Don’t let it fool you,
the moment rides forever;
you are just the stop.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Tag Archive: Carlos Chagall
Sands are cooler this time of day,
evening shore’s spongy underfoot,
refreshes the soles on up.
My towel skirts me,
hula at the waist, a tuck-knot,
long, cool cotton sways,
massages me, naked thighs.
I buy a coco-rum-nut at the hut,
torches burn, leave a larger than usual tip,
fly chica behind the bar
rewards me with a double-floater-shot in return.
Salt air leaves me heady, nostalgic,
for some primal scene,
saline roots, when hot springs sprang,
before speech found its way to our tongues.
Duet up the beach plays Jobim,
he, nylon acoustic
she, silky throat and lovely neck.
Samba for lovers,
smell of herb
from under umbrellas.
The rum is good,
arouses my caramel,
makes me thicker,
I glide, boogie board on bare feet.
After the verse, at the coro,
I step toe to heel, to toe to heel,
dancing like no one’s watching,
’cause no one is.
My ears pop suddenly,
the rush of knee-high waves
swooshes crisp, tens of decibels louder,
foam about me touches my towel hem.
I am doubly alive, in overdrive,
oxygen never smelled so good,
clean, sweet, perfect pleasure,
just breathing in, keep breathing in . . .
Back at the hut, I double-up rum-nuts,
bum a cigarette from the fly chica,
who lights me up and smiles.
I do a paso dobla,
in a rum numb,
up and down the beach,
dancing, someone’s watching.
Queres dançar comigo?
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Thousands of strange lights,
an armada of seers,
protecting the point.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
I relax my boundaries,
merge, seep outside the lines
to where I end, and the rest starts.
No such thing as this and the other,
just the all, what I am
is not as unique as I think;
sentience is.
Simply to meander as awareness
misting low over vernal pools,
is quite enough to keep me
live, a hot wire.
My mind, thoughts, and words,
all get in the way.
I’d otherwise just ride atop the hum,
the throb – am I the only one feeling that?
In my first month,
I knew my mother by her ear,
the cells of her hand,
as well as her eyes.
I was a puppy punching at my pop.
I once hit a pink ball so hard in the living room,
before I was ten, for sure,
it caught six walls, rebounding around the apartment,
before it lost steam, and caught the soft roll of linoleum.
I’d gaze out the curtains,
through the screens,
to watch you leave
early in the morning,
you off to work,
me a sixth grade insomniac.
I’d hear the bus air-brake on the avenue,
picking you up, taking you to the el,
as I’d drift back to sleep,
soothed by the tocking of your Baby Ben.
I think that time was intended
to culminate now –
always was.
I travel freely in nexus,
causal and otherwise, nasally,
nay synaptically – and syntactically –
congested.
My mind, thoughts, and words,
all get in the way,
I’d otherwise just ride atop the hum.
(That throb – seriously, am I the only one feeling that?)
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Somebody’s cut the line –
damn it, I dozed!
I’m rising way too fast,
this is not good.
I have no rudder to steer,
no weight to hold me to earth.
Wild careen across cloudscape,
sideways then up then sideways and up.
A monstrous downdraft deals a concussive blow,
stops the ascent dead in its rise,
propels me for a moment into the envelope of the balloon,
barely missing the flames.
My crown-lines appear staked to nearby clouds,
but I know that can’t be.
I stabilize with open jets of whisper burners,
aglow in night-blue sky.
I have no way back down,
except to plummet, finally fall.
But instead, I simply dangle,
cautious not to breathe.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
She, eloquently,
recited his passages,
as he once would have.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
The earth shook,
rumbled steady roll,
like the subway leaving Chambers,
heading for the Center,
sky turned night, came down.
Debris,
soft quiet,
snowfall, deserted
ancient Manhattan,
the southern tip,
where east meets west
at a point
where neither
is what it was,
along gaslight streets,
immigrants stroll,
sing silent carols,
forbidden hymns
for fallen angels.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Sebastien Greco, vocals
Carlos Chagall, guitars
Music & Lyrics by Sebastien Greco and Carlos Chagall, 2013
Just this side of spoken word
… views of Lower Manhattan, glimpsed from an apartment window, a cab, or a stupor.
… romantic interludes where anything minty had a starring role.
… Saturdays of the top 10 years of my top 10 lives.
… best aerial views in dreams where I hover at low altitudes, lucid, just above treetops.
… lies I wield to convince you that I care.
… things I will say to cause you to regret our ever having met.
… ways I will subvert the very fabric of your culture.
© Carlos Chagall, April 2013
The long taper of the fisherman
carves graceful serpents in the air,
undulates overhead, uncoils,
lays his leader down on the eddy.
The coachman’s hackle catches fine droplets,
sprays from the crisp rush,
reachers for the crest,
slow dancers, lurid with deep thrusts,
small surfers on the foam, riders on the scree.
A rainbow in the fast lane least traveled,
in the underwater silence,
flexes rudders in a rush to the mar
in the clarity of the surface. In an instant
the hook barb sets into the soft palette ridge. There!
An electron on a wire, taut signals, no slack.
A tug on the line between thumb and index, yanks.
The rainbow, slick and wet, the surface of glycerin bubbles,
shocked by sunlight,
the maddened roar of the pool,
regrets the prior impulse,
in a graceful arc, in forbidden air,
catches a glimpse below
of grateful free rainbows,
defies and reasserts its fate, re-submerges,
running out the line, but jerked back hard
with the whirring intake of reel.
In a froth of its own making, frenzied oxygenation,
the rainbow abandons its own locomotion,
to the small plummet of a fall that marks a carry in the forest beside the stream.
A steep slide to a horizontal glide, and is wrenched high in the air.
Too high, too hot.
Indigo.
Violent violets.
Brush smears on cloudless skies,
peek through the tops of the old white pines
that can still be found here.
At the apogee, there is no tension.
No tug.
And the rainbow is weightless.
Flying,
free
fall
back
to the planet.
Hits hard on the surface,
for a moment
half in,
half out.
Descent buoyant to rest.
Finally, silent and spent.
Immersed in cool waters, on the soft polished stones
at the bottom.
The run of the stream is halted:
froze.
Time:
still pulses.
Caws of large birds startle the silence,
with reedy bleats
to mock the passing.
For the moment.
At least for now.
Till then.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 