John Biscello

Shimmer

Posted on August 23, 2018 by John Biscello

Light’s slow, basking crush
on the sea’s shimmied wavelengths–
A sunset affair.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged haiku, John Biscello, sea, sky, sun | Leave a comment

Illustory

Posted on August 23, 2018 by John Biscello

The sky,
a photographic illusion,
a veiled overlay,
which the sun,
in this starring instance,
burns through from behind,
creating a pinhole aperture
through which one can vision
proof of eternity,
and its unending
volumes of light.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged John Biscello, poem, sea, sky, sun | Leave a comment

The Sadness of Beautiful Things

Posted on August 15, 2018 by John Biscello

Review of Simon Van Booy’s collection of stories, The Sadness of Beautiful Things.

“O Lord, give us each our own death. Grant us
the dying that comes forth from that life in which
we knew love, grappled with meaning, felt need.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

Simon Van Booy is a collector of stories, a distiller of them. He is the ear suctioned to the glass pressed against the door, the man scribbling on the back of matchbooks while seated in a hotel lobby, the sensual rover making his way through the patchwork euphony of voices in a diner. He is, in paraphrasing Anais Nin, a consummate spy in the house of love. Love, in all its splintered fragmentation, in all its rubbed shine, is always at the punchdrunk heart of Van Booy’s work, a dreamworn kernel in the grist of his tender elegies. His latest collection, The Sadness of Beautiful Things, inspired by true stories he was told during his travels, holds the power of love up to the light, in soft focus, while moving through a world of ache, sorrow and longing.

Read the full review at Riot Material.

Posted in Books, Press, Prose, Publications, Uncategorized | Tagged elegies, John Biscello, love, Prose, riot material, simon van booy, stories, the sadness of beautiful things | Leave a comment

Ripening

Posted on August 8, 2018 by John Biscello

“They wanted to blossom,

and blossoming is being beautiful. But we want to ripen,

and this means being dark and taking pains.”–Rainer Maria Rilke

O poor fragile blossom,

hue of vetted contradiction,

do bask in dark,

soft, storied chambers

and folds,

and come to know

the bible

of sputtering seeds

that speak, in tenderest scintillas

of gospel,

of ripeness to come,

of bursting

that soaks color through blanched veins,

and skin outworn

to fall.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged how dark and light team up so wonderfully, John Biscello, oem, ripeness, the color wheel, what dreams may hum | 3 Comments

The Rebirth of Aphrodite

Posted on August 8, 2018 by John Biscello

The tasseled white veins

of the sea pulsate

and spread powdery

billows.

The wild expanse

is a magnificent lay

of azure froth and fizzing eyelets,

goldened by the dragon’s teeth of sun.

Clefted,

between a rock

and a soft place,

the slowpooling shadow

of Venus

is cast,

to pierce,

and to spool

mortal longing.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged it's a goddess thing, John Biscello, lovemaking in golden salt, running blues, sea based poetry, Venus on a halfshell | Leave a comment

Elegy

Posted on August 7, 2018 by John Biscello

At the risk

of harbor,

emptiness pools

where hearts

marvel

in sync

with grief’s

ruins.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged grief, how hearts, John Biscello, love, marvel & sorrow, poem | 1 Comment

An Affair to Remember

Posted on August 6, 2018 by John Biscello

Unscripted, unbound,

wind’s summer fling with towel–

Love, gently aired, seeks.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged John Biscello, poem, wind and towel getting it on as the world just walks on by | Leave a comment

Door II

Posted on August 6, 2018 by John Biscello

When the trap door fell,

he remembered who he was–

Peter Pan leapt, soared.

Posted in Prose, Uncategorized | Tagged John Biscello, magic, peter pan flys again, poem | Leave a comment

Door

Posted on August 6, 2018 by John Biscello

There is a legend

of a door hidden from hearts–

How stones, unturned, scar.

Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged door, dream, heart, John Biscello, mexico, otherworldly, poem | Leave a comment

Nocturne on the Horizon

Posted on August 5, 2018 by John Biscello

Cover reveal for my new novel, Nocturne Variations (coming this November). Designed by Heather Ross.

NOCTURNE VARIATIONS:

Dystopic Peter Pan meets surrealist noir in this cinemythical tale about love, loss and the illusions of shadow-play.

Los Angeles, December, 1989, is when we first meet seventeen-year-old Piers, runaway, savant puppeteer, spiritual love-child of Holden Caulfield and Edie Sedgwick. Addicted to Sike, an experimental drug which promises a surrogate return to Childhood, Piers, in an act of revenge, robs a briefcase full of Sike from her dealer and flees L.A., pursued by two hit men. Hiding out in a stark Southwestern town called Redline, where she meets and is taken in by a man named Henry Hook, Piers is soon confronted by the buried trauma of her past and the ghosts risen from old haunts.

Comprising a jigsaw synthesis of narrative, journal entries, letters, monologues, screenplay, poems, photographs, and press clippings, Nocturne renders an interior world of fragments and parallels, and casts a tinted light on that neverland between dreaming and waking.

Posted in Artwork, Press, Prose, Publications, Uncategorized | Tagged cryptic peter pan, dark neverland, heather ross, John Biscello, noir, novel, Prose, Surrealism, unsolicited press | 3 Comments

Light’s slow, basking crush on the sea’s shimmied wavelengths– A sunset affair.

The sky, a photographic illusion, a veiled overlay, which the sun, in this starring instance, burns through from behind, creating a pinhole aperture through which one can vision proof of eternity, and its unending volumes of light.

Review of Simon Van Booy’s collection of stories, The Sadness of Beautiful Things.

“O Lord, give us each our own death. Grant us the dying that comes forth from that life in which we knew love, grappled with meaning, felt need.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

Read the full review at Riot Material.

“They wanted to blossom,

and blossoming is being beautiful. But we want to ripen,

and this means being dark and taking pains.”–Rainer Maria Rilke

O poor fragile blossom,

hue of vetted contradiction,

do bask in dark,

soft, storied chambers

and folds,

and come to know

the bible

of sputtering seeds

that speak, in tenderest scintillas

of gospel,

of ripeness to come,

of bursting

that soaks color through blanched veins,

and skin outworn

to fall.

The tasseled white veins

of the sea pulsate

and spread powdery

billows.

The wild expanse

is a magnificent lay

of azure froth and fizzing eyelets,

goldened by the dragon’s teeth of sun.

Clefted,

between a rock

and a soft place,

the slowpooling shadow

of Venus

is cast,

to pierce,

and to spool

mortal longing.

At the risk

of harbor,

emptiness pools

where hearts

marvel

in sync

with grief’s

ruins.

Unscripted, unbound,

wind’s summer fling with towel–

Love, gently aired, seeks.

When the trap door fell,

he remembered who he was–

Peter Pan leapt, soared.

There is a legend

of a door hidden from hearts–

How stones, unturned, scar.

Cover reveal for my new novel, Nocturne Variations (coming this November). Designed by Heather Ross.

NOCTURNE VARIATIONS:

Dystopic Peter Pan meets surrealist noir in this cinemythical tale about love, loss and the illusions of shadow-play.

Comprising a jigsaw synthesis of narrative, journal entries, letters, monologues, screenplay, poems, photographs, and press clippings, Nocturne renders an interior world of fragments and parallels, and casts a tinted light on that neverland between dreaming and waking.

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Light’s slow, basking crush
on the sea’s shimmied wavelengths–
A sunset affair.

The sky,
a photographic illusion,
a veiled overlay,
which the sun,
in this starring instance,
burns through from behind,
creating a pinhole aperture
through which one can vision
proof of eternity,
and its unending
volumes of light.

“O Lord, give us each our own death. Grant us
the dying that comes forth from that life in which
we knew love, grappled with meaning, felt need.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours