I fall in love
too often for I mistake sorrow
for the amorous
Perhaps it’s my sense
of being atop the chain
striving to deliver the lonely
their fair due
So I would die in your place
loving you more than myself
mistakenly standing
the world on its end
Chagall 2015
On my back barely beneath water,
the soft sand molds me to form,
I’m dense, settled in with full gravity,
heavy human-molten, I dare myself to breathe
in the liquid as at birth my lungs
accustom to the wet, I relax accepting
this will end soon, I smile
at diffracted rays of sun, the final light
I will see this time around; this drowning
is not so hard, it’s more a state of mind.
Chagall 2015
When she was a child we played a game
we pretended to be high on a cliff at the edge
losing grip on our footing we’d plummet
down off the bed as if from Everest
at the last minute grabbing hands in mid-air
in outstretched rescue every sinewy muscle
straining to hold onto life. She writes
that it’s readied her well for the fight,
she loves me, it’s time to let go.
Chagall 2015
Did you see that?
It just flew by –
I’m pretty sure
it was life!
© Chagall 2015
With little water for many weeks, today I found a small cactus
sprouted soft and smooth-skinned tendrils, still green, alive
like the curly hair of a young child, the candy-apple scent of talc
behind the ears, so many years ago; I gaze at it here on my palm
and hope it remains evergreen.
© Chagall 2015
You would have liked this morning
with the dancing trees amid cool breezes
blowing salty air.
You’d have liked the azure blues
sung by the sky, pink-tinged and vast
under the sunlit dome.
Where you are I want to be
a million times smaller than now,
simple fragrant mist that once was
© Chagall 2015
Morning melody
Harmony swells far away
Still near songless birds
© Chagall 2015
There along my thumb
where the small cells
resemble parcels of land,
a hard ball forms, straddles
the tiny triangles that stitch
me together: mutant, multiplying,
malignant.
© Chagall 2015
So soon
to be
so much
too late.
© Chagall 2015
Sparks shock my darkness
stark elements project
my soul tumbling
in ghost towns
beside gray seascapes
nothing escapes final curtains
caught in the damned
proscenium arch at the foreground
You – there in the thicket!
From whence thee be lit?
© Chagall 2015
Alphabet City 