Alphabet City

Was it Sara who talked
about the tree with lights –
sunlight so languid along its bark,
its rise, that it appeared to be
lit, as if by hollywood,
but instead it stood there,
dead center in the thick,
under a circle of cleared canopy, the earth tilted to catch
the rays, just right –
wasn’t that Sara?

© Carlos Chagall, 21013

Satellite images caught in transmission
between heaven and earth,
frozen in wave,
convey no story, carry no sound,
spark no what-if.

Remember all those trees
that fell in the forest
when no one was there;
implore them please, to reprise their descent.

Metaphysical monologues by a fallen elder,
their white flowers peek through violet berries,
leave us wiser, if unaware.

Light sometimes does not
saturate the silver of the film
sufficiently to graph the photo.

I scream in dreams
make no sound,
I strive to clear my mind,
but fixate instead on that thought.

I make silver dollars disappear,
yet have not perfected the reappearance of those
from behind the ears of my passers-by.

Told him point-blank,
still drew blank stares,
wrote blank checks
for ideas conceived on a blank canvas,
blanked out from lack of oxygen
running to escape from blanks shot in the dark,
filled in the blanks,
a five letter word for hope,
blank, blank, blank, blank, H.

Like a foreign language dubbed flick,
my words don’t sync out of mouth up line my move, now not but before.

That’s right, you heard me correctly.

My uncle used to make his thumb disappear,
just the tip, from the knuckle up.

I place warm kisses along the fine line
of a spectral cheekbone,
expecting cold lips in return,
somehow better than nothing at all.

Premature emancipation?  Call me
for freedoms lasting longer than four hours.

I freeze dry my savored moments
add water at a later date,
whenever I need what was once, again.

I prolong the ephemeral,
reconstitute the insoluble,
permeate the tightly bound.

Sentience interrupts us,
awareness deludes,
covers close sharply on our skulls,
breaking our necks repeatedly.

I breathe through gills underwater,
my eyes fill with cold saline,
miles of ocean pressure over my head,
the sky beyond,
images caught there frozen.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

I often think about people, the past,
the special moments that we used to share,
times together, now more precious and rare,
each second ticking shorter than the last.
Life is accelerating way too fast,
at a pace that’s really too much to bear.
At one time I thought that I didn’t care,
I’d already won my spot on the cast.
But a special play still waited for me
tucked away in the corner of the game,
a card to be played in emergency,
in case one needed to put out the flame,
when the drama’s intense, during act three,
the beginning and the end, all the same.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013