We were walking scarside,
had been for a long time.
The wind sounded like fading bells,
the air smelled of singed salt.
I asked her how her heart was holding up.
Good, she smiled, it’s floating jellyfishlike
in a pool of warm liquid.
That’s where I drown my ______________.
The way she spoke blanks, like concrete flatlines,
stopped me. And drew me closer to her void.
I always fell for and into women’s voids,
headfirst, heartfirst, groinfirst,
it was hard to tell the order.
But absence was a death’s-head elixir, a potion
made from pines, bones, and frozen bees.
I told her–Did you know
that the closer you get to a black hole
the slower time runs?
Is ……………… that ……………….. true ……………
she slo-moed her speech and movements, a dying reel
equal parts eerie and comical.
When she resumed regular speed, she kissed me
hard and quick, a hummingbird on high.
It was at the far edge of scarside
that she asked me–How is your heart doing?
I considered this, then responded,
My heart is _______________.
That’s where it’s most comfortable.
She smiled, I think savoring the jittery draft
of blankness, its throbbing drift,
then she stepped away
as I leaned into her void,
wanting.
There is nothing
more heartbreakingly
human
than sharing your loneliness
with another,
a tender enclosure
bonding the furtive nuptials
of intimacy
for as long
as ephemera graciously
grants.
There is a dying art
to teething
on the candied skin
of a bubble
for as long as you can
before its inevtiable burst
becomes the shyest glimmer
grieving your lips.
White-hot throbbing, to
bask in the sidereal–
Unzip your skin, please.
How lyrically beautiful,
and tragic,
the ballad of binary stars,
engaging the rogue symmetry
and slow-burn turns of a lonely ballet,
two stars,
gravity-bound to one another,
sharing a common orbit,
an elliptical intimacy,
yet never touching,
a via negativa
of grace at play,
a magnetic flirting
of blown charged kisses,
and radiant spread
of bluehot wavelengths
that leave ghostprints
on their asking voids,
and in those rare exceptional
cases where the binaries do merge
and conjoin,
Eros explodingly ensues
in pooling corteges of light
and gospel,
testifying to the magnifience
of stars in love,
in the whitehot throes of cosmic lust,
colliding
once
and forever.
My dream,
or need,
has always been
to gauge
and organize my mania
into something
resembling music,
or at least rhythmical sutures
detailing the heart’s lighted country
of scars
while proving,
beyond shadows,
its valiant worth.
Greater flow dictates–
let it go, let it all go,
respire in wonder.
Photo by Philipe Hugonnard
Time slowed,
and I carefully studied
what amounted to a
prophetic X-ray,
showing me the void within,
her future ghostlife,
or perhaps mine,
grinning at me
like a black hole,
an atomizing tantalus
with a ravenous appetite
and pearls for teeth.
Beginnings
are never just beginnings
but endings and middles
all at once,
Time, that slippery procreative
eel, siring its own gospel brood,
leaves us with a charge
of options from which to bond
and choose
in a stream unending
in its roundabout turns
toward the infinite.
Touch me
where I am not,
where the fade
meets the form,
where the furtive scent
of glisten
perfumes its own root cause
and fable,
give to me
the dirty dinghied
secrets of the center,
the storied core,
which, in onrushing
tidals of prickly light
will wipe away
all history and identity,
and leave us amnesiacs
with a flair
for the pooling memory
of skin.
John Biscello 