I am made so very lighthearted
by the sight of my neighbor’s light.
© Chagall 2014
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Ecclesiastically contested.
Unceremoniously censored.
Perilously pared.
Piquant?
Perhaps.
Illuminatingly metro.
Respectfully nuyorican
(not – as the spell checker has suggested – Corsican).
Aggravatingly a salted one.
Flighty, from too many stairs in buildings too tall
to mention in one breath.
Cheesy?
Maybe.
But as I go,
asiago.
© Chagall 2014
I miss you Friday, thank god that you come around just one in seven.
To have the weekend ahead is simply too much for me to bear:
a deliciously wonderful concept – whole weekends ahead.
I am joyous over the freshness, new and unused time,
a breathtaking canvas to color with handfuls of being;
I am the elf of Saturday Eve.
© Chagall 2014
She overcame inertia by bearing down hard
catching grip on shift-gear and leather,
deeply like cement – she became fixture,
a ground to figure
aloof, always the bold one off-axle spanned across
imperfect timing, but not to be lost on a roll –
tipped her shoulder, head-down ditched and tumbling
to topple her way to the billboard below,
fifteen famulous minutes though nary five feet high,
smaller than popcorn and concession soda,
but horribly beset by bugs in the diffraction of projector light.
© Chagall 2014
I feel so inept;
I do not know what we call
this time before stars.
Twilight?
This place without time –
rimmed cold blue in ice,
trillions of bright sparkles
for each shiny object.
Light still holds to treetops;
the axis of the world is true,
once more affirms the autumn of promise.
© Chagall 2014
The world is plainly there before you
so describe it, adapt – in free-form-air
it’s always the night before holiday if the world is
to hold any wonder to ride the way, to soar
in mid-air wobble, dip, graze the treeline
coast to touch ground, gracefully –
ever so lightly . . .
© Chagall 2014
I lay color down
to highlight not
necessarily to enunciate.
Like a kite o’er head
in early bedtime, sparklers
and spiraled streamers.
Asleep in slow moving
breezes under bundles of coats
and warm sweaters.
In arms that hold
endless days upon piers.
Sometimes the path
is batik.
© Chagall 2014
I am notably missing from the photo,
this portrait of me is instead now a landscape,
the foreground that should have been
a background had I actually arrived
on the scene. I wonder whose index finger
pressed down the shutter. Of all the proofs,
I like this one best, it instills a sense
of the imminent, careful lighting, edgy compose,
something’s about to happen, to jump at you from the frame,
you feel it.
Instead I order
a life-size print
of me in white hat
buried up to my forehead
blinded by the bank
of new-fallen snow.
© Chagall 2014
I seek a place of serenity always,
a place where the bubble rides
engaged and peaceful, natural
as breathing in; all is tuned
to perfect, as I’d prefer. You
need to slow all the way down, to
appreciate really the lack of angst,
zero – nay nada intrudes, invades the rest.
Who are you kidding?
she was incredulous.
Such a rocky road she disturbs.
© Chagall 2014
The rain in its patter
sounds to be trying
to drum home a point
already made, such moribund
yammer
hey – you got that?
wafts in sweet cologne, some rosy
cheap knock-off more cloying
than haunt brings an ache
to my head, eclipses the migraine
I once had in Nam, when those stars turned mist
to shroud good men of both sides
I would light ’em if I had ’em, feel the need
for strong smoke, held breath in incantation
awaiting release, new days will come
a roman candle erupts in my mind, I see
shiny things to fixate upon, come and go
divert my attention from checks marked Void
though the paper on which they print
is precisely the price I pay
© Chagall 2014
Alphabet City 