She exclaimed
Such a beautiful church
it’s non-dimensional
I asked
You mean non-denominational,
don’t you?
She retorted
No, come look
She swung open the large wooden door. I walked in.
Oh, I see what you mean.
oh!
o
h
!
m
y
G
o
d
!
.
.
.
Chagall 2015
Over time
God becomes
ever more vast
Chagall 2015
Like any muscle,
you work it, it flows
like Ali in Zaire,
boom-ba-yay
Long before rhythm was sound
there was pulse all around,
the red-hot glow of a fresh start,
heart at the bell like flutter-by
everywhere center and everyone here is gone
into the eyes we compel ourselves to peer,
so what if we’d had wanton ways,
troubling how those days still tremble,
the quake more fire than smoke than
torrential rain.
Streaks of landscapes run like tears
bleed colors, mascara runs, wipers keep time
then stop, and all is silent neck-deep in the flood
How hard is it really
to step from the edge, much simpler for sure
to refrain: boom-ba-yay!
© Chagall 2015
Light #1
I’ve a string of white bulbs that run up-along-down the wide wall of my porch
where I sit sometimes with my back to them wearing my glasses;
their image reflects on my lenses from behind, photons in the metal rims perhaps,
making everything appear as if staged through a proscenium arc of white neon walking beads.
Light #2
I was in my neighbor’s garden last night
right at that time when solar day-charging outdoor lights
kick in. In the middle of the patch was a small
electronic elf on sky-cycle, pedaling gently, emitting ice-blue pinwheel sparks
there among autumn sunflowers.
© Chagall 2014
I’ve a universe abloom in the cellar
early expansion, just seconds old
can fit in my hand, both hands now,
but man, let me tell you, it’s hot!
The roaches appear to fear the neutrinos,
finally they’ve met their match,
they scatter and hide, no laughing dark matter
as a dense and fog-like wannabe light
obscures the path to the boiler
In minutes the ceiling buckles then pops
to reveal through the gape of its tear
the Cubans who live in apartment 1C
backed to the wall, frenzied signing the cross
as their floor dissolves and withers away
Then we double and treble and do it again
and again, maybe once-twice more
Until Alphabet City hovers and throbs
in pulsating light, still too bright,
it buzzes new colors, these youngest days
wet and lush, teeming with life,
implicate order and hope
And that’s where it stops, thank God (I guess)
’cause we’ve all got our trains to catch
© Chagall 2014
Nothing
Languid
for eons
Till a hum
from nowhere
Suddenly
everywhere is somewhere
The rest
is history
Welcome
to the now
© Chagall 2013
Geoffrey Burbridge died on February Ninth, Twenty Ten.
He was Eighty Four and survived by his wife Margaret.
In Nineteen Fifty Seven, he wrote a ground-breaking piece:
The Reviews of Modern Physics – We Trace Back To Stardust.
Stars explode, burn helium, create oxygen; carbon
lithium, hydrogen, mix; Time’s magic primordial.
I imagine soft incantations spoken in darkness
somewhere on the universe edge; blessings, benedictions.
Geoffrey met Margaret, a lecture in London, they married.
They said Doctor Burbridge did not believe in the big bang,
rather a steady-state theory that posited many
big bangs, occurring every Twenty Billion years or so.
Big bang? Steady state? Either way, we’re golden, made of stars.
Geoff’s friend Al said, “We’re brothers of the same supernova.”
Goodnight, thank you Geoffrey, for your bold stroke to connect us.
Wish I may, wish I might, help you find Margaret here tonight.
Born of stardust, starlight release me! Be jeweled, firmament.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 