EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE

Always
is
still always
until
it
just isn’t
anymore.

The past
not only
wilts
in the wind,
it floats
on nowhere air
and dulls
with distance.

The present,
though transitory,
is the treasure-trove
of yesterday's aspirations
and tomorrow's dreams.

It is home
to the circular center
that unfolds
between the young
and the old;
between myth
and the actuality
that everything
must change.

We are living
in the now,
like rivers
that flow between
transcending twilights.

To be all
or no one
happens here
in these
precious moments
where music is,
and nowhere else.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

VOICES OF THE SAME POETRY

I might never begin
to begin to envision
infinite absence,
where
never and forever
return
like the dew
of a dawn
on my
day after day.

Silently evaporating
between
the silvery mist
underneath
the morning sun
and the variegated shadows
of merging memories
is a rare passion
that tantalized time
when timeless sweet things
were the simmering half
of a smoldering whole.

You lived your soul
as I live mine,
deeply intertwined,
like tendrils
on a garden wall.

But like a tea rose
that knows
it is not a floribunda,
I bloom alone
for you and me
on a single stem
with a solitary heart.

Everything that touched you
touches me,
like voices
of the same poetry
that carry me to you
beyond goodbyes and ashes
and the irresistible rhythm
of a wavering moon.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE SUNSHINE OF HER SMILE

I looked like myself,
but I wasn’t me anymore.

Beneath a melting surface
with no center
to sustain me,
something
both unknowable and familiar
seemed destined to disappear
between everything and nothingness.

In languid limbo
surrounded by hollow shade,
nothing but the inner light
from the love
of my life
could block out
the motionless shadows
of clenched sadness
and half-forgotten joys.

The sunshine of her smile,
etched deep inside
her soul and mine,
keeps me from falling
and is my sole connection
to the reconstruction of myself,
particle by particle,
cell by cell.

I have learned to move
according to the rhythm
of her life
and mine to come
with a singular heart
and the certainty
of uncertainty.

Destined by love
that endures beyond
our vanishing,
we return
to the very essence
of poetry,
side by side,
page by unwritten page.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

IN THE COMPANY OF CATS

Heaven,
if there is one,
is where my wife sleeps.
Not just among the angels,
but in the company
of cats.

Surely,
Florine’s heaven
is a kingdom
for all catdom,
with all the cats
from our past
sharing a nap
on her lap.

Forever
is easy there,
where poetry lives
and love creates
celestial truth.

Where waggish whiskers
and gossamer wings
flutter as one
through the air
of eternal friendship.

But what of dogs
like our Chagall?
There must be
a place for her
and the whimsical hearts
of all puppydom,
to nestle evermore
at the side
of a loving friend.

Truly,
nothing less
is a just reward
for having died
never once
having lied
about friendship.

For the less
than pure of heart
there is always
a hell, I suppose,
but who really knows.

Perhaps it isn’t
a sanctuary of silence;
a far-away
netherworld
on the high tide
of the other side.

Just maybe,
it exists only
in that void
where love
no longer has
a face or a name.

© JOