Alphabet City

Mediocrity
is overrated

Chagall 2018

Heard a bird today
I think it was a pigeon
Whistling Clair De Lune

Chagall 2018

The movement of bees across the lilacs,
group brilliance spread, for each flower we touch,
has its own due time, a suckle, a rub,
powdered noses, compound but bloodshot eyes,
quick departures to drop off sweet treasure,
returns in wing-step to resume harvest,
never missing a beat or a petal.

We are the we who colonize this place.
You move, I fill, you fill my move, and so
we dance a pert, apian polonaise,
primal patterns that intoxicate us,
gluttonous pleasure amid the nectar,
I roll in the musky charms of Venus,
sans the desire to come up for air.

The hive is a place for our alchemy,
where powders convert to beads of gummy
cone-nestled honey, the local terroir,
the minerals and startdust peculiar
to only us, there’s no others like us,
anywhere in the throbbing that surrounds,
nor the worlds of impulse we hold within.

We move like a magic hand, our chevrons
sketch the same subtlety as our synapse,
similar circuitous routes we take
over the landscape, this ecosystem
is home, we are the flight we imagine,
we are patterns we choose, gestures we make,
bonds we forge, one in the one of it all.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

There at the end of the garden are
all of the seasons’ lessons
to be learned

So let’s Us harvest
for unless we harvest
we shall never know

The taste of fruit we nourished,
laid out to field beneath sun
amid nature on true course

These tomes are more than mere words,
they are …

Chagall (2016)

My point of view and body dance
in lockstep around the actual

In promenade, they turn to face
and beckon to join in the reel

Chagall 2018

I need a pen, a place to write
these rhythms in my head…come and go

Chagall 2018

I sense
I am
imperishable

Chagall 2018

He ran a calloused thumb,
over the Zippo flywheel,
out of flint and Ronson.

An older guy, the Navy taught him
to run between raindrops on flightdecks.

On the Boston when Spearhead Marines hit Iwo,
works now at Gabrow’s Toy Store,
there on Avenue B.

Runs numbers for Connie from the pizza store,
who works for Lucy, who is married to
Tony the Barber.

Watches Bilko, Burns, and the Beaver,
has a crush on Coca and Miss Brooks both,
fancies himself to be Palladin.

Sometimes hangs with Blackie from the garage,
or Alvie the addict,
remember – he used to date Momo’s girl?

Got beat up by the guys from Avenue D,
who thought he was someone else.

Has an egg-cream and Joyva jelly bars,
every day at Sid’s,
with the kids
when they come home from school.

Owns Action comics, one through ten,
in absolute mint condition.

But he’s misplaced his reel-to-reels, the original satins,
Art Blakey live at Birdland.

Knows how to treat a lady during slow dances,
like the Elevator, the Five Hundred, The Press.

Likes taking his time,
with Bonomo Turkish Taffy.

Is a Dodger fan,
but secretly likes Rizzuto.

Will not live to see fifty,
killed by a time traveler with a knife and a cape.

Chagall 2013

A couple of birds every year,
the same nest there in the
back of the house – they’re
diligent and proud parents
to-be till this morning I
find an egg on the step, an
egg on the paver, an egg on the
table, and an unusual lack
of luster and life coming
from their home of straw tucked
humbly away in my old outdoor
light switch. I gaze up to
where they live, see a small tuft
of hair crest the ridge of the nest,
and I start to sing slow laments, please
don’t-be-sad songs, as much for me as for them.

Chagall 2018

An eye for an eye
Ink for ink
Tentacle for tentacle:
Squid pro quo

Chagall 2018