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 ∞
Today while reading Figure and Ground, I highlight
passages that I do not want to remember.
© Chagall 2017
short
star gazers
long
a
lot
like
the
tall
ones
or are they just farther away?
Chagall 2016
So subtle this thing called language
rears its head above tangled perception
discernible froth we skim cerebral
I prefer raw more sensuous groping
meaningful wordless visceral stew
the lasting poems of impulse
Chagall 2015
Outside reading
clouds part
sun-photons come
beaming down
I stare
but for a moment
clouds merge
gray again
I return to the page
residual sunspots
there in my brain
wreak havoc
with punctuation
Chagall 2015
If I’d known the pages were there
I’d have read them, odd how my story
worked better not knowing.
© Chagall 2015
Let’s all do this once more with feeling,
avoid the sidesteps askew to the point.
I don’t yet have automata down pat
quite enough to divert my mind away.
© Chagall 2014
At the piano, I play a light blue,
my left hand punctuates, strident bulbous,
circles of gray, droplets of black timing.
My right hand ripples arpeggios, brisk
splashes of gold, Pollockesque, allegro.
Musically, on pilot-automatic.
Out the window, there in the sky, I see
major triads as clouds move slowly, pushed;
invisible winds above dissonance,
beyond the minor second. Zephyrs play
in the treetops, to and fro, suspended,
diminished, dominant, gin and tonic.
Then you arrive, a refrain at the door,
so I add the seventh, ninth, eleventh.
Your smile lifts me up in harmonics,
too many octaves high, in overtones
that crash the normal frequencies, like bells
in heavens, all is hallowed, on this night.
On ground, a breeze stirs the honeysuckle
love, pianofortissimomente.
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 