From the series, Japan Poems.
Screen black.
The sound of waves
lapping against the shore.
Fade in
to three police officers and an unshaved man
gathered around the empty boat
carried in by the sea.
The poem ends,
the movie begins,
a mystery seeking direction
and the right kind of detective.
From the series, Japan Poems.
We are all pretending
here.
Hoping not for the best
but for not the worst
to claim
unsettle
or overtake us.
The young girl
in the rented summer kimono
taking a selfie with the misty
Kyoto landscape in the background
the middle-aged man
filling up his empty water bottle
with the sacred water spouting
into the stone fountain
the man skipping the iron ladle
they put out to collect water
in favor of something his own
that he can hold and take with him
his own disposable source of holy
the throngs streaming to and fro
a hydra ravenous to devour
a culture’s prized offerings
while preserving through an inventory of photos
the memories of absorption
the hungry ghosts
never appear in the photos
only us
so we remain fooled
able to go on pretending
where emptiness glares the most
and the worst feared finds evasion through hope.
From the series, Japan Poems.
If only in trespasses and glimmers,
if only
the passages within
possessed lasting value—
What is that thing,
at the edge of waking,
that thing
without agenda or the burden
of always moving freight?
From the series, Japan Poems.
Moss-carpeted
stone steps
leading up to
the forgotten temple,
fewer and fewer guests
paying their respects
to these hallowed grounds,
a song of stately decay,
of bones and overgrown grass,
a rusted bell tolling absence
to the fount of prevailing silence—
Do forgotten temples
die from loneliness
or find themselves ennobled
by the ants carrying the sun
on their backs,
the stones conceiving immaculate whispers,
the trees bending down
to eavesdrop on the worms
itching for rain—
what exactly
do we mean
by keeping company?
The quiet life teems
beyond the flagged limits
of loneliness
or its mortally wrought concessions.
From the series, Japan Poems.
To engage
the intimacy
of distance
one must attend
from within
the agency of absence
to sensual contact.
From the series, Japan Poems.
In the hushed expectant stillness of red,
the wall waited for the day
it would no longer have to hold the girl back
or up, waited patiently for blue to pick up
where she left off to become the haughty moon
in the motherless sky.
Some curses last long, and longer still,
blurring boundaries bodiless to the touch—
the girl had had enough,
her infinity a troubling shell of itself,
a plaited trembling.
The girl’s secret assassins knew this well
and truces were out of the question.
In the smallest hours of waiting
to no end
the wall’s pressure
inevitably forced the girl
to break into a thousand small dark shrieking birds,
constituents of a maze now resolving itself,
with each bird bearing a piece of the girl’s lost name,
unlettered, fast-moving, placeless
in its origins
and spacious unbecoming.
From the series, Japan Poems.
We, lucent beads of rain,
clinging indefinitely to a spider’s web—
the climate of ephemera.
From the series, Japan Poems.
In the loneliness of night
she stares at her cell phone
thinking about her next customer
not thinking about them at all
numb
wondering about her high school friends
what they are doing right now
the ways in which they would judge her
the cold clear haunt
of who or what she had left behind
rising up as a ghost
possessed by glaring vacancies
motel signs advertising
occupancies for least tender
trysts with oblivion
the world burns without ever stopping
no one told her this
in the middle of almost wondering
about something new something different
she is interrupted by a man’s voice
asking how much.
One of my most sweetly savored pleasures: a freshly printed manuscript.
Completed at the Casa de Currier retreat (May 2023).
John Biscello 