I pick ground tubers
orange, white, deep purple,
while my students practice
yoga ’bout the hills
around us
In morning sun and overnight dew
I laugh then cry through the splendor
Prisms of light diffract there
on my lashes beaded rainbows
I close my eyes slowly till I am consumed
by indigo, orange,
white, deep purple
© Chagall 2014
In time we find
though never lost
in trimmed gardens
The search alone
we sidle walls
flash furtive glance
In green maze
morning haze drops
The same each time
blurred roundabout
swirl dizzy spires
Endless breathlessness
tiring quicker
than yesternight
Out of rush of flame
comes desire
Sparkling cold
dense stars are lit
the air so thick
Like water we
drown
© Chagall 2014
I experience me
like migraine
so I let go to seek relief
to still the incessant yap
floating atop
the knotted river
observing none
but the roil
© Chagall 2014
Clearly
opaque
odd
even
distant
touching
apparently
real
I’m
not
are
you?
© Chagall 2014
I am a time traveler –
doubt me?
I travel backwards in time
with each regret and every tear
of nostalgia
Anticipation, anxiety, angst
all the “A” words (okay, and Dread too)
is me time-tripping, future to now and back again
But I
digress
Now
where was I?
© Chagall 2014
Some seeds display
erratic behavior
rather inconsistency
in their rate of sprout
with respect to time –
how long – and volume –
how many, more specifically
the percentage coming through
I treat such seeds with mild disdain
jostling their incubators and
peat pellet packs, perturbations
surely their style, nothing regular
about the routine I provide, rotating
to sun, shade to moist, dry
to mist, drench to relaxed bouts
on cedar planks, cool porches after
hot days, the deck still radiant with heat
photons captured their pulse eager
to tell of where they’ve been, places
they hope to see
The seeds, perhaps seedlings now, asleep atop this cooling bed
dream on behalf of light emanating underneath as heat
Into the earth on a vision quest
for hydrogen-oxygen-carbon – even more sunlight
color minerals, trace elements, the spectrum
proxy for the union of unnamed things
Inconceivably there are no more miles for the light to travel,
if I have not made my point clear, it’s traveled all of the miles
of distance that exist
So it must assemble in wave, in halos about the drop-off so sheer
without sign of bottom, more surrender than plummet, the last call for shadows
in a world of no sound though I imagine that the shriek of gravity is deafening
beyond here there are no more walls
it’s certainly not the place nor time
for hand puppets though that certainly would be ballsy
Hop atop with me, ride the sunspot madly
blindly, dash with me into the light
we shall make new stems and leaves together!
© Chagall 2014
I feel that old wedge of wood
between my plexus and my temple
meaning the pressure of time
to get things done, I’ve learned
to feel it without words, it is
merely sensation, like the rose
petal of circling bullet holes
that I’ve deemed my anger there
in a stream of turrets just above
my belt line, mossy scent of water
heady far back behind the eyes coats
the back and top of the inside of my
skull is the melancholy of remembering you
© Chagall 2014
In the canvas bag where I stored garden hand-tools,
in a side pocket covered by a blue-black-white
paisley bandana, I kept a small brass pipe and a palm-size
stash of homegrown I’d grown here at home years ago excellent really quite primo
kept moist by rotating wedges of apple newly
I’d partake every now and then
when out in the green house at the potting bench (no pun intended)
the aroma of earth, water, and oxygen processing
in filtered sunlight
and sometimes in moonlight
wondrous dahlias and grapes on grafted rootstock
made tougher to live here, to be able to endure here
propagating boxwood and ficus and fig
helping them to get through the erratic germination of exotic types
in the end just hoping
we’d all find simpler things
© Chagall 2014
Abuzz
and so there’s apt to be
an I
who must name the white-hot point
just life
throbs and flows goes up-down the frame
neon really
while no one’s there to watch it
© 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
Alphabet City 