I am getting quite adept at playing guitar with my eyes closed,
and the other night I navigated fully around the house in total darkness,
even stopping here and there to pick up errant socks, strewn about,
unseen by the human eye.
I think I am developing bio-sonar.
Chagall 2020
I’d had quit smoking almost 4 years
when 9/11 happened. Broad Street
turned night though it was day, and debris descended
like snow when the first tower fell. Oh God, that rumble.
We huddled in the stairwell, assuring we were all
accounted for, and that the exit door would open
before we trusted allowing the upper door to slam shut
behind us, for fear of being stuck with no way out.
On the street we were near-ankle-deep in white ash,
a collection of steel, concrete, paper, human destruction.
We broke off into many separate groups of two and three and four,
making our way into the city, to find our respective ways home.
Someone in my group lit a cigarette and I asked for one.
I quit again in June of 2005. It took that long to collect my bearings
after that day.
Tonight, in the steady rain that is falling around me,
in my isolation, in the warm breeze that blows through the porch,
I find myself desiring a cigarette, a pack, some refuge
in a handheld tiny fire, the acrid smoke that fills the lungs,
a few minutes of soulful departure, selfish moments really
of indulgence, enabling contemplation, facilitating introspection.
But I don’t give in. I need to know that my lungs are working with
15 years of cleanliness, my mind and bloodstream clear of toxins.
I don’t want to have to quit again.
I don’t want to die staring into the eyes of a nurse,
so young as to have been in elementary school when the towers fell.
I want to live to be able to hug her, to applaud her and her colleagues, to embrace their collective sacrifice and never let go, for doing their best to keep us all alive. Once this is all over.
Chagall 2020
The wedding was to be this Saturday,
rescheduled now for August of 2021.
My mother-in-law, 94, had been waiting
all year to see her granddaughter married.
“I don’t think I’ll live that long,”
she said, hearing of the new date.
So I told her, “If you don’t make it to this wedding,
I’ll kill ya’!”
Chagall 2020
with all the time in the world
I lose myself in the puckers and dimples of you
your contours under my palm are
a reminder of all good things
I am amazed at the soft pliability
of the most rigid parts of your body
tiny extended blood-pulsing rosettes
cheek to cheek, chest to chest,
thigh to thigh, nose to nose
atop the blankets
motionless
lost in the sadness of all of the world
Chagall 2020
With all doors and corridors blocked,
I retreat to the stairwell, where I hope
to levitate, ascend to the roof
Sentries, from the top floor down,
on each landing
As I begin to rise they aim and fire
and I am forced to alight on ground
A window!
I must find a window
to jump, catch flight,
bleed into nighttime sky
Chagall 2020
Got bit by a tick
shaking hands with Paul Tsang
now I got Lyme and the Hong Kong Flu
but babe…
I ain’t got you
My fingers too stiff
to play a sitar riff
lack wind to blow my harmonica too
and baby oh…
I ain’t got you
(Jerome – to the bridge!)
Used to be pretty now my pits need a shave
and this beard to my knees won’t do
paralysis and sneezing just don’t mix
oh baby oh, I’m in a fix
Comotosis in Manhattan General
with General Tso’s thrombosis
somebody throw me a line
so sweet and sour,
save me from these horse and buggies
wheeling up-down my spine
this final hour
Motionless, breathless,
like after making love with you
but this is Lyme and the Asian Flu
and still…
I ain’t got you
Chagall 2020
Talking to myself again,
the spirit moves me to tongues, jibberish,
shot from the hip, to some point, encircling,
a knee jerk, a spasm, catatonia,
asleep atop a tightwire. Tympani?
Are those really steel drums playing?
Or just the hum of song machines,
there behind the walls? The underground trains
speed, fluorescent murals, painted blacklight
tunnels that rocket to bright midday sparks.
Hot; starched curtains, white; edged lemon cotton.
Key lime pie and peaked, sweet meringue rosettes.
Life is easy in the sun; blood orange
juices run the length of your inner arm.
The parrot also blabbers,
straight from the beak, so to speak, turns a phrase
clean as a whistle or a pirate song.
I wash your arms in clear cold water.
Stickiness dissolves, your limbs are refreshed,
renewed, invigorated, christened.
These streets are ancient; the clay is primal.
The sunlight is primordial. The stars
are the reason for the day, for being.
Raison d’etre. The way it’s to be.
“Marcello!” In the fountains, once again.
Your place has large sculpted window boxes,
arcs, smooth plaster, your own personal asps;
so much fun to kiss in rooms well tended,
in classic southerly light, long lean rays,
from ceiling to floor, in lofts in Paris,
light caught in seams of wood planks, sock-varnished,
colors ride steamed mist, swarms of bees take hold,
so much space between me and the thing seen,
which is you, grace and splendor, at its peak,
where the oxygen is too thin, miles high.
You can gasp all you want, you still can’t breathe.
When you mistake up for down, more than once,
is it time to buy champagne by cases?
Accelerate the deterioration.
Kill brain cells in droves, fly ’em to the moon.
There’s a wind that blows when you’re not around,
scented of nectar suckles and honey,
combs of thick syrups, agave, sugars,
lustrous caramels, burnt deep sienna,
It rains and lifts the mocha, brew of loam,
rich in mineral, organic matter.
You’d be proud to be associated.
Everyone agrees, nothing but wonder.
Smells that evoke another time and place.
Melodious aromas shadowbox.
Mardi Gras and everyone is elsewhere,
despite being right here, smack dab in it.
I am so sorry to have to do this.
i capture the light, a strand from my lips,
small fibers connecting there to her own.
Not yours. There’s something wrong; I feel feint, spent.
It’s another earth, I’m so sure of it.
It’s that other me, I’ve kept under wraps,
a subtext, a prelude to sanity,
an idiot in the making. Save me.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
We hop on a branch and we both whistle
My love climb higher!
in sunlight
carefree frolic, with big claw feet
we perch on birchwood warm
I side-step the blossom
pink petal, then I think again
and pluck it
for you
beak to beak an offer
for hands I have none
and
we are happy
for now
together
at the canopy’s tip
Chagall 2020
I drink 2% milk
98% of the time
Chagall 2020/8080
A cardinal family has made a small holly bush their home,
very near by garden gate. When I approach I whistle, not hum,
Miles Davis’s opening solo from So What. The modality, the D dorian
riffs and bluesy slurry passing tones, soothe the tawny female, who used to flee the nest when I’d approach without sound. Now as I seed the earth, we are side by side, and I am starting to once again feel my wings.
In the corner of my eye, just atop my beak, I see Coltrane to the side, awaiting his chorus.
Chagall 2020
Alphabet City 