Alphabet City

This one’s too religious,
this one’s selling stuff,
this one’s in a language
that I don’t parlay enough

That one’s background’s way too dark,
can hardly read the text,
while that one . . .
well, not too sure where the poetry is,
so I move on to the next

Some are just too wordy,
and some are downright trite,
so I continue searching
for the one that feels
more right

At last there’s those so perfect,
the voice of souls who yearn,
who let it out to let you in,
whisperers above the din.

© Chagall 2014

The lost verse – added March 16, 2020:

Some are way too sexy,
there’s nothing wrong with that,
I just can’t spend my evenings
with my lap beneath my hat

Chagall 2020
P.S. Mike McGuire – where are you?

The worlds you meet
on the way up,
on the way down
will present their dark sides

Find the right ring and orbit

Chagall 2020

damselflies
mystify
very rarely
frighten

electric-blue
fluorescent green
goggled friends

on rocks
while I seed
my garden’s rows

spry tiny copters
fanning my compost heap
aspiring to be hummingbirds

Chagall 2020

Long away and far ago
she wakes me to ask
Shall you still keep dreaming?

Drowsily turning to face her, I say
I’m fine who I am
but please, that shouldn’t stop you

Chagall 2020

Her breasts are large and my arms are long
so we are able to maintain the requisite meter between us

Chagall 2020

This virus! I just wash my hands of the whole thing.

Chagall 2020

in space, the almost-sterile vacuum, amid cosmic radiation,
we multiply, we travel, we pass through

we the probes appear like virus, penetrate, reside for a while,
scan, inventory the planet life, one by one, and then we are gone

a small data set, less than a moment’s send
over light to the tab quartz crystals

over the eons few stand out as outliers, save One,
part of the three, when your world numbered merely 300 million

such a spike is rarely seen, save again some 500 years later,
a blink for us, generations for you, essentially the same story

the data says dine on whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters,
enjoy Ajwah dates for dessert, and so restore the covenant of the pieces

faith is to speculation as truth is to fact

Chagall 2020

i l s
i l s
i l s
i l s
islands without sand

Chagall 2020

I remember that highchair, not looking at it, but the view from it,
the objects swimming about the room (people as if under the ocean),
and if I try real hard I recall the sense of it being time to go,
to leave, the feeling of weightless suspension among stars, urgency
to land, the bright rush of blinding white light, the pull of gravity,
finally her face, eyes, hands, lips, voice and smell, the small of her
earlobe as she caresses me, holds my back steady, against her breast,
my tiny finger running the topographic world of her finger, so much
larger than mine, God all around, within everything, no border between
me and her and Him and Her and Me

Chagall 2020

there in the water
all things reflected
blue

as the wind blows
invisible wavy lines
of air

a face emerges
unwavering uttering
let all Be

stutter steps
a winding path
alongside the water

I dive into the reflection
of all things without
floatability

sinking airlessly down
to alight on sandy bottom
facedown prone

convergence on the limit
of all possibilities
at any speed

silica in my mouth
no matter how hard I try
to eschew

as my carbon meets quartz
I crystallize to Become
the record keeper

from underwater I emanate
joyful light remembering
how to breathe

purified luster
clarity is a tablet
to swallow or to write upon

the temperature
of the water around me
rises

I turn on my back
to face the sky
I smile wildly

mouth open
liquid enters me
makes me whole

engorges me
till I consume
(or Am consumed by)
all of the water

like a mother bird
mouth to mouth
come feed

I Am the water
reflecting all things
blue

Chagall 2020