Alphabet City

I know it’s trite to ponder
is it real or a dream,
a well-worn writer’s device,
this question of whether or not

the loss of self so profound
that one has to wonder and
wander about, the stuff on which
it is founded and grounded

wisps abound,
images fleet, hinting,
leave me melancholy,
wanting

so many symbols
so real

I never agreed to
be a part of any
equation

please let me live
in my favorite space
with my daily routine,
my mundane happiness,
these trivial concerns
of mine, my easily
begotten
joy

allow me to be
simply small

irrelevant

to anyone
but a few

and most of all
grant the children,
the babies born today,
peace in their time

Chagall 2020

sight no longer comes effortlessly

I can feel my eyes, the effort they make to draw
in the light, to sketch the world about me

like liquid through a straw
the photons pulse my optic nerve

purple – this way!
orange – over here…

upside down I turn myself
correct side up

happier
inverted
happier

ceiling moldings are curbs
and chandeliers are art-deco tables
we sit around, seated on ceiling tiles

above us only carpet,
empty shoes
that defy
gravity

stepping from window ledges
we float airily up
to our deaths

vision saturates my brain
like a sponge drinks water

I am all things sensuous
and sensual

I see
therefore I am

Chagall 2020

It transcends profession, race, gender, and nation

A most profound heartbreak
concerning another being

Crime against sentience, existence,
tender life

Chagall 2020

I am torn between two topics today,
how to encase the eternity of morning, or a diatribe
on those who would dance on yesterday’s ashes and broken glass

But perhaps they are one and the same,
a duality of wonder and hate,
the absence of the other
in the other

the promise of life
the negation of promise

celebration that there is mourning
disconsolation over inhumanity

the blurring of the outline of being
human

Me? I still breathe in the sun, the early breeze,
and cry over birdsong that lilts from the trees,
I rejoice in the infinite shades of greens
that God has bestowed on my eyes,
the blues on my ears,
salt on my tongue,
warmth upon skin

…and I will lie down in heady fields of lavender
when I die, my face to the sky, tickled orange by tiny ladybugs,
rather than be consumed by flame

Chagall 2020

The sun died today
In the throes of final light
Sky turns so lovely

Chagall 2020

at least once a day, I lie on my back,
to watch the sun in the sky

we are often both
lost behind clouds

at times like those I tolerate the darkening,
then consider how large – how long – is the offending cloud,
the direction and speed of the wind, to estimate the return of the light

the sun always eventually returns,
except one time there was this cloud
that came and was going according to plan
and once it had went, had taken with it the sun

as if in passing it had dabbed its backside with our star,
made it stick, and continued with it hidden in tow,
such a fluffy magician

but of course this was just an illusion,
a result perhaps of sleep interceding,
some lapse of time that moved the sun
from here to there, the loss of my mind
for a moment, maybe a different cloud
or a different sky

and I thought would a cloud like this
have a silver lining, as I’ve heard it said
all clouds do

I pondered this for what seemed to be ages,
finally deciding

when our sun, our local star,
is down to its final moments of burn, spitting
hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and neon, after billions
of years, in that last eight minutes of light, before
the collapse – the eternal shift – of the Milky Way…

I would beckon this cloud to reappear to release
the beautiful sun stolen that day

Chagall 2020

There are stories I have not written,
paths I’ve not walked, nor trampled,
bramble I have yet to tangle with

Outside
there is peace in the dust

Footprints in the lie of my heart,
narrow heel and textured sole, your well-worn moccasins
left to dry upon sun-warmed wood

I have rarely seen yellow so blue

The absence of you,
the anticipation of someday

There are words to you I have not spoken,
ideas I have not explored, nor endured,
webs I’ve not woven

My mind is a round I sing,
a duet I perform, a half-verse behind
with you a step ahead, a whole-tone higher

And I am a stray astray,
bled in thick bramble

Chagall 2020

I have no patience to be profound,
I’m a fast truth junkie

Chagall 2020

I prepared to harden young vegetable transplants,
which is getting them accustomed to the sun gradually
over the course of several days, so that they do not burn
when ultimately put in the ground

I conceived to put them out at sunset, rather than sunrise, 
to take advantage of the cooler solar light of early evening

and then to dial back to noon's harsher rays, 
to start with an hour and to add each day 
a quarter-hour more

For example, set them out at 7 PM, and bring them in at 6, Day 1.
Set them out at 7 PM, and bring them in at 5:45, Day 2,
and so on, until the seedlings accustomed - inured - to 12 o'clock sun 

This sounded crafty and so on Day 0 I readied to proceed 
until it dawned on me that I was planning to use time in reverse, 
contrary to its natural flow

But it had felt so possible

Like a seed, all of my futures splay before me, 
while my past converges on a single vanishing point behind me

I am a prism that diffracts existence
to reveal its constituent parts

Through me run seemingly
parallel lines

Chagall 2020