She says goodbye to the face and dress
lets her hair down long catches air
in the wind she is and night is way past nigh
she’s again a little girl running singing
goodnight moon after all this very long while
in a step clutches beams in mid-air, nothing there but
graceful descent in a fall maybe to Avalon, she’s heard there’s a king there
© Chagall 2014
Quickly
follow that theme!
© Chagall 2014
I taste the warm sweet-salty brine
life’s wonderful beautiful colors
each with the voice of a cello
within me and without in shapes
of indescribable topology
sensuous polygons breathed in deep
the garden’s steep of lavender, rose,
and bergamot, pastels in chalk and oil
regale this chamber about me
© Chagall 2014
I thought I probed the depths
for the right words
to find I am essentially unaware
that I am twice removed
from the truth below the bubbles
but buoyant
despite a payload
of heavy ballast
I’m a hale and hearty
bottom feeder
who really isn’t
at all
just a background hush
an undertow
a current
an eddy
a relic
of implicit order
the mystery around
the actual
around the real
I name
through words
I’ve probed
in search
of nameless things
© Chagall 2014
I ran to the border
and found no line
no visible boundary
between here and there
the others seemed
us
such an odd place
for division
like mimes we palmed
the imaginary wall
brick by brick
both we and they
occasionally brushing
fingers, such delightful
and forbidden tingle
he of the gray robe
I of the white
now
we both don blue
and stand guard
with pink erasers
© Chagall 2014
Today the world
has no front page
something marvelous, curious
occurred overnight
East awoke to loving West
and all cardinal points the same
for their neighbors
Everywhere there are puddles
of dissolved factions
and relinquished isms
People are sharing ethnic breads
and strong homemade brews
passed down over the generations
singing folk songs in the round
overlapping choruses in a variety
of tongues, accompanied by beautiful
percussion, reeds, and strings
dancing around fires, gifting homeland costumes
in a worldwide exchange of giving
The energy around the planet is palpable
one can ride it like an orbital ring
to transcend the here and now
seven billion tiny lights illuminate
as one
deep in the reaches of the multiverse
the Knower for a moment thinks Earth
has flickered
but soon loses interest
as there are much brighter beams
to tend to
© Chagall 2014
Our music will always exist while remnant
of us ever having played it mightn’t
No photograph in black and white coarse-grained
in the morning coffee and the light of new day
coming through the window
A voice, a life captured
in a vinyl groove, we dig it out
with diamond styli
Trapped in overtone
due to expire, reliving
the last time touched
Sere earth in rapture over the horizon
lines recited in subtle gesture atop
fallen and graceful wonders
The music’s more than bulbous slanted dots on stave
windblown rests and italicized Italian
We are intended
to be sung
© Chagall 2014
It’s raining in parts of me that had predicted splendor,
the patter of drops punctuates me perfectly
aside from simpler things, until it doesn’t
The trace around the stencil
of the letters that spell my world’s blue
is black enamel ornamented etching edged in a fine line of ice
Turgid meringue of paint, rigid and aroused brush strokes
on canvas where pointillists lie
Too deep in the colors I bring
to fade susceptible too paused
eventually to relapse or release perhaps
At the edge of white alders miles below, easy to reel and harder to breathe
cold thin air halfway to where space encroaches indigo spectacular onyx and aqueous
headfirst spirals home no less than a slither face-down in a snowbank
Should I never see this time again, know there’s no one to thank
and I did not fan my arms and legs to engender a frozen angel
© Chagall 2014
He is skilled in the art
of provoking a response
then dismissing the provocation
so that all that’s left
is the response
making it appear as if the other
is the provocateur
© Chagall 2014
A gnat evades being smashed
by twenty thousand times its mass
yet keeps coming back for more
Flies in and out of nostrils
with carefree abandon
resides in an eyelid or two
The wind from the blow that would destroy
is sufficient to propel it out of harm’s way
Do consider slow stealth assertion of the finger pad
as the more effective means to transition the gnat
a step back home to the dust
© Chagall 2014
Alphabet City 