I am precisely like a beacon she breathed
yet the time still faded quickly away, syrup
stopped in its pour, a cascade surreal atop
lithe and limber aplomb. Inside I am a rush
of water banking smoothly along high sides
of perilous plummeting flume, before I dive
so help me God … to ascend and emerge again,
the scent of lavender adrift on warm woven mist,
I am blinded by light calling me from the shore.
© Chagall ∞
She searches for sea shells, slowly combs sands,
then wades out waist-high; the surf erases
yesterdays’ traces, and less is no more.
She (it’s just she) is shucking shells by the shore.
© Chagall ∞
Felt not right, so I left.
© Chagall 2017
I’d once written
Why write a sonnet when a scream will do?
and now I am thinking that an opus is unnecessary
if a mere aside can convey ample poignancy.
Such uneven lines but they’re scented. Where is the real?
I remember Mary even through the haze, how steady and rock-solid
she was, I could hug her and nestle deeply there for hours, or days, spent many a lifetime contemplating her most heavenly face and rubbery delicious lips and cheeks and long stretches along the neckline; I need meaning in each moment – I suffocate otherwise. I hesitate to take the time to narrate a deeper story for fear of failing to convey anything and therefore would regret having wasted our mutual time. hers and mine. Shouldn’t we simply abandon our search? Nubile rubbing of the nubs is how angels beget – it’s allowed there within the confines of wingspans, celestial light like champagne ices me pink from head to toe, I’m a garnish to her night on the town, I dance and rock hard like the fourth horn in the section, I am simply sunglasses and quinine water atop bitters and rocks, I jiggle my shoulders in beat sometimes rather than my waist and hips, or sometimes just a nod, a tilt of the head like this – see that! Hear that? Oye! Oye, Marie? The figures are jade, intricately reptilian, self-referencing, Escher-like in their wrap-around. There are older turquoise figures that you would think would be younger. She once made me a hot drink of sweet white maize water and freshly ground cacao, sugar, without chili. I sipped the thick chocolate while she unbraided her hair and rubbed scented balm on her breast. I remember the desire to write and to play music, to create in a world so filled with creation, a desire so intense that it overwhelmed me and incapacitated me such that I was unable to respond with anything meaningful. Ambition birthed and squelched. In her presence I am inspired to leave behind some remnant, an artifact memorializing my having been here, a monument that captures the light of this day, the song of this hour, the perfume of the tilt of the sky, the spray of life from her lips when she cries out in joy, my joy is her.
© Chagall 2017
Snow, an extended heaven-sent sigh
expresses its passion as a function
of the angle of its fall; precipitation
begat and chilled by the wind, a fluttery
jitterbug afoot overhead. My scarf wraps
twice to warm me, beguiled amid words that
form between flakes, they speak you know –
to warn me there just ahead is a hand
reaches out to embrace but the space between,
the chasm divide is too great, still we blow,
still we fall to the ground, a powder, a mist
slowly wisps away in time, nestled deep in the throes,
in our throwaway wraparound world we propel ourselves
deeper each time we fall, backwards off-stage I trust
you’ll catch me never let me fall,
I would break along dotted lines …
snow from afar
each little star
is snow.
© Chagall 2017
I had such a clear falsetto once,
soared the musical scale high above
any notes that mere mortals dared
to defy. I’ve lost it since the
childhood innocence is gone, left
alone, this humble baritone, no longer
a tenured tenor, soon to hit rock bottom,
a baseless bass who dreams of being in love
fully soprano.
© Chagall 2016 – oops! – 2017
The sun is too hot – it always is,
a single lock of hair on your cheek
scrolls a shadow where I’m lost in whorls
of deep affection, a whirlpool of your gaze,
the tangle of arms and lips, you are scented
everywhere of salts, soaps and time.
© Chagall 2016
I’m so sorry you misunderstood,
I came back to meet you merely halfway.
© Chagall 2016
Candles oblige me, light me back
to the sea, for at night I lose my way
if not for the sound of surf, the salt-spray,
I’d be lost, tossed about as innocence in the squall,
fragile bones amid limber wind, snapped barely alive
except for the thought of you buried deep,
the last seed of hope that I know I’ll sow someday.
© Chagall 2016
I don’t even like pea pods
so stop saving them
for me.
© Chagall 2016
Alphabet City 