Alphabet City

Ashy indigo, backlit evening sky,
echoes the call across the universe,
orators prowl the low-end of the dome,
beneath the ear of any listener.

How’s your modulate, do you tune in so finely?
A tough station to catch at any time,
it’s undoubtedly easier at night,
signals bounced higher off star factory.

But we just don’t know for sure who’s watching.
Leaps from the edge, the event horizon,
end up in free fall to infinity,
to mornings in your bedroom, years ago.

Trap door bottoms out directly to you,
naked, your room’s light, bundling potpourri,
lavender, mint, melissa, and ginger,
aseptic, astringent, beaming holy.

I pull you back down, you’re preoccupied
carefully tucking the fine cotton gauze,
spilling tinctures, aromas on the bed,
so many sparkly beads at the party.

The pain of loving you overwhelms me.
I want to do nothing but pulse and stretch.
I know it’s short-lived, I’ll have to ascend,
back up the funnel, to free-fall, to Time.

For now I contemplate the reverie,
the joy of being anywhere at all,
let alone being anywhere with you,
this time, here, because, us two, doing our thing.

We are long-lived, we transcend the other,
leapfrogging our way to a lonely place
deep in cold space, out beyond the limit,
jettisoned, in eternal smooth motions.

Buoyed, embryonic, placenta fragments
like jigsaw pieces made-to assemble,
into odd shapes, misgivings, melodies
we sing only to ourselves late at might.

Charcoal violets, opalescence, twilight,
pearls throb tremors of rainbow in moonlight,
a kiss rips a hole in cracks of lightning,
leaves burnt sugars behind where we once stood.

© Carlos Chagall, 2013