From the series, Japan Poems.
There is a danger
in wondering too much,
in giving due notice
to the low burning fire
that nightly dreams of arson–
An entire block
or city
or world
eviscerated in a vengeful nod
or blink–
There is grave danger
in thinking too much
about all the thinking you’ve done
while waiting for the slow burn
of dreamed distances
to accompany your grief home.
From the series, Japan Poems.
Outside the station
monotony finds solace
in ritual want
mated to vagrancy
and hours slow burned.
From the series, Japan Poems.
Fasting on solitude
and wordless want,
waiting for the
next far thing to arrive,
to cede distances
to an intimately engraved haunt–
In dreams begin
the cutting of our losses,
only to see them
return again in the meshes
of nocturnal crossings.
From the series, Japan Poems.
Rows of secret lives,
in the shadow of the moon–
River flow, syncing.
From the series, Japan Poems.
Train station at night,
quiet keeps me company–
First person dreaming.
From the series, Japan Poems.
At night’s
softest lyrical edge,
dreams, untethered, come
and go lightly.
The cinema of our lives
projected as a mutable course
of flickering images,
a tenure of opiate bewitchment,
so soon fading.
From the series, Japan Poems.
At night,
the high-rise
with the lighted siege
of multi-colored eyes,
grows stumpy legs
and projects out of the earth
to wander freely,
without conviction or purpose.
No one,
not even the people living
inside its boxy compartments,
know that the building
uproots itself to move
beyond the norm and known.
Its ambulatory nocturne remains a mystery, a secret.
I wait all night
on the other side of the darkly dreaming river
to witness the high-rise get up
and take off.
I wait, and wait,
under a moonless sky,
and consider the rare intimacies
achieved by trust and longing,
by distances savored
in the company of solitude.
From the series, Japan Poems.
So much
depends upon a red slide
hosting a long play’s journey
beyond the edges of night
to the favored glee
and dawning
of innocence when dreaming.
From the series, Japan Poems.
A gentle beckon,
and softly blurred invitation
to disappear–
No words necessary
as you drift along the gauzy lines
of a nocturne, so soon to fade,
so near to dreaming
within worlds quietly lost.
From the series, Japan Poems.
Words,
well-warmed
by the soft buttery spread
and halo of naked bulbs–
In tenderest solitude,
texts run on,
deviant, unfinished,
bare to the trespasses
of touch and longing.
John Biscello 