the surrounding she replied
They’ve decided the moment repeats forever
Just you and me
I understood the nature of fate, she knew
It will have to do
Chagall 2016
Alphabet City 