Latest Entries »

Thank You, Amaya

A few years back, Amaya Engleking (Gospel Isoceles) surprised me, made my day - nay, my year! - by integrating a verse I had written, into a wonderfully composed poster, seen above.  

I strongly recommend her work, if you have not already discovered it, here at her site

cc: Chagall 2020
Those who take pride in telling it like it is, 
and letting you know that they’re the sort 
who tell it like it is, and of whom others refer 
as those who like to tell it like it is, rarely – 
if ever – like to be told what it’s like

cc: Chagall 2022
(found written on the back
of a bierhaus receipt,
from the Final Archives, 
where History repeats itself
unbeknownst to Anybody)

Memo: re the Shop Floor
We own the factory
they labor within
low quality
ideas and people 
will come off the line 
this time
quality spikes
our score 
not yet 
six sigma

cc: Chagall 2022


Baker’s Dozen

The photo distinctly showed fifteen cookies on the plate.
When they asked me what happened to the other three, 
all I could say was, "Fhoock oohf I no."

cc: Chagall 2022
Please know that Carlos Chagall does not advocate
talking when one's mouth is full.  
The cyclopetrist today told me
I needed trifocals, which is cool 
as I have been developing a third eye

cc: Chagall 2022

Requiem

Anna had said she would
call us all by name, but
the list was removed and 
she had nowhere else
to look

Listen here

cc: Chagall 2022

Goodbye My Love

The cardinal knows it was too much risk,
too long a flash of red in sparse woods,
he lingers on dead branch atop limestone,
now prime within the hawk's cross-hairs, 
his tawny mate safe, fled away to the distance

cc: Chagall 2022

I've never read you say
Eye Drop, yet you are 
the Eye, and I would
have thought it an
apparent play on words,
to describe a dessert, 
or a soup of yours or a 
wrestling move, maybe 
a syndicated column about 
society scandal, but no, 
you have yet 
to write it

cc: Chagall 2022
I remember one day, when I was smaller than now, 
my grandmother received a large envelope,
ribboned with foreign stamps, par avion

She weeps when she opens it and looks inside

I ask
Grandma, why are you crying?

In her broken English she says
From Bachory, Ukraine, моя сестра

She hands me the photo,
a young woman, holding a child
in front of large thicket aside a thatched house

On the back, in cursive Cyrillic, it reads
Noisy are the rustling groves
Glance sister at this photo...
Memories are there

It is signed
With Love
Kateryna, 26, Ivan, 2 (1910)

cc: Chagall 2022

Crested

Strange how falling out of love
feels so much like falling in.

cc: Chagall 2022