Tag Archive: love lost


Feeling Country Again

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I found your painted sweatshirt
in a box of your belongings
in the attic by the stairs
that fold on down.

And it smelled like Sunday morning
over coffee in the kitchen
before hope and our sweet life
began to drown.

I remember gentle kisses
up and down the ragged neckline
and the yellow on the sleeve
when it was new.

And the blue was like the starlight
coming through our bedroom window
on those crazy rainy nights
just me and you.

I fold it all away,
the shirt, the stairs,
the papers,
and tuck it in my mind
for another day.

So many colors,
a rainbow, a medley
of the laughter and the heartbreak
of our rooms.

© Chagall, 2013

A Dollop

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At one time
everywhere,
now nowhere.

They’re somewhere, wherever
your heart has left you.

Remember forever
to rein it in,
the day needn’t
escape you.

© Chagall, 2013

Minutes To Splashdown

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From a tilt ship
there’s heaven aslant
etched in the portal pane:

Orion on its head,
his belt instead a choker,

the Southern Cross a sword
with just a dash of hilt,

Big Bear on her back
for tickles,

and Aries with horns
in the ground.

I wonder how silence
can pervade a world
so large, a universe
so vast.

Maybe I’ve just grown cold,
lost in the draw
of this vacuum.

Reentry back to earth
was always hard

but now face down
at high speeds to blue

I find it
the saddest part
too.

© Chagall, 2013

For Basoalto

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Beloved,

you write of the white statues
in the gardens of midnight
alabaster darkened
in the weak rays of stars
overhead in cold skies

where a kiss is like a petal
torn from just above the thorn
but before the bud
with only a hint
of the bouquet
and the promise

and we twirl
and we twirl
and we twirl
madly under moons
that are merely satellites
escorts for the real
who are meant to die in one’s stead
should it be necessary

who knows what’s need
in everything
there is no exception
to the rule

a tear on cold steel
warms the blade
if only ever so slightly

and we laugh
and we cry
and we die
sadly in our finest hours
since this is all there is
that we have

we know what’s beyond
it’s what’s here
that we’ll need to conceive

© Chagall, 2013

Glass And Silver Backing

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It’s a favorite mirror of mine,
one where I still look good
popping a collar
or doing my best James Dean.

Background behind me
is plainly patterned
so I stand out
in bold relief –
the soft lighting helps a lot,
ambient, aside, overhead
but not directly.

I try to catch me in profile
but my eyes always seem
too shifty,
glancing as one must
to catch the view,
viewing one
glancing as such.

I use fingers,
not combs,
for the poet’s look
tousled  –
save money on gel
that way too.

I no longer do
that mirror-to-mirror thing
where I watch myself
cascade to infinity,
or catch myself
walking away.

Speaking of which,
once there was a face
at my shoulder,
but she’s gone now,
off to some other room,
maybe some other mirror.

© Chagall, 2013

It Just Hangs There

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She said
the hardest part about love
is the waiting

to be asked or kissed
near the phone, by your side

up all night
or around

the bend, on the news
hand and foot

like a fool
for the other

shoe
to fall

© Chagall, 2013

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plaster of Paris
falls from the ceiling
seals me in
it’s Fall

autumn in Paris
leaves, me
she’s left
but I’m right

in the end
on the Left Bank
of Paris

atop a bookstall
looking down
at the Seine

all the sane
watch my dive
I descend like a Swann

falls through
all the time
lost

remember our walks
along budding groves
and Guermantes Way?

© Chagall, 2013

In Dreams I Fall

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In a bedroom dark
the outline of our window
lies there on the quilt
perfectly etched in moonlight

a portal to another world
I’m certain

as I sidle a-rump over
drop myself into its panes
and free fall
into the down of time

I see you there on the other side
peering through the glass
above me, only stars
have had this vantage

love’s a sill
on which I rest
between bouts
of such rapid descent

entangled
in velvet curtain stays
you used to draw
the light in

On my side it’s cold
but I’m too far away
for my breath to fog
the glass

Dashed hopes
for finger-traced hearts
and comic book Eros

You recede
you’re a constellation
whose shape takes form more clearly
as distance grows between us

I can see you now
the epitome of what
you’ve purported to be
all along

My love, my discovery
so I believe I’ve the right
– perhaps I’m even obliged –
to name you

The slightest tear in the moonlight
leaves jagged cracks
with each daybreak I lose forever
my best and only way back

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

Carousel Stubs

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This morning’s chill reminds me
that summer is gone as you are

Yet my sandals still hold sand
the roar of distant surf

from our pas de deux
on the beach

under too many stars
seen only
if rarely
at this latitude

a specific tilt of the earth
brings us to this day

an offering on an axis
like a petal revealed
on the palm of a hand

opens slowly
to show you

before the approach
of wind gusts

carries it all
away

© Carlos Chagall, 2013

I Will Hold You Now Till The Next Time

Our time here is always brief
a spark between two endings

the poem within the tome
on an empty shelf

a darkened room

the basement of a large mansion
tucked away among the hills
that begin to show the age

of the bedrock below
from which they spring

incessant droplets
of water
erode Everest
over eons

I will find you again
though it might not be
this next round

or the one after that
nor the next

Know that

the sadness you’ll feel
at night looking up
at planets and dreams undone

is the hole
of us

the gap between
beginnings

I will hold you here
until then

© Carlos Chagall, 2013