John Biscello

Love, the ultimate flophouse,

the dogged prayer-bin,

where you swap

scars

and hopes

and soiled dreams

pressed to the lungs of light,

where half-moon

fingernails clipped

and kept in urns

remind you that life

is a fleeting sideshow,

a strange affair

that you may be lucky enough

to share with a kindred flop-mate,

someone who understands

the veined beauty

of crumbling walls

and fated decay,

who knows

that the corpuscles of sun

radiating symmetry

through the cracks

in window-glass

serve not as answers

but as praise

 to two people

sharing a room

and daring love

in the face

of inevitable ruin.