Flophouse

flop
Love, the ultimate flophouse,
the dogged prayer-bin,
where you swap
scars
and hopes
and soiled dreams
pressed to the lungs of light,
where half-moon
fingernails clipped
and kept in urns
remind you that life
is a fleeting sideshow,
a strange affair
that you may be lucky enough
to share with a kindred flop-mate,
someone who understands
the veined beauty
of crumbling walls
and fated decay,
who knows
that the corpuscles of sun
radiating symmetry
through the cracks
in window-glass
serve not as answers
but as praise
 to two people
sharing a room
and daring love
in the face
of inevitable ruin.

 

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About John Biscello

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, novelist, poet, performer, playwright and filmmaker, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of six novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, No Man’s Brooklyn, The Last Furies, and No One Dreams in Color; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag, two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama. He also adapted classic fables, which were paired with the vintage illustrations of artist, Paul Bransom, for the collection: Once Upon a Time, Classic Fables Reimagined. His plays have been staged and performed both nationally and internationally.
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