Long Haul

Posted on October 13, 2022 by John Biscello

Grief lies here like an insomniac pining for sleep. Like scissors running dull to the touch of fate. We paper over grief its many wrecks its brittle slates with hordes of torn pages. Forget me nots band aids christ sporting a porn stache. Upon torn pages words amass to memorialize to clarify the haul of plague doctors wandering roadsides barking Bring out your dead bring out your dead. Ten pages twenty thirty. Nothing novel in this. The words both deeds and barrows to the bones. We give graves to our young. Our candles rage mirages that merge with fall winds. Beneath the shadow of all things moving we incubate. We are sworn to the word to worlds unseen because the rules of the game assure us that paper covers rock. Grief is an insomniac attending its own coma nightly. From near distances we keep close watch.

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Where on Earth

Posted on October 13, 2022 by John Biscello

Nineteen rifles and the village was burned to the ground there were nineteen rifles stolen by rebels and then came the awful burning down what was called scorched earth policy. My mother my father my brother were burned down to the ground with nearly two hundred others my god the atrocities committed my god I go on repeating numbly coldly in someone else’s voice not my own my god the atrocities. The village. I escaped. I don’t know how. Later on I heard the story it was on a radio program about this man a painter who went to the village the ruins of the village and painted. Every day he went to what locals from nearby villages now called the Vanished Village he went there wanting to paint the bones of the village the ghosts wanting to paint what the land held and was telling him what it tolled. The program said the man was a medium between the living and the dead and that dreams had led him there to the village to paint to listen. The man went there with a dog his dog’s name was Ginger or the dog was ginger colored or maybe it was both the name Ginger the color Ginger I can’t remember but the dog went rooting around and found a doll with broken limbs half buried in the earth. And when the man picked up the doll when he held it the man said everything came to him torrents of grief rushed through him the grief the voices the burning. The doll it seems was a medium between the living and the dead a gateway. The man painted the doll. In painting her he felt the presence of the young girl to whom the doll had belonged the young girl who had been her best friend. When I heard this I got to wondering if the doll had belonged to me. Were me and the doll best friends? I don’t know. My history isn’t mine. The village has been barred from my memory. I was told it was my home and so in that respect I have inherited its ghosts but what else. Mother father brother. These are words almost like stones dropping into a dark well and sometimes feelings sometimes sensations. They are dirges coming to me from graying far off places from graves I don’t know. When I hear the voices calling I feel as if the fire is moving dangerously close.  

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Keepers

Posted on October 12, 2022 by John Biscello

Grief lies here like an insomniac thirsting for sleep. Like scissors dull to the touch of fate. We paper over grief its many wrecks its graying slates with torn pages. Forget me nots band aids christ sporting a porn stache. Upon torn pages words amass to memorialize to clarify the haul of plague doctors barking Bring out your dead. Ten pages twenty thirty. Nothing novel in this. The words both deeds and barrows to the bones. We give graves to our young. Our candles rage mirages that merge with fall winds. Beneath the shadow of all things moving we incubate. We are sworn to the word to worlds unseen because the rules of the game assure us that paper covers rock. Grief is an insomniac attending its funeral nightly. We keep close watch. We keep on.  

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Domain

Posted on October 12, 2022 by John Biscello

Make the small your domain. Your belfry for lost hours. Within the small words gather to tremble to sublimate to keep solitude company. Also they become cinema in which you are watching words gather to keep solitude company that being the plot you being the watched watching. You wait for the words to become the monologue you will speak you listen to it forming on your lips here it comes—Solitude is the circus from which everyone runs. It is also the nexus toward which all is drawn. You look at the mouth moving and can’t say if you agree or disagree with what it has said but no matter what you think how you feel the voice continues—Solitude is near to god. The lost hours are near to nothing. Between the solitude of near to god and lost hours near to nothing there is a place for you a space in which you can place yourself. Make the small your domain.

The monologue ends. The film reel if there had been any hisses flaps. You notice you are now near to fading and this gets you wondering about god and solitude and lost hours and when the wondering ends what then.

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Calling

Posted on October 11, 2022 by John Biscello

In not so many words I found my wanting voice calling out to you almost. It was going to say things about blues and greens I think in relation to the sea in relation to your eyes. I might’ve gone there or somewhere near to there if I would’ve kept going. Instead I turned around remembering that beyond description lay not so many words not so many words being the kissing cousin to silence. So silence. So within silence I kept quiet with words circling everywhere and I said nothing in so many different ways it was incredible. Because as you know against the raging clamor of silence all phenomena pales when it is your eyes demanding homage when it is your eyes holding my voice hostage.  

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Children of the Moon

Posted on October 11, 2022 by John Biscello

We the motherless fatherless children of the moon wake up dreamless weeping. This is why we seek the all dreaming. The all dreaming is more feeling than place. Sometimes not always but sometimes we are chased by the fates. The fates laugh big round red blood platelet laughs and chase us laughing with scissors. We don’t know what they’ll cut where they’ll cut why they’ll cut but if they catch us we’re sure they’ll cut. Someone once wrote it’s like cutting off your faith to spite the universe. I don’t know how that relates to the fates but I believe it does. We the children of the moon understand that the moon is a cup and we fill it with water and drink laughing. When we’ve drunk enough moon water we talk about the good old days when we tilted at windmills and rode clanking boxcars. The good old days. We didn’t live them didn’t know them but we became them through the all dreaming. Sometimes in the all dreaming when we are scared we see the flashing of green scissors and hear the blood round laughing and know that the fates are following us. The fates stalk relentlessly. We bent inward and bending in further still keep ourselves away. We have long specialized in keeping ourselves away. Away is where our angels went whoosh the furious magnificence of their wings when they went. They said not in so many words Stay blessed but we didn’t know how. Could the stalking fates be the angels in disguise returning? Could the green flashing scissors and laughing be exactly what we need? To stop running. There are many of us. The motherless fatherless waking up dreamless weeping. Stay blessed the going away angels left us. Then we alone. It’s okay. We the children of the moon of the all dreaming are inevitable. We are myths not yet spoken.

