Alphabet City

I feel so inept;
I do not know what we call
the era before stars.

Ere-light?

Place without time
rimmed blue in ice.

Chagall 2018
revises a piece from 2014

I yelled out playfully to put a move on, to stop
Salvador Dallying. In response she looked at me abstractly.

Chagall 2018

My time now was implied long ago
like cream in coffee stirred in reverse
the light brew darkens as white concentric circles
appear, dissolve and elevate as a single drop into the pitcher
before the pour.

I am level – on the horizontal now.

Chagall 2018

I read a poem tonight that should have
stopped at its first line, powerful and poignant.
Nine lines later – halfway through – I exited.

And then I edited, whittled my own work down.

Chagall 2018

I read a poem tonight that could have
stopped at its first line, powerful and poignant.
Nine lines later – halfway through – I exited.

Chagall 2018

I tell myself to relax,
that we will get around
to those things.

Chagall 2018

With my skull in place, I thank God for
the eyes’ orbits, the gravity of the brain.

My ears adhere to sound, my touch to your skin,
lips to lips, buried in the loam of you.

How do you taste? Honey and almond, agave and goji;
earthy, salty, a drink of ocean.

We have knelt facing, our thighs parallel,
our hands pressed as if we were mirrors.

Forward without falling,
suspended in a space of our making.

The world, a spotlight,
fades to pinpoint, traces down our seam.

We are stencils
in time.

An image from
light years ago.

Chagall 2018

I’m doing the best that I can
with the soil and the seeds that I’ve got.

Sun, wind, rain, bring me fortunes from the sky,
I am beholden.

My eyes focus on horizons far away,
except when I see you near.

The lush gold ambers of Autumn
mean less in the face of coming Spring.

But crochet somber patchquilt around
a silenced final snow.

Chagall 2018

The praying mantis, a walking stick,
an incredible sentient being with swivel head,
arms that search like ours,
able to stick, bend, and pray from any position,
horizontally vertical in genuflect,
genuine with reflective eyes that follow – the plot at large,
disrupted by early autumn mowers from otherwise everyday mantis things.

Chagall 2018