The brave captains
of Saturday night
are dead.
Sunday rains
wash the street
bright, alive and sun-gray.
Such beautiful light
on the barber pole.
A whisper-promise,
soft nibbles
to the lobe.
Long drags
and draws,
and pulls
and strokes.
So much yearning,
first-floor
windows.
Part the curtain,
would you
wave?
I watch
Ed Hopper
prep his palette,
early
Sunday morning.
© Chagall, 2013
I stall to commence
as I have no intent
to ever let this end.
© Chagall, 2013
Strange,
how nothing moves.
The clockwork’s
stopped.
Sprung,
a gear, a female gear . . .
ray,
a drop of . . .
I move
too freely,
having been
here before.
Hawks
in the canopy,
whispers
in the wings.
Still alone
and quite alone,
are really not
the same.
© Chagall, 2013
When you come to my garden,
look right just past the gate –
there’s a bone-white bowl
with raspberries picked
clean by hand,
each cane.
Taste them!
I’m sure
they’re pure.
Berries are good!
according to papilla polled.
No –
don’t you agree?
© Chagall, 2013
I pulse,
you pulse.
We both pulse?
I guess.
But you know . . .
you’ve always been
more certain
than me.
I see
you saw it
(I saw you had)
in my eyes,
where I can
never gaze
directly.
© Chagall, 2013
I drive real fast
down slippery slope,
hit high point curves,
at crossings
nothing daunted.
In the dead of night
I kill my lights,
I’m an asteroid
on Highway 1.
Dark wind
whips through,
dashboard glow –
rockabilly twang
on the radio.
© Chagall, 2013
From a tilt ship
there’s heaven aslant
etched in the portal pane:
Orion on its head,
his belt instead a choker,
the Southern Cross a sword
with just a dash of hilt,
Big Bear on her back
for tickles,
and Aries with horns
in the ground.
I wonder how silence
can pervade a world
so large, a universe
so vast.
Maybe I’ve just grown cold,
lost in the draw
of this vacuum.
Reentry back to earth
was always hard
but now face down
at high speeds to blue
I find it
the saddest part
too.
© Chagall, 2013
At what point
did this become
ordinary?
When did it lose
any claim on
sublime?
Before
the pen
hit paper,
or somewhere
along
the line?
© Chagall, 2013
There’s a song that I sing,
it escapes me
without thought,
no lyric but lilt.
Leaves me winded
and dizzy, though I manage
the pace of the line.
I breathe on the beat
where my grace notes should be
to precipitate delicate action.
In lush exhalation
I hum in the shift
of two tones.
© Chagall, 2013
The blog-site has an option
to toggle a different language,
something Afro-Asiatic
or maybe Austronesian.
So I flip,
and get lost in Formosan:
click-click here
if you like-like post
I meet friends
for merry in Māori!
We pump our arms steady
and war-dance.
© Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 