Tag Archive: sentience


Dal Segno

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

Les Nuages

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I raise my arm,
again and again
and then I raise it
a third time

From whence
does
that
signal
flow?

I seek out
the Commander
the one who barks
the order
and find her easily
nearby at the helm
yelling Raise It!

But what happens next
I can’t discern
the work of that motor
eludes me

I assume a small band
of gypsy synapse
lights up and plays jazz
’round the fires
of my heart
and I raise my arm
on the prominent
upbeat

So much of life
is mindless I
in surrender to
the Mindful

© Chagall 2014

Bacchanal

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An orgy of copper beetles
on the leaves of my raspberry canes

I can’t beat them
so I join them

Très buff
is my new shell

© Chagall 2014

Harmolodic

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Lyrics spun in the round
a chanted rondo

Tone intervals nudge
my soul askew

I am in the space
between sounds

A spark of the gap
between now and then

Enchanted bridges
I enunciate clearly Now

So viscerally
cerebral

So mindfully playing it
by feel

Elegant long draws
of breath till silence

Below me
abundant sky

Eons yet
till twilight

Dusk hums
key shifts

Concordant triads
of star after star after star

New starting
tones and fresh days

A sense that we will
always

© Chagall 2014

The Choreographer’s Advice

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Catch the upbeat
with a shoulder shrug,
more subtle than hips.

Convey as much
with a nod.

Start off deeper and slower
when you thrust, and hold the finish

make it go all the way, tap the hilt
if you get my point, feel the lust
along the long line you’ll hold.

And I’m not kidding!
Absolutely motionless
till the follow-spots fade
plus a beat

© Chagall 2014

Out By The Jetties

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I start with a notion of myself
from which all else grows

my cheek sinks into a cold pillow
and I heave a sigh for having never felt
this good

under a spell –
a concussion, under water

harmonic
metallic dinghies

upside down in waves along an island sporting
a solitary palm tree

rarely have I backstroked
this long or so well

just like my mother,
I’m buoyant

© Chagall 2014

The Frolic Of Fonder Hearts

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In silence
I hear the choirs,
taste the sweet abundance
of the fast

My body surrenders
to engage the energy
behind closed eyes
of swirling fractal beauty

From the pocket of my mind, loose change empties
as I spring up to plant a handstand

© Chagall 2014

Absolutely Cause To Celebrate

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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

You Too?

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It’s quieter this morning
white noise some hum a random creak pops here there
far away celestial cries – more song than shout
barely heard murmur above the proscenium
along the back space you carve.

I dive to a hollow center and find it even quieter,
save the lone chanter, still strong on feeling.

I spin
till I’m dizzily drizzled;
my, such cute little bongos.

© Chagall 2014

Thought Sloped

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Forget about frocks and sacraments, if you would
for a moment shake the vestments, the wafers, martyrs and saints

and rejoice instead on the preponderance of we who would ponder,
who know that simply to ponder is a privilege pervaded by what constitutes God.

© Chagall 2014