Alphabet City

Light.

To where?

Chagall 2018

Bluejay dead
on wet gray pavers

Damselfly with
ripped diaphanous wing

Lost dog who
defers to your lead to find home

Any and all missed opportunities

Chagall 2018

To distance oneself
write poetry that
doesn’t pertain
to them. In time
they will realize
you’re gone.

Chgall 2018

It is quiet tonight in Clarkstown, years of growth
have consumed the land, heaving the buildings to rubble,
resurrecting the old beneath, leaving silt and clay
sere at the surface to overtake what was once cement and
remnants of the human hand, above the resting dinosaurs and
the great mainsails of spiraling galaxies.

With respect,
Chagall 2018

Everywhere – didactic thrusts.

Chagall 2018

She said she wasn’t crying, that
people inhale sharply sometimes

Chagall 2018

I have already ascertained
the regrets I will die with

Chagall 2018

You be the one today

Chagall 2018

I was forced today to look up calumnious;
it has nothing to do with discovery – new worlds –
but all about Queen Isabella

Chagall 2018

Got on the bus today, sat behind the driver,
looked at the old lady across, turned right,
in the back, seated on the aisle,
the second bench of two, the passenger side of the vehicle,
was a guy. We held stare for a count of 5
and concluded simultaneously that we looked exactly like one another.
We both grinned from ear to ear and nodded vigorously our mutual understanding.
Even as he exited, in profile and waving from the street as the bus pulled away
he was my physical twin. The bus filled up
eventually. No one had noticed so no one
to remember, nor anyone to forget.
Only us.

Chagall 2018