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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Proof

Posted on October 7, 2022 by John Biscello

They say that

in the beginning was the word

but you weren’t given

the true complete sentence—

In the beginning was the word,

betraying silence,

and this became lighted proof

of the beginning of fiction.

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In the Beginning, Fiction

Posted on October 7, 2022 by John Biscello

Now you say no more words but you don’t really mean no more words, these dreams of going wordless are playthings in the air, concepts without volition. You are compelled to use words to express what it would be like to go wordless and be wordless, you are enmeshed in process and voice, without these things the experiment ends, you become voiceless void as opposed to singing void or speaking void. Except this isn’t true. There is the music of silence, within silence. Without a single word, you continue to pulse and hymn.

You say no more words because it is something to say, a way to get started on using more words to constellate yourself, to orient your innate trembling. Mapless, we wander. To wander, mapless and wordless, what would that be like? Would you improvise by the light of the moon? Here’s another way of looking at it: You are lost in a labyrinth. Would you agree that you are lost in a labyrinth? You pause, consider your situation … yes, I agree that I’m lost in a labyrinth. Okay, so now that loss inside labyrinth has been established as your circumstances, your goal is to find your way out of the labyrinth. You use words to do this. You believe words, enough words, the right words, daring sequential combinations as trail and proof, will eventually lead you out of the labyrinth. The thing is, and this is what you refuse to admit, this is the bane of denial—the very words you are using are what the labyrinth is made of. Without the words, there is no labyrinth. In other words, no words will save you. Silence is the way out. Silence will destroy the illusion of a labyrinth in which you are trapped, of walls closing in and all that existential jazz. Your greatest fear is the silence. Why? Because, without it, the labyrinth can remain labyrinth and you can remain trapped, desperate to find your way out. And you can use words, many words, found words, lost words, to engineer your escape. Beware of metaphors. They will mislead you. Words are not to be trusted. Especially when banded in groups. They say that in the beginning was the Word. But they didn’t finish the true sentence. In the beginning was the Word … and it betrayed silence. Or, to remix: In the beginning was the Word, and this was the beginning of fiction.

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Bathwater Blues

Posted on October 7, 2022 by John Biscello

Our destinies are molecular, uniformly bonded, an immaculately charged cluster fuck of singing clinging particles wedded to a liminal bubble bath … that is the beginning … we are not alone … we see god drop the soap, intentionally, perhaps the precursor to a gag, and watch her slip under to retrieve it, when she remerges, face caked in frothy foam beard, we laugh and laugh, god is a champagne rabies monster, we laugh and laugh till our sides ache, till it hurts so bad, we consider drowning as a viable port to dreaming … so this is what it is like to take a bath with god … recognition and awareness recall that old glittering adage, all roads lead home, so if you were to slip under the water as god did, your eyes may become dreaming eyes and your breathing dreaming breathing.

where is god the champagne rabies monster? has she gone? did she take the soap? it appears it is just you and the tub and the water and this is how the resounding what-ifs begins, how the inconceivable becomes a minor plague, and as you search for the means to drain the water from the tub you wonder if this is what is meant by throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in other words, you’ve contracted the bathwater blues, its timeless riff and melody causing many everywhere to wake up weeping motherless, god the champagne rabies monster is the ventilator through which the weeping breathe, but where is she, what happened to god with all her wonderful antics like sporting a beard of bubble bath foam, where’s the gag, and alone in the tub, you find yourself contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding, a fear-inflating pufferfish with amnesia,  and not knowing what else to do or how else to do or why else to do you begin singing—I’ve got the baby bathwater blues—and the echoes of your voice, coming from a far distance, splinter you to no end.

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Hymnal

Posted on October 6, 2022 by John Biscello

On a molecular level, we are fucked.

Perpetually, repeatedly, renewably. Fucked.

The world is an unceasing orgy, everything

touches everything, nonstop fondling

and hymnal friction between pulsing meshes.

Your very breath is a shore leave sailor and kissing cousin,

a polygamist engaged in measureless trysts.

Affairs to remember, affairs to forget,

it doesn’t matter, it is.

Everything touches everything.

Graffiti on ice caps, tear-mapped children

waking weeping to motherless lands,

my breath mirroring a net

for your breath to snare.

We etch in the air,

our fingernails growing glassy vines of light.

Eternity not a noun or prefix or afterword.

Eternity the borderless bed spread out to host

the everywhere everyall clusterfuck.

You are at the heart of sheerest orgy,

a seed pitched in the crotch of its panting nexus.

Whether you like it or not. Deal.

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Not in So Many Words

Posted on October 6, 2022 by John Biscello

On a molecular level, we are fucked. Perpetually, repeatedly, renewably. Fucked. The world is an unceasing orgy. Everything touches everything, nonstop fondling and incestuous friction between particles, the pulsing frisson of meshes. We are nets that hold nothing and touch everything. Your very breath is a sailor and kissing cousin, a polygamist engaged in measureless trysts. Affairs to remember, affairs to forget—it doesn’t matter, it is. To think about it too long might make you feel sick or disgusted or consequentially wrong, so you isolate and declare yourself immune to whatever it is your cells are doing behind your back. You close the eyes behind your eyes, tell me no secrets I’ll tell you no lies, to imagine yourself vividly entwined to the everywhere everyall could bring on nausea of existential proportions. You want your mystery to remain shapeless, because, you reason, the shapelier the mystery the more dangerous it becomes, why run the risk of mysteries shaped like hourglasses or bulges or bugles or legs of lamb? You will maneuver as adroitly as you can to avoid conjugation with the lady breathing down your neck a hundred thousand miles away, or ignore the man falling asleep in a fetal position dreaming motherless dreams as he sucks his thumb in time to a melody forgotten upon waking weeping. This is the world. On molecular levels, we are bonded, we are fucked. It moves beyond human, beyond us. Stone, lizard, pollen, polyp, newt, cumulus, cauliflower, stardust. Everything touches everything. Graffiti on ice caps, my breath mirroring a mask for your breath to wear, the tears of stained children etching scarry stories into hearts … to remember … we etch in the air, our fingernails growing glassy vines of light. Eternity is no stopgap. Nor is it a noun or prefix or afterword. Eternity the borderless bed spread out to host the pulsing pines and needles of an everywhere everyall clusterfuck.  You are at the heart of an orgy, a seed pitched in the crotch of its panting nexus. Whether you like it or not. Deal.

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Splish Splash

Posted on October 5, 2022 by John Biscello

Our destinies are molecular

an infinitely charged clusterfuck

of singing particles

wedded to a liminal bubblebath

in which god drops the soap

and slips under to retrieve it

when she reemerges

face caked in a frothy foam beard

you laugh and laugh

god is a champagne rabies monster

you laugh and laugh

till your sides ache

and consider drowning

as a viable port to dreaming.

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