Never met girls on trains, just across platforms, skirting so many fares.
© Chagall 2013
Tag Archive: lower east side
On 10th between A and B
at the northern edge of the park
the buildings across
face southerly light
The expanse of Tompkins Square
cuts a vista there
unique for this part
of the city
In the movie
Love With The Proper Stranger
a sweet complicated love
between Steve McQueen
and Natalie Wood grows
each the stranger
The movie is filmed in ’63
before flower power
and the death
of the stars
a month after Camelot and Texas
but prior to Mekong
as a household word
and 10 years at least
before VCR
Natalie plays Angie
who works at Macy’s
with an apartment
there on 10th
In one scene
Rocky (Steve)
comes over
for dinner
The camera pans westward
from Avenue B
catches the southerly light just right
could be Paris for all we know
Captures that perfect day there
on the Lower East Side
before anyone knew
of Alphabet City
or of planes flying in
too low
People old then
are gone
even the young then
are gone
everyone alive then though
in award-winning
black and white
Angie and Rocky sup
Natalie looks fabulous in basic black
from the street outside
joyful screams come ringing in
children skating and punch-ball
in Tompkins Square Park
where everyday I would play
having grown up on 11th and A
maybe that’s me? – I would wonder
My Dad looks up
in bold relief
against the weave of patterned stone
that rims the park
He tightens the skate
and hands me the key
sits on the bench
with his paper
I soar over streets
in a rumble like surf
washes the sand away
Do a hard stop and turn
to face where I started
there’s Rocky walking away
Walks past my Dad
on the evergreen bench
and I pray it will stay this way
But it’s a world without Pause
or Rewind
and so the story flows
without any chance
of a second glance
only the promise
of a future showing
© Chagall, 2013
Angie Wasabi, is that her real name?
No, what are you, out of your frigging mind?
We call her that ’cause she’s hot and spicy.
Once she tied me up with my cummerbund,
after we hit the town in black and white.
She even drew blood with her diamond studs.
It’s all good; afterwards we made pasta.
She can do knuckle pushups on one arm,
while doing leg scissors from the waist down.
Talent like this comes along once in life.
Her dead daddy used to own a dojo
off Delancey Street, near Katz’s Deli.
I think I’m in love Carlos. She’s the one.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
This was the very first post to Alphabet City in March. We reissue it here as music set to poetry. Sebastien and Chloe on vocals, along with the usual suspects playing behind them. We are having fun here this wonderful April evening outside of NYC, 2013, planet Earth; hope you are doing the same. I'm a wire thin warrior on rooftops in starlight. Red-shifted from eons up alleys, down fire escapes. Black and white flickers from Telstar, from before the flood, but after the mad dash. Back in the day, on Eleventh and A, who knew we were in Alphabet City? Or that Twelfth and D would be the place to be? On Tenth and First we'd quench our thirst with piragüa in July, coquito in June, from the little man with the blue pushcart and the green balloon. So much love, so much heart, so sweet, so right, see you on the corner tonight. Oyeme mulata! Che che colé, que bueno e'? Chicheme, March 2013 © Carlos Chagall, April 2013 Links Telstar
I'm a wire thin warrior on rooftops in starlight. Red-shifted from eons up alleys, down fire escapes. Black and white flickers from Telstar, from before the flood, but after the mad dash. Back in the day, on Eleventh and A, who knew we were in Alphabet City? Or that Twelfth and D would be the place to be? On Tenth and First we'd quench our thirst with piragüa in July, coquito in June, from the little man with the blue pushcart and the green balloon. So much love, so much heart, so sweet, so right, see you on the corner tonight. Oyeme mulata! Che che colé, que bueno e'? Chicheme, March 2013 Links Telstar
Alphabet City 