John Biscello

It was driving me crazy.

I couldn’t stand the teasing anymore,

the eternal seductiveness,

so I fabled right through the roof

and into the capacious night-sky

to be with the stars, those luminous coquettes

and avatars of celestial elegance,

on whom I’ve had a crush

since god knows when.

I need to be with you,

I screamed myself blue and hoarse,

as I ascended fast

but not fast enough

for what I imagined would

be the tryst to end all trysts,

a liason which would thoroughly exempt me

from mortal fetters and worldly considerations.

An abstract longing to know pure feeling,

and grow texturally intimate with realms unseen,

had followed me straight out of the womb

and into this worldscape, an unsayable something

which had formed and remained

a clawing tenant in the heaven section of my gut,

and though I had scored my life with a litany of haunts

and diversions, no more! the time had come

to fable, untethered, nonstop, into the raven-gloss pools

of nightsky, and to bring the metaphysical yes yes yes

back to impossible consummation.

I am, at present, still ascending,

while the stars continue dispatching signals

to guide me toward the pinwheeling whorls of white fire

and etheric milkbaths.

There is nothing quite like the lore of universal attraction,

its magnetic sway not for the faint of heart.

In drawing nearer and nearer to my heart’s desire

beyond known desire,

I pray to shed gracefully my mortal coils,

and find myself, unabated,

a natural kink in the inviolable symmetry

of spatial breadth and lay,

i.e., a lovesick orphan

coursed to home

and cosmic parlay.

(“Starry Night” by Van Gogh)