I remember events that occur in my youth and
I know they are happening now
Chagall 2018
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Bi-plane pulls a banner
across graying skies, says
All you can dream!
The moment is
an aberration in Ordinary Time,
extraordinarily so, unlike all that’s come or will.
I am mass, resonance, shape and design
breathed through glass, spun backwards.
Figure is ground, the toucher touched,
trapped in surface tension.
I see through the mist at first so pervasive,
inevitable as time and space, life, death, love and rebirth.
I waltz with myself in a salty room,
broom-swept but no worse for wear,
still smelling of summer, I samba
on sand from beaches I conquered, on
bleached plank floors carefully about broken glass.
I mist the room of petals
to keep them opened wide
alert to the sound of oceans;
dance-darkly waves, froth-sexy
whitecaps warm in bare moonlight
rush about ankles.
It’s the last day, the pieces away,
the board packed up, damp paperback pages
adrift on shores, stuck like wonton wrappers
Barefoot girls
dance ska, dark rums and tabla
keep beat that only seers feel.
On this day of reclamation, nocturnes
for atonement pipe through vents
that rim the sky.
Murmurs I can’t distinguish
clearly, the words incanted,
more than prayers,
I think perhaps formulae.
Chagall 2013-2018
See that hand
waving up from your waistband?
That’s me
via your pajama leg!
I’ll just loll here a while
let my fingers moonwalk
up and down your belly
index
tapping on your navel
a little bongo
scurry like
a cat on a mouse
on parquet
triplet raps
middle to thumb
add the ring for
straight four-four time
end with all moving
cascades and flourish
like Vladimir Horowitz
full-hand five finger
quintuplets
ah, so you’re ticklish!
well, I’ll just blow raspberries here . . .
and here . . . and . . .
okay, enough? cry uncle
Tio!
Come on, get dressed,
we’ll go have breakfast.
Did I lie,
wasn’t the sleepover fun?
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
tied up and twisted
a spirit turns to a wick
to burn, but not endlessly
Chagall 2018
If you can’t cut the mustard
you will be forced to play ketchup
Chagall 2018 – asleep at the pantry
The Buddha took out a small ad
in our local wellness magazine.
No one noticed. Nobody paid him
any mind.
Chagall 2018
Morning at the old wood gate
warblers peck for breakfast
excited cheeps for each
spider in the dead bark
of the mailbox post they find
Sweet pea blossoms
like caramel sugar on the hot
steady breeze off the pond
where the fattest cattails grow
Meadow katydids chatter
while fuzzy bees bump and buzz
Ankle-top hoppers pop
alight on bent-grass
sway there asleep at the tips
until sprung again
I chew wild sorrel while I wait
lemon zest on my tongue
glorious as the day is breaking
Wavy heat
off U.S. 9
along the hill
by Neary’s field
That’s the way you’ll come
with your dad
in his old grain truck
Your head out the window
Ike with his Camels
unfiltered and smoky
He tousles my hair
says I’m a fine young man says
you and Elizabeth have fun
Lately he shakes
a marionette
fly-away arms from the palsy
But he holds me steady
with steel-gray eyes
reflecting sky like fender chrome
Says expect him back around supper time
on the return trip home from Granary
One long wave
all the while he leaves
he smiles in his side-view mirror
beeps twice at the turn, and he’s gone.
The road is quiet
except for the sound
of settled dust
and ancient rock compressing
The summer is ours
and ours are days
of endless morning
Together forever
as if in dreams
we vow
To touch –
never to spoil
Carlos Chagall, 2013
A year ago you asked me
to grow goji and I did.
And now that they’re here
you’re gone.
Chagall 2018
Right up front
before I begin
I would like to preface what
I am about to say with
a few opening remarks, but first…
Frankly speaking,
I’d rather not say, but
if I may be direct,
only circuitous routes
for me from now on
Chagall 2018
Mediocrity
is overrated
Chagall 2018
Alphabet City 