You cannot appreciate who you are
from within yourself.
So stand alone
aside, inside
the sparkle.
© Chagall 2014
Tag Archive: existence
Lately I talk
more and more
to myself
finding I
enjoy my
own company
immensely
– been
beside myself
essentially
© Chagall 2014
The songs we sing tonight will be pressed
onto small and platinum platters
the last of which will perish
many years from now
without so much
as a whisper
© Chagall 2014
Nights I stare up the chimney flue
to marvel at the square of stars
cordoned off there in my view
at the long end of the draw
of the red-brick tunnel
the cube of heaven
before me up there
always measures
two by two
by forever
© Chagall 2014
Starred skies lift hope’s eyes
heavenward, the path obscured
all in God’s hands now
© Chagall 2014
Of course it’s my field
where your horse stands
Snowflakes fry my frozen ground
chill me solely
though you are welcome to stay
if as you travel you recall
all that’s been lost
Time at the rock
and bread at the table
Crumbs at the card game
kissed away
Under blankets
and crisp sheets
Atop the lavender
beneath first snow
With Time
tense and tired
Till
Spring thaw then
Death is . . .
after all
© Chagall 2013
With oxygen my chief inhalant,
I pulmonate my way
through a tangle of moments
I manage to right-side up
to a semblance of order,
I call my life.
They say that you focus
on only a thing at a time,
but I seem to be struggling
with even that.
I rotate through the five senses,
like so many outfits,
costume changes laid out for the week,
before wash day, Friday, rolls around.
I see, I hear, I smell, I taste, I touch,
I conquer.
Son of a bitch inside my head
keeps insisting it’s me,
though I’ve asked over and over:
please stop calling here.
I find serenity in the ground,
in the space around shape,
the silence between words,
the time around now.
It’s the art of glass blowing,
creating outsides from the inside,
from a glowing tip,
sand to form to ash.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 