The New Romantics

We need visionaries, now, more than ever.
Those in tenderest thrall
to the lore of zeal and trespass,
this side of dreaming.
We barker for the rise and call
of the New Romantics who,
in their shedding of scales and sundering of veils,
are preparing to open up to the ceremony of new skin.
We need beginners
to enter into the folds of Mystery,
which, unlike plot, thins
into the respiring air of wonder,
and flagless expansion.
We need those who are inspired
to vision sideways,
to model the unilateral tango of crabs
who move upon this earth with fluent mobility;
We are combing near and distant shores
for those willing to humbly
assume the mantle of guests,
while abdicating, like outworn appendages,
the petrified rod and spite of mastery.
Rest assured, watchtowers will collapse,
birthday cakes of ash and symmetry
will be spawned from the crisped rainbow plumage
of Phoenixes duly resurrected;
Dusk, in its celluloid gauze,
will coerce us into becoming surfers of gloam,
initiates of the in-between and unknown.
We need visionaries, now, more than ever.
Those willing to approach the doorstep of the Muse
as orphans with manna-starved eyes, where we are treated
to a marvelous bounty of gifts, previously undreamed, untried.
We need diggers willing to trade in rusty spades
for dancing threads, blood-dark roads
for ones that are impossibly red,
sterile spats of data
for innate feelizations.
Intuition,
you see,
is that old reliable bucket
bound to the rope
lowered into the well
from which ancient-new
seeds, moist and dark,
are drawn up into the light.
We need humanly wrapped beacons,
pooling to source
and harmonize
the cellular strife
of warring selves within;
We need to unlearn,
just enough,
to embrace
a new season of vocabulary,
and no longer be afraid of
or so quick to ridicule, belittle or dismiss
words such as
soul, mystic, witch, alchemy, wonder and why-not.
It was long ago prophesized
by one of those new-old Romantics,
Mister Arthur Rimbaud—
“At dawn,
armed with burning patience,
we shall enter the splendid cities.”
Visions,
which milk sunrise
from that timeless place,
do not age or wrinkle
or grow outdated,
they are, and remain,
the sound glimmering basis
for a renewable scape of dreaming,
feral seeds popping and sputtering
like homesick newborns
in the heart’s greenest drifts
and wilds.
There has been a bugled call
to bless your broken softly,
to become as aria and chorus,
brimming seismic yawps
in Whitman’s electric circus,
and at the liminal edges,
where torn veils
flutter like green wind,
and soul-speak meets felt-sense,
that is where you can hear
the whispers and echoes,
repeating in a continuum—
We need visionaries, now, more than ever,
those willing to marvel dumbly,
hopelessly in love
with Wonder’s wheeling gist.

About John Biscello

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, writer, poet, performer, and playwright, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of four novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, and No Man’s Brooklyn; 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 produced, full-length plays include: LOBSTERS ON ICE, ADAGIO FOR STRAYS, THE BEST MEDICINE, ZEITGEIST, U.S.A., and WEREWOLVES DON’T WALTZ.
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