Alphabet City

small words escape with least breath,
ride a wave of exhalation, carry
over the air to tickle the cilia
within your ear, and you hear
the intent, their meaning

resonance,
the ability to vibrate
sympathetically,
hypothetically
empathetic

big words,
long drawn breaths
that capture ideas,
a stream flows
between two minds

obfuscation,
the ability to blur
communication,
words gobbling words,
lexical cannibalization

a kiss, a touch,
a moment pure
in silence,
a single meaning
in the coupling

clarity,
the ability to love,
life, people peopling,
the world at large
so small

in the face of creation,
small words hint,
imply intent,
infer why we are
at all

Chagall 2020

I have read that if you fold a piece of paper 103 times
that its thickness will exceed the size of the known universe,
93 billion light years.

So, assuming great care is taken – precision folds, impeccable creases, etc –
one should theoretically be able to use a single sheet of toilet paper
to wipe their ass for an entire lifetime.

Chagall 2020  “…where the sun don’t shine…”

Will the timer shut itself off, I wonder,
there in the other room

As I think about it, it seems to stop,
more concealed – in the nooks and crannies,
the rhythm of my thought – than silenced
to my ear

Am I breathing, I speak aloud,
I there in that other time

As I slow down, I seem to float,
more free – in the loosening of my ties,
my willingness to untether – than I have
ever been

The timer does not cease its incessant
bleeting as my heart does not give up
its ever-diminishing beat

Someday the power will go out
and in that absence will remain
the question: is there life
where there is no sound?

Chagall 2020

April, 2060, Federal Landfill – Staten Island NY:
Found a box of 125 cards, white linen stock, badly yellowed,
inscribed in beautiful cursive type,saying
“Save the Date, Amanda and Chris, April 25, 2020.”

Not sure what that means. Anybody?

Chagall

I am certain there once was darkness there,
obscuring the life underneath.

But now?
Just look at it!

Chagall 2020

My heart yearns for lighter fare,
for frolic and whimsy, a stolen kiss

mid-morning, and the day is yet ahead
with all of the promise the years once held

bright sun or warm rain,
either would do

it is timeless here
in the garden

the aroma of the earth is you,
the burning heart of stars is you

the breeze that holds the memory,
the foretelling wind

a single thought indulged,
over and over

detail slips away
until there is doubt once ever was

perhaps there was no sun,
no rain, no earth or stars

perhaps there is no garden

Chagall 2020

I lie down
beneath the bough of the lilac
in dappled shade amid fragrant peace
I sleep

Chagall 2020

the sun, the earth, and my bathroom’s casement window,
are aligned such that this morning a tiny rainbow appears
on the tiles of my shower stall

I leave the curtain partially open
to allow the prism-effect to continue to shine there
while I luxuriate under the hot water

my large plastic bottle of soap is near its end
so I fill it with just a bit of liquid from the nozzle-head,
and shake it up to make the most of the last of it

when I pop the top, tiny bubbles emerge and lift in the steam,
brought into existence for a brief moment, the delicate film
of each orb – scented of shea and lavender – caught in light

and I see the rainbow reflected many times over, swirling around me
in the face of the glycerine – the hydrophilic and phobic hydrocarbon
caught between the soap molecules, striving to become spheres
to minimize the surface tension, expending the least energy

so delicate, so ethereal, each tiny bubble, here but for a moment
then gone

as the earth tilts ever so slightly, so too disappears
the rainbow on the wall

and I am once again
alone in the mist

Chagall 2020

Inside I scream,
a panicked shrill cry
of terror to break the glass
between me and the world outside,
to clear the debris, the dead insects
off the windshield that prevent me from seeing

I seek the button to release that fluid which wipes the dust away;
clearly, I want to see clearly

With a vibrato so intense, I shake
until I shatter, the momentum of my resonance holds over
to coagulate the reassembly of all my pieces, binding me at the seams
as if brand new, as if once again whole

But I know I am merely a puzzle, a pastiche, a patchquilt,
a part apart from form, a formal departure,
a mere formality of the species,
an uninformed biological unit,
a uniform of skin
akin to nil

When all is said and done;
when all is screamed and done

Chagall 2020

After the rain washes us down
the dust turns to mud in which I frolic until sunlight
begets a hazy rise of mist tinted emerald upon waves of warm air

ascension –
and I sense what I think to be God, blinding, euphoric,
the supreme celebrant of all good and alive

thoughts now crystalline, out of the vortex, the eddy
that once captured every moment to divert me from the actual,
the purveyor of the shifting real

in the rain I turn my face skyward, to drink in as much of the deluge
as I can, so engorged that I am washed clean in the purge
with eyes opened to the world, neither strange nor new

washed simply clean,
crisply floral and herbal

upright and human

Chagall 2020