All I want to do this morning
is to tickle your mind so that
it’s impressed by the same grey
morning I’m experiencing here
electrically sublime anticipating
the vestige of today.
Chagall 2015
Tag Archive: thought
Threadbare themes are all I’ve left
discarded, dressed in symbol
so far removed from the pang in my gut,
the swift uptake of breath, the gasp
that attests to beauty, the prolonged
search for words to convey the fleeting
moment, one step behind disappears
a paintbrush stroke of water,
a wet hieroglyphic that mists in the hot sun
and is gone.
© Chagall
We only had words, no meaning,
long liturgical drones,
endless hours, sonorous
dirge-like ponders, attempts
to reveal the roiling core
of our humanity, of love as ground
for creation, essentially to invert,
to feel likewise on the inside,
overlooking already being
once removed from having once felt,
a mist on the face of the water.
© Chagall 2015
Pretty pictures inside my head
stop me from seeing the beauty without,
there where the actual lies, beyond the real
where I’ve occasion to wander rarely,
but now it’s a different story.
© Chagall 2015
I’ve always been a sucker for a good lead pencil
mechanical or otherwise, with exotic size like
double o’seven, o’eight, or o’nine – the promise
of scribe on paper, the spilling of thought
like blood though black on brilliant white fibers, pressed
so many linens to emboss with the outpour of my mind
but the scratch – listen . . . do you hear that? that’s quill on papyrus
the sound of it, the sight of it, so much like sex in so many ways
the north-south-west-east of it, a counting of blessings
© Chagall 2015
The poem starts a place without word
outside the hourglass
The sound is an outburst (exclamation!)
whether a howl is uncertain, more likely a caw
Brains pretend to know, but they don’t
sadly at perch too high perhaps
It’s the last flight out in search
of reconnaissance stalled on the tarmac
On a high reef
or a low arete
In certain dreams I spiral down
sharp winding roads without guard rail
where perilous switchbacks cause me to dangle
precariously close to then over the edge
perennially in descent but how decent of you
to drop by thank you I would kiss you yet . . .
chances are odds are
merely an end to a means to an end
© 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
Alphabet City 