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Apocalypse Now and Again

Posted on October 10, 2022 by John Biscello

Everything always going on. People worry about everything not going on but what they’re really saying beneath the waves what they’re really saying and worrying about is them not going on. Everything going on and them not. I not continuing. If it feels like the world is ending it is because you are ending. Individual endings magnified to worlds ending. Autumn is a sonata. A soft lisping grave for lost hours. Fall falling is the sense you have when mortality grows yellow inside you and you ending becomes a felt thing. A notation at the edge informs you that you will be ending and you ending becomes all ending everything ending. Every generation spells doom differently yet the same. One of the older meanings of apocalypse was revelation. We waiting to be revealed to ourselves are apocalypses unto ourselves. In the dust of lost blue hours we go silent. As if practicing to be dead. Then we talk and come back to life and the cycle renews with us wondering about everything always going on and everything ending and really what is there to do except cherish and bless.  

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Story

Posted on October 9, 2022 by John Biscello

In the beginning the dreaming. not the word. the word came later. it came whenever and betrayed silence and this was the beginning of fiction. now you’ve got what passes for a world of dreaming and fiction and parallels became multiples merging. metaphors moved worlds. people grew from wilds. from the bones of sound. someone heard someone else talking and that someone and someone else were born through listening and talking. when this happened no one knows. to say it happened a long time ago or that it has yet to happen amount to one and the same thing. the bones of sound rest on symmetry. time is needed to keep a beat a rhythm yet music itself resounds timeless. symmetry is proof of the dreaming. within the dreaming there are many stories beginnings parallels multiples and everything everywhere dreaming going on dreaming going on dreaming going on. the bones of sound endless. all falling. symmetry indivisible. Let me tell you a story, someone said once, and in telling this story they were also saying Let me tell you a story about me telling you. in the telling is the me and the me and you. in the telling parallels merge then split and merge again endlessly. stories cannot die. they are the impossible.

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Sonata

Posted on October 9, 2022 by John Biscello

Once upon a time     somebody didn’t scream (when they should have)     and this set them down the long twisting road to becoming one of the screamless.

You must understand     there are screamless who still dream     then there are screamless undreaming      they are the living damned      the screamless undreaming.

To begin again: Once upon a time there was a boy who didn’t scream and everything he didn’t scream went somewhere else    we don’t know where     the boy would have liked to follow the screams to wherever it is they went     also (we assume) where the other unspecified bits of boy went to form a sclerotic golem     a creature near to beingness born from forgotten     with a limited vocabulary

i so stupid

i so dumb

i so blind

i so deaf

i wonder why

ill conceived this golem and these screams being somewhere else     the boy not knowing where     without screams the boy became words in the land of dreaming    it was dreaming all the time and all the dreaming became all the boy ever wanted to be   all the words in all the dreaming all the time desired to become stories   Let me tell you about me telling you     that was the secret voice of the stories talked and talked     Let me tell you about me telling you    words born in all dreaming all the time never die

To begin one last time: A screamless boy wondered    what happened to all my screams     where did they go     and what of the golem made from displaced bits of me     maybe through all dreaming i can find those screams and place them back inside my mouths and stuff them deep down into my lungs and scream them into lives they have never known    maybe the vagabond golem can find its place among other forgotten golems     and its limited vocabulary of i so stupid i so dumb i so blind i so deaf i wonder why could be expanded to include a novel term      i so blessed     maybe these words could make all the difference in the world      yes maybe

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of sound mind and body

Posted on October 9, 2022 by John Biscello

bones grinding on. bones grinding. light on light. light on bone on light grinding. give us this day our daily savvy. this how our bodies shape music. make music. no names attached. mapless and hungry and eligible for fractures. bones on light on bones grinding. eligible and sworn we choose this. this together. we choose forward and grated friction. we choose locomotive as the model the example. we grind bone on light while dreaming starry. we feel so far away from home so irreconcilable. we approximate. measure by measure. light on bone. we stink of animal perfume root. burning. me and you and the light before. we bone starry. we do what we can give what we have to make our flesh somehow sacral somehow something remarkable. rememberable. to hell with manners. we vulgar trembling bone on bone and all these curious incidents give us cause. we grow the shapes of our mysteries our waters. now flood. now bone. now light. now percussive slam flow goddamn falling from one of us into the other. one of us into the other. goddamn. this the falling the reciprocity of jazz. us taking turns swapping goddamn. bone to the light flinting sparks and the sense of dream swelling beyond. the universe is so small so vast and we breathe inside its panting catch-all crotch. so very warm. so very snug. we bone light on light. to the edges of words we follow where we cannot go. we go there and bone. this is how we make each other known to each other. our bodies wordless poems. cinema. where the ongoings are chancy lusty forlorn. we of this wordless bent always becoming. one to one is us boning the light becoming. we laugh. the vast majority of us light on light. laughing. grow me where you are wild. grow us into wild children with wild ideas about wild children in a wild blue world unexplored and vast. the sea in your eyes. dawnstar is the color we’ve forgotten. in the beginning dawnstar was all the rage it was the color of the sea and then. replaced by blue green and other colors. i am recovering and rediscovering dawnstar in your eyes. how they change how they laugh. i am indebted to flashes. bones grinding on. bones grinding. light on light.

I am here with you: it is enough.

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