The sun on thighs and insteps, warm grass luxuriant on tufted sand mixed
with clay drawn earthward into the tight bind of compacted silt atop bedrock,
I am a unit of exchange – the wild card – a cation on the prowl
awaiting disposition, eschewing polarity, willing to topple
dominoes. Flip ’em green and let’s us live!
Chagall 2017
This morning I find that I still can’t fly
though I pretend to with poetry and song
That I would be startled to fall before catching on,
catching wind of flight, to hover and soar
Chagall 2017
And even though we were arguing, I was thankful
she took the time to remark at how clean I had gotten the lawn chairs
remember me, this sun, the melody
sounds like breathe…
one day I find
the years are all behind me
arpeggios
run
like buffalo
trickle
up and down
my arm
where I’m
home
home again
I like
to be here
on
my knee
awash in
incantations
Chagall 2017
I’ve grown weary with folks at my own table
feeling micro-aggrieved over standard dinner fare
Chagall 2017
The day’s going to come, you gonna say I should have
I should’ve, I didn’t, so wake up, do it now
Chagall 2017
No wind
still arbors
living trees
in repose
Docile shaggy creatures
unwashed but scented
deeply of Mother
breathing
Absorb light
emit air
knee-deep
vernal pools
I am the sound
of the haze that’s risen
each morning heat cast
in winter chill
I am hope
pervasive
Chagall 2015
Today, a red-tail hawk took off
from its high perch in the white birch,
with enough downward thrust to break
the limb free from the tree’s body.
The heavy timber in free fall
shatters boughs jagged at the trunk,
crisp splintered pops, thick bones breaking.
hurled to the ground like body-slams.
Old sunlight beams through the new gap,
illuminating fine sawdust
left to hover in afterglow,
to float as do mists of passing.
I sit on pines’ dried-out needles,
last year’s vintage, weathered copper,
matted thick and aromatic;
when I was younger, I’d sleep here.
Stars then dominated the sky,
speckled cutouts of hydrogen,
strewn across space more void than black,
echoing sight as well as sound.
I howled and yelped at the night’s souls,
my own peculiar assertion
to the panoply of creatures,
that I also wept among them.
Then the rhythms were always prime
numbers of beats in…
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Rain
is a calliope
of tears
shallow hollow chimes
the times that you and I
part ways
Chagall 2017
A child waiting to jump into the twirling ropes
of double dutch like I do awaiting the start of my life
Chagall 2017
Love I think has side doors, ways to enter unannounced, behind the main stage, below the orchestra pit. Oh, but to fly down to the center spot from the mezzanine tethered to a taut invisible wire, a nymph dreaming of a midsummer night. But then what? Soliloquy, bow, curtsy? A pas de deux followed by fond adieu? I'm through your cellar window, past sorrow, stumbling over joy in the dark and damp. Overhead, a string, a pullchain of light, evades my touch with each stretch to grasp it. © Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 