Alphabet City

Even if there is other life out there,
the eternal question still remains:
why?

Is existence the only option?
And I don’t mean death as the alternative.

If not to exist, then …

I can only fathom my non-existence
atop an infinite expanse of gray static.

And there is the dilemma.
To perceive the great empty
implies consciousness.

Nothingness is dissatisfied
with the implication – the
inferred duality that insists
something be.

In a world of no light,
total ebon static,
we swim like silverfish
in a petri dish, bouncing
into matter.

Chagall 2018

Do any of you wordpress folks remember a writer who called herself
Greeneyed Chess? I know she went through a bout of ill-health a while back.
Any information is appreciated.

CC

I jump from the rim of the earth and
descend into the island of clouds
afloat in the sky above me; gravity
is no more.

Sadly, its time is up.

Chagall 2018

It’s written her writing is wrought
with heart-wrenching sadness; but
I think they’re wrong – she’s more wry.

Chagall 2018

I never defer to the better
judgment of others

Chagall 2018

Flee the hospital
Die watching hummingbirds feed
Alive on the porch

Chagall 2018

I pray for peace, love, longevity,
romance beneath an arch, a kiss along the Seine
an end to sorrow and hate –

the scent is perfect here
I will paint so that nothing mars
the essential, somehow I must grab and apply
small points of hundreds of millions of color beads that combine to give
meaning

life
is color

we are all
in the end

light

Chagall 2018

I wish my father-in-law was still alive;
he’d help me get the mouse-nest out of the shed.

Chagall 2018

I will have kissed her face in the warm downpours,
brushed snow from her lashes, stood her umbrella in summer sand,
and pondered with her the golden passing of autumn,
every year since I’ve known her

Chagall 2018

She screams Read me! so imperatively
a cascade of chills oversweeps me, my arms
and abdomen profoundly hollow in the moment,
and though it feels to be a big hall surrounding us,
she and I are under the low-ceiling beams of her attic bedroom
her voice is not actually echoing off distant walls
but rather is muffled by all of the dampening accouterment
that constitute the mementos of her life, the momentum of her years
collectibles from seashores and places where calliopes played
souvenirs from dances and plays and carnival rides
photographs she vowed to savor and cherish
through time

Please just read it she asks, handing me the manuscript
and so I begin

Chagall 2018