I remain truly yours to the cause of the heart to the matter at hand here and now split as a fine-hair V a moment prior to then one foot still ago in the eye-shift lost in the indigo on the gaze from here to there cc: Chagall 2021
Tag Archive: now
I did not think I would write today,
living life had more allure until
I reached too far, I felt too
deeply, I fell ever so gently
from such a short height,
that’s all it took
to be here.
© Chagall ∞
Tendrils girdle, torso, bracchia,
anxiety manifests, parted seas close,
I prefer to be cleaved to channel pervasive winds,
a feeling named, neurosis in situ, otherwise benign,
despair unnamed is more easily thwarted, a mystery
even to itself
© Chagall ∞
Ants traverse freely
Leaves curled into Escher curves
Endlessly nowhere
© Chagall ∞
The night is crisp, autumnal.
Bourbon sweeter.
My son and his petite amie
at a friend’s cabin while they’re away.
With them, a bag of sweet potatoes
I grew and cured, for roasting
over the wood fire they’ll make.
Life is good.
Peepers sing earlier
than usual tonight. Harmonics from breezes
to trees to shape the glass arc of our ears
to blow gently in them.
I am yellow aged orange inflamed
dared to go red before withering.
I pray to the last gold ray of sun
there in the tall eastern trees
that refuses to say die to another day.
© Chagall 2016
Sunday early eve
eastern standard
time
Her parents are old
but still alive
and mine are still
quite dead
We both hang on
we four
Plus others within
our gravity
We call
family
Our love traces
many roots
to get here
We are leaves, we are buds
on a tree growing
Sunday early eve
eastern standard
time
Chagall 2015
She tells herself to let go – soar –
and so she does
and soar she does
but only for just a short while
She often walks on coals
then her soles burn hot
then her soul burns hot
she is lost in her gaze, fixed on her spot right there
Okay to breathe now. How your shoulders smell like rain
and apple dew.
We carve a single stretch, a shared arc – a yawn on the wall
our bodies run long supple lines intertwined pulsed at all the right points
just like DNA
in June on a picnic blanket overwhelmed by the possibilities on all fronts
She dances herself into tight glass
corners in high places, finds herself looking
down where lights light up way down there somewhere far below where it’s before
there was anyone other, besides, else, or at all
Before there was reason to bawl
Before there was reason to ball
© Chagall 2014
Rain sounds massage me
each wet gurgle a bubble
dropped hollow echoes
© Chagall 2013
While it’s just an Autumn Friday,
it somehow seems more than that,
preordained a holy day
but by whom, I couldn’t know.
It does feel special –
a canoe carved in time
that I feel I’m obliged,
even intended to lie in,
lay low
to shoot the rapids,
braced in a four-point stance.
I look up, see nothing
but sky in constellation,
water founts arc the lip,
refresh but nearly drown me.
On this day of reclamation,
nocturnes for atonement
pipe through vents
that rim the sky (good bass
– it sounds like vinyl)
push cold air.
And I sense there’s someone out there,
maybe a Being or two,
masterminds, big kahuna,
a capo, a boss,
a God.
Murmuring I can’t distinguish
clearly, the words incanted,
more than prayers, I think
perhaps formulae.
Or maybe it’s just two Angels
out for kicks on a Friday night,
the weekend’s tip
with a divine tap,
a haloed index finger
extended from a perfect hand,
aces over kings.
The evening is timeless,
an aberration in Ordinary Time,
extraordinarily so,
unlike all that’s come or will,
smooth-shaven, coiffed,
perfumed.
I am mass,
resonance,
shape and design breathed
through glass, spun backwards,
figure is ground, the toucher is
touched, trapped in surface tension.
Small planes fly low
en route to Idlewild;
even here on the ground
I can hear the pilot
implore the crew
to land.
I arrive at this special feeling
by making less of who I am:
I strip way
I float away
I fade away
I bleed through the blot of autumn
that once seemed so pervasive,
inevitable a construct,
like time and space,
life, death,
love and rebirth.
© Chagall, 2013
I eat roasted peanuts on the porch,
watch you through the door
prepare papaya salsa there,
chiles, cumin, brown sugar, agave,
lime and red onion.
The grill gives off toasting hickory smell,
radiates heat in small waves of mirage;
I sip white liquors and tonics,
beyond ice cold and bracing,
intoxicating quinine.
At this moment, all things are possible,
the frosting of salt on oiled peppers,
fresh clean sprays of water
to raise steam off of the smoking woods,
you in the kitchen humming ancient lullabies.
White smoke rises in fantail wisps,
disappears into the day’s air, as does the day,
commemorates life’s rituals,
protects the perimeter from evil.
As stars appear,
I trace constellations older than man,
and imagine that I am among the first
to gaze upward, and to recognize pattern.
We lie on the night grass,
warm and dry on a frilled blanket
that I keep in the trunk of my car,
cleaned regularly, especially for moments like these,
when a person or two, needs a view
prone face-up to heaven.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 