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Big Hunking Blobs

I relax my boundaries,
merge, seep outside the lines
to where I end, and the rest starts.

No such thing as this and the other,
just the all, what I am
is not as unique as I think;
sentience is.

Simply to meander as awareness
misting low over vernal pools,
is quite enough to keep me
live, a hot wire.

My mind, thoughts, and words,
all get in the way.

I’d otherwise just ride atop the hum,
the throb – am I the only one feeling that?

In my first month,
I knew my mother by her ear,
the cells of her hand,
as well as her eyes.

I was a puppy punching at my pop.

I once hit a pink ball so hard in the living room,
before I was ten, for sure,
it caught six walls, rebounding around the apartment,
before it lost steam, and caught the soft roll of linoleum.

I’d gaze out the curtains,
through the screens,
to watch you leave
early in the morning,
you off to work,
me a sixth grade insomniac.

I’d hear the bus air-brake on the avenue,
picking you up, taking you to the el,
as I’d drift back to sleep,
soothed by the tocking of your Baby Ben.

I think that time was intended
to culminate now –
always was.

I travel freely in nexus,
causal and otherwise, nasally,
nay synaptically – and syntactically –
congested.

My mind, thoughts, and words,
all get in the way,
I’d otherwise just ride atop the hum.

(That throb – seriously, am I the only one feeling that?)

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

F Stop

Small propeller planes overhead,
whir and circle, in summer sky,
drop straight down,
like marionettes genuflect,
on make-believe knees,
ride the cloud-scape, trace the rim
of bulbous, cottony profiles,
precisely, as if etching them on.

Girl next to me smells like lemon,
bet you she feels,
kisses like meringue.

The field is rich, primal, loamy,
though dry from the lack of a few days rain;
shuffling souls wander, kick up dust,
wish-on-me thistles, ancient spores and grains.

We stood like this once very long ago,
when the woods were not yet here,
when darker nights prevailed
letting in so much starlight,
so much more than now!

Then our eyes focused,
on far away, to the reaches of the roll
of the land, broad strokes of bumpy, lovely earth,
sod, thicket, sun and flora.

Very little then was near;
as we looked
into each other,
we missed the point,
gazing beyond,
the we there blurry in the foreground.

The planes overhead loop then roll,
synchronized in sunlight,
splitting the sky to unveil back-lit flaring pulses,
the blue blare of sparking pinwheels.

At the end of the day,
fires, like match flames, dot the field,
the diehards hang on
till the final drop,
when red-tailed hawks nestle in.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

chagall-backdrop4.jpg

I stand in sunshine,
photons bombard my being:
untethered light speed.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

It’s Saturday might,
I imagine you all are happy,
making the most of your time,
this and every weekend.

You all are so much
better than I
at movies and dinners,
first kisses in back seats,
moving at the pace of leisure,
free from work and wake-up times.

Dance music, bounces the evening,
keeps the flow, inhibits not,
moves the feet, dervish and whirlwind,
along private patterns, known by hips,
strut and gait.

I’m a peacock parading a beautiful plume
of violet, indigo, and stark white tatting,
thousands of barbs bound the edge of my wings,
oils keep out the mist, that otherwise weighs me down.

I think of you coming home late
after a wonderful evening
on the town,
tired, consumed, and totally tipsy,
savoring Saturday into the wee hours,
milking it for all it’s worth,
knowing that it doesn’t come back around,

ever.

Kicking off your shoes, loosening your belt,
putting on your favorite album, vinyl,
at the perfect volume, pouring yourself
yet one more drink, sipping it,
in a private reverie, as you contemplate
the certainty of your being there,
the perfect clarity.

Let it all
just fade away,
simply melt into
the passing.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

I eat roasted peanuts on the porch,
watch you through the door
prepare papaya salsa there,
chiles, cumin, brown sugar, agave,
lime and red onion.

The grill gives off toasting hickory smell,
radiates heat in small waves of mirage;
I sip white liquors and tonics,
beyond ice cold and bracing,
intoxicating quinine.

At this moment, all things are possible,
the frosting of salt on oiled peppers,
fresh clean sprays of water
to raise steam off of the smoking woods,
you in the kitchen humming ancient lullabies.

White smoke rises in fantail wisps,
disappears into the day’s air, as does the day,
commemorates life’s rituals,
protects the perimeter from evil.

As stars appear,
I trace constellations older than man,
and imagine that I am among the first
to gaze upward, and to recognize pattern.

We lie on the night grass,
warm and dry on a frilled blanket
that I keep in the trunk of my car,
cleaned regularly, especially for moments like these,
when a person or two, needs a view
prone face-up to heaven.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

A Quick Note Just To Let You Know

We have so much to say,
we know any attempt will only fall short,
and so we say nothing at all.

But no more.

We write now to tell you of even the trivial,
prayers for your joy,
health, good life,
plentiful bounty.

Wishing you peace,
night skies you can penetrate,
with an ardent scan.

Warm fires against your back,
your shadow there on the wall,
hovering above your lover’s.

We close, respectfully,
with the heartfelt desire,
for you to experience nothing,

just perfect days,
timeless days,

slow puffy sails,
wet turquoise.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

I am nothing
if not existent,

bewildered
when I don’t see plainly,
omega
right from the start,
sunlight
over my shadows,
rain
to quench the sere,
drought
in the aftermath of flood;

I am
essentially that.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

Intercession

I am secure in the dark tunnel
your hair frames about my face.

The nightroom is violet,
moonlight rouges your cheeks.

Gentian fills the air, we’re children, we whisper excitedly
into each others ear, ticklish, warm, and sensuous.

We move invisibly, pepper-silk sheets, timeless postures,
silhouettes against the open bay windows.

Night breeze blows cool streams across the bed,
refreshes me, each time I rise and fall.

I stare at the grace of the arc you cut,
at all of the napes where you crane.

My straddles throw you in shadow or allow you to be lit,
depending on where I am, between you and the light.

And when we perfect the flip, you’ll do the same for me:
twin souls dancing to the strains of a forgotten eclipse.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

Haiku for Muggy & Humid

Rain, rolling applause,
small hurrahs, thunder like jets
at low altitudes.

Cracks over treetops,
breaking barriers to sound,
with every fly by.

Small parachutists
rotate nimbly in descent,
buoyed by wax paper.

The newer streams rush
most smoothly atop old stones,
clinging to bottom.

I drink from the well,
I’m thankful for underground,
cold artesian pools.

I steam in cold air,
return again to the rain,
to once again pour.

I am a moist wisp,
mostly water and whimsy,
on the rocks, then neat.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

Bee There

The movement of bees across the lilacs,
group brilliance spread, for each flower we touch,
has its own due time, a suckle, a rub,
powdered noses, compound but bloodshot eyes,
quick departures to drop off sweet treasure,
returns in wing-step to resume harvest,
never missing a beat or a petal.

We are the we who colonize this place.
You move, I fill, you fill my move, and so
we dance a pert, apian polonaise,
primal patterns that intoxicate us,
gluttonous pleasure amid the nectar,
I roll in the musky charms of Venus,
without desire to come up for air.

The hive is a place for our alchemy,
where powders convert to beads of gummy
cone-nestled honey, the local terroir,
the minerals and startdust peculiar
to only us, there’s no others like us,
anywhere in the throbbing that surrounds,
nor the worlds of impulse we hold within.

We move like a magic hand, our chevrons
sketch the same subtlety as our synapse,
similar circuitous routes we take
over the landscape, this ecosystem
is home, we are the flight we imagine,
we are patterns we choose, gestures we make,
bonds we forge, one in the one of it all.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013