The page is parted so subtle
where once your finger touched
and I traveled, searching the meaning
of words and the lattice of white space
© Chagall 2015
Tag Archive: love lost
I find
when I cut it
at arm’s length
it doesn’t
make me cry.
© Chagall 2014
Her love roots in pity
so her partners once healed
suffer her leaving to prompt her return.
© Chagall 2014
Twice I watched her leave,
always the strange wisps vanished;
nothing to hold on.
© Chagall 2014
Paris underground, got to get above
to breathe in colored light and rain,
somewhere the girl with the doe’s eyes emits scents
when she’s warm again, but for now the metro is too hot.
The last drag on a night as it nears
dawn, I retain my poise even though I shuffle
and carry myself contemplative, in the rush of early stars,
late tears, departing planes, misted red tail lights.
I can see the flicker, a thousand cycles per second
impressions to strobe, so I dance and pulse intentionally
out of time in order to preserve the macabre, the long spindle
of my spine held erect in this samba, tendrils limber vines.
I bow best in tuxedo, she curtsies in gown, with spit-shine shoes
and perfect air waltzed down the stair rail, shined baluster
on which we glide so gingerly, how I embrace her at the landing
night lamps hushed low in the hall, the turn of some century somewhere.
The kiss is beyond confusion, tousled minds and souls
echo against the marble and ceramic, the air about our noses
warmed by friction of lips, my cheek incessantly tickled by her lashes,
such a brace at the race ‘long the length of the neckline.
I am lulled by the rattle of the trains on the rail,
forever between stations is such a long time so I ride
legs astride between two cars and enjoy the time
in and out of the tunnel, warmer outside, I wouldn’t have guessed.
I apply supple pressure subtly there at the small of her back
help her to find the updraft, the current to ride like the leaf on a scree
tossed, disassembled to light once again, after-starbirth
prepartum blues ere the birth of her new world.
She becomes the moment, blends polymorphic
her biology transmutes to be the time I experience, upon which I cast
my living sine wave, transgress as a pulse I impose on her
downbeat, very much like knotty riffs of rock ‘n roll.
In my dreams I’m often running until I go lucid
where I remember I’m flying of late
with a body like hers in my arms, so heady and weightless
albeit I fly pretty low, blessed just to be near the neckline.
© Chagall 2014
It’s an old photo
from a cheap camera:
you and me on the run
in dense forest, blurred
for too long a shutter,
extraordinary light washes
away, evanescent at edges where time
bleeds to the back, recedes like a wave
from the child within moving on.
Interspersed palpitations, sun on silver backing
would capture the moment no more.
© Chagall 2014
I’m past that point of convenient landmark
someplace to tether and one day to mourn,
where the whistles of birds are the strange ones
that you don’t always hear though they call.
Once a freckle, captured, amazed me for hours
as it danced on the tip of your nose.
Obliged to convey the lightness of hours,
she is behind the pale curtain, diaphanous sun.
The shutters slam shut as the wind blows,
kicks in gear with the upcoming storm,
brings the darkest grays while white scented pillows,
when the rain comes, lie softer still.
© Chagall 2014
My pen is filled with streets, not ink,
jagged black marker paves avenues
to arcs of triumph where synapse parade
in goose step lock these blue afternoons.
Perfect heat and only the scents
of flowers and her and sugar dough.
I could burst from so much promise,
eternity of mornings, preamble to days,
long, lustrous days, immersed in time,
absorbed by years; exhaled panting lovers.
Allow me to will you to will me back
to perfect heart and sharpened quill,
from that moment before the edge,
yet ere the step into open space,
where it’s clear save to ponder the last dash.
© Chagall 2014
When it comes to socks
I’ve a couple of uncoupled pairs
Lonely and wooly,
gray and blue
Perhaps just a tad
like me
© Chagall 2014
As I stand here bared atop this mountain
arms stretched to the heavens in awkward pirouette
how can you say that I am not ethereal enough
to matter?
I’ll crouch low and contort, build up tension
and torque then release like a venomous viper
if you prefer a lady-like me
Akimbo!
What more can I say?
Perhaps bobbing for pumpkins is more your sport
I can breathe just so long underwater
till my lungs give way, I invert inside-out
in order to let outside-in
Tell me why would it matter
if I leaped from this charmed aerie?
And floated like down to the river and sank
belly-up to the bubbly bottom
© Chagall 2014
Alphabet City 