John Biscello

The boy sat on the train that would take him to the station where he would catch the train that would take him to the airport where he would be lifted away from everything he had been dreaming in real-time. It is hard to say goodbye. He pulled down his bucket hat, a gift from his grandmother, and stared out the window, squarely forming a portrait of the mountains in the distance, a misty blue, almost a chalky lavender in relation to the green landscape spread vibrantly before it. The sky was vapors, a gateway to vanishing, to dissolution. The boy cried. He hid his head, so no one could see. What is this feeling, he thought, this feeling of fleetingness, how everything passed so quickly into nothing, how rapidly it disappeared, when you stared out a window, a lens for a slideshow of images comprising not only scenery, but the way your memories adhered to that scenery, congealed, and became inextricably wedded to what you saw, how you perceived, in brief fleeting doses, and then gone, it sped away, fell behind, everything at the mercy of instant blurring, moments of clarity crunched into blurring, as if you were taking an unstable eye test—was the test unstable, the images, your vision … what is this feeling? Were these bladed pangs of a farewell that left a heart wounded, wandering, ponderous? The boy looked out the window and then fell asleep. I do not know what, if anything, he dreamed.

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged boy, japan, journey, poem, Prose, real time, sketch, time, train, travel, wandering | Leave a comment

Gloaming

Posted on February 7, 2024 by John Biscello

At twilight,

the softly paling

into summer

plum sky,

sliver of moon

suspended like

a bone-white boomerang

in the distance,

narrow street

courting its void

with dignity—

What kind of dream is this,

which reminds you

there is nothing to do

except savor and cherish

the lyrical lucid fragments

of this floating world,

its mysterious grammar

and subtext

in sublime accordance

with prevailing volumes

of unerring silence.

Posted in Poetry | Tagged between worlds, dusk, fragments, gloam, japan, lucid, lyrics, poem, silence, street, twilight | Leave a comment

Jizo and the Lost Children

Posted on February 5, 2024 by John Biscello

They were everywhere in the woods. Clustered in hidden batches, concealed, unseen or barely peeking out from foliage or grass, the verdant estate of jizos, some whose faces had been worn away by the elements, others with shadows and hints and suggestions of mostly vanished features, bald pates banded together describing domes in the open air, bodies half-buried in earth, stone footstools, small time-scarred guardians, a hidden population of jizos that hailed in varying shapes and sizes, some naked, some garbed in ceremonial red cloaks and bonnets, some with flattened satellite dishes for ears, some earless, groups lined up in rows, smallest to largest, an assembly of symmetry, adjacent to moss-infested headstones. This was the shrine in a remote region of woods where people prayed to jizo to heal their sick children. And for those whose children were healed, the parents or family would return with a jizo statue to add to the ever-expanding colony of jizos. A clasp-handed Buddha with closed eyes and a serene countenance presided at the entrance, right before you climbed the grass-carpeted stone steps preceding the shrine. There were also toys. Stuffed animals. Pinwheels. A dark satin rabbit lying prostrate at the feet of a band of jizos. The rabbit had flopped forward, face hidden, tips of his ears grazing the earth. Was the rabbit placed in this position of piety? Or had he bowed down of his own volition? Was this rabbit endlessly supplicating for mercy for all the lost children?

Posted in photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged children, compassion, japan, jizo, niigata, Poetry, Prose, rabbit, sado island, sketch, travel | Leave a comment

Cause of Light

Posted on February 4, 2024 by John Biscello

She stood at a distance, imagining her daughter there, playing. She saw how her daughter lit up with glee when she was near the sea, or scampering along the shoreline, collecting shells, poking holes in the mud with a stick, or simply ambling along ensconced in the mercury of being. What is the difference between memory and fiction? She watched and listened, as a mother would watch and listen. The sea splashed forth, retreated, splashed forth, retreated. The rhythm was soothing, unmistakable, dependable. This was the sea of her past, her childhood. Her daughter had never been to the sea, had never played in the sand, as she was playing now, a fugue and ghostly footage in her mother’s time-hunted eyes. She went to the rocks and sat down, staring out from behind dark sunglasses. She remembered days and nights on the beach with her girlfriends. They were young once. I was young once. Now, I am older and my daughter moves lyrically along the shoreline, glee-infected. What is the difference between memory and fiction? Ephemera becomes us, and we it, whether we like it or not. Some ephemera, geared on a fast-track, takes away what we never had, what could have been, gusts invading a sandy beach. The sea, a smooth slate-gray mirror, briefly, then the mounting of ripples disturbing the smoothness, and in its place, a grammarless script. What is the difference between memory and fiction? She looked out at her daughter, a hundred or so feet measured in years, no time at all, her daughter wandering elliptically along the lacy edge of the sea, rhythm unbroken. Behind her daughter’s footsteps, she saw flashing traces of color, the remnants of fractured rainbow in harmonic motion, following the cause of light.