Hey you chasing wisps tonight, so lucky the clouds hang low
in bitterwarm air so easy to fly when it’s like this.
You see me there, hover just over
the rooftop, below you I wave in wan moonlight.
I was once on a sea that was lit like this,
so many moons and just enough time to crest every one.
I love you, you know.
© Chagall 2015
The doctor says she sees Q-Waves
there on my EKG, usually a sign
something bad has happened
to one’s heart. I tell her that
they’re probably there to say hello
to that day you went away. Now may I
put my blouse on?
© Chagall 2015
Her love reached me in fragments
until I was whole, except for fine fissures
where sometimes I cry at the seams
© Chagall 2015
Hold me and tell me sounds, what I need to hear,
shake words to make me rattle, I’ll see foregone conclusions anew,
you used to once. Brave hearts go deep, so low in chorus, concordant
and oh so sonorous, young voices blend in pure bass tone,
hallow and echo, till the bell of the voice of the belles fades
into night around corners turned yellow in gaslight,
an ancient night quite like this one, I swear I hear
waves lapping somewhere down where couples go
to kiss standing on the rocks, eternity beckons like warm night,
with nary a star or a candle from windows along the bow, I cherish
how we move like this, persistence in each iamb
to draw one last breath, I feel it so I let it expel
to realize one next breath, the trick it is to keep breathing,
the idea simply to just let go, somersault lively, high-step now
flare a bit and be reckoned with like a child’s limerick
where you puff out your chest and exclaim
it’s certainly my special day!
or so I hope it is, I wish the best for you
© Chagall 2015
She said she liked to trace her heart
against sparser white tufts, her etched lines
of cursive flues, hollowed deep and grooved
tight tucks over moguls, small drops to earth
each time gravity curves she bends molten streams
over time embossed so apropos of moments come, but not
whether she’s gone – she’s no time for that.
© Chagall 2015
She’s on a stage with the world on her arm,
a tiny warm whisper in spring, always so far away,
high in the pine on the outskirts of mind where night falls
merely once a day I would find her atop low points,
arms outstretched perhaps breaking her fall – I’d never break her fall,
I’d never ask why only. It’s an effect she had on others,
this effect she had on me, precise – so fluently bewitched,
maybe a little bit bothered by the largesse of charms
I’d heard her recite at least one time, had felt so blessed,
so suddenly whole, too alive to hope to survive anything but liftoff,
everything riding on time, yet so irretrievably late.
© Chagall 2015
I slept too late that morning,
awoke to find you, your coat on,
head down, hand on the door, though we’d said goodbye
the night before I still wanted
to see you one last time.
© Chagall 2015
My how her perfume has lingered this long,
rises from random odd places, mere puffs
of her scent still warm, till fanned
by disruptive cool air.
© Chagall 2015
My numbers are all messed up.
You’ve denied me twelve times,
monthly really and three times I’ve risen,
leavened, refreshed. I’ve but seven left.
© Chagall 2015
She said flowers are for making
sweet nothing of the air, she’d wave
her bouquet in sweeping arcs,
to trace comets she saw there,
streaks of scent, slow color to fade
figments, flames in the dark dimmed
to a lilac’s breath, her intentions lingered
longer than she, still remain.
© Chagall 2015
Alphabet City 