Note to Self

Words,
the right ones,
ripe and engorged,
outgrow the necessary dark
inside you and, abiding
the laws of catch
and release, demand
light, air, voice.
Beware atrophy,
the root killer,
and do not leave language,
ingrown, unattended.
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Gravity

The only voice
of hers I know
is in my head,
frozen
to an untouched form,
lying,
bedwarmed,
in gravity’s stead.
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Waltz

On the night
God went topless,
and the nephilim performed
a burlesque of Carmen,
or perhaps it was the Wizard of Oz,
the girl with the frosted tulips
in her hair,
and love song
in her head,
turned off the stars
and started waltzing,
as if the entire world
had shut its billion
and one scarry eyes
to better divine
and redeem
a single girl’s
respiring edge
to glisten with candor,
to home in on light,
where innocence lay in wait
and surrender.

 

 

 

 

 

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Daughter, Mother

woman and child
Mother, without your touch,
blood-lush access to eternity’s grasp,
I am rudderless, and adrift,
in a world that shits on innocence.
…………………………………..
Daughter, without you to hold,
a promise illumined into love’s totem,
I am sunless, and moonless,
a stray tide receding into an abyss,
where innocence lies in wait,
numb to its cherish.
(Artwork by Cris Qualiana Basham)
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Perigee

It cannot be held in tongues,
the veering arc of this perigee,
ice-hot moon,
rounded,
throbbing to full,
lightly
crushing
the sea’s
glittering fount
of lace.

 

 

 

 

 

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Still Life w/ Selfie

 

IMG_3304

How I,
my ego-fiend-self,
craves
and wishes
and desires
to take ultimate credit
for the words
and poems
attaching themselves
to their mortal host, John Biscello,
thinly grafted to his signature and persona,
but deep down
I
understand all too well
that there are forces at work
and play,
which are beyond me/my name,
of which I am a frayed stitch
in a gracious skein,
and my heart, the fool’s testing guide
and tramp
to a fathomless row
and drift,
puckers its secret lips
to kiss the rippling hem
of whatever muse, whatever form/less
bastion of grace
tenders fluency to offerings,
i.e.,
how a puddle
is sometimes lucky
enough to intimate
the largesse of the sea,
to hoist pearls
just above the murk
and fallacious din.
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Votive

There she is,
luscious votive
to my jagged script,
contours
engaged
to flesh out missive,
sealed in hot wax,
lightly scented.

 

 

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The Source

Their hearts, registered
as infinite beacons,
have gone gently
and luminously into nights
not so good and pitch-black, braving
flytrap folds and god-awful rows
to soothe, mend and
restore the bruised vitals
of daughters and sons;
they go, infused with bright rage,
green force driving home
nocturnes and hymns–I will sing for you,
child, in your gravest moments of fear,
when mirrors forcecast darkly,
follow my notes, gonged and trilled,
lisped and cracking, a gospel rush
of crumbs guiding you, measure by measure,
into the milkdeep arms of safe harbor.
When lost, we set our compass
to Mother, the truest needle forever pointing North,
a fixed constellation
wedding orphans
to an infinite charge,
how light travels
at the incalculable speed
of love.

 

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Sculpt

To sculpt,
with just the right amount of brandish,
and restraint,
how you, art to your own
crumble and chasten,
exact marvel, slowly,
at the Muse’s favored bidding.

 

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Runes

Hungry ghosts,
gorging, moon-bellied,
rending gristle
from earthly scavenge—
my god,
these monsters
and their appetites,
swallowing illusions
whole,
to feed empty
its runes of fire.
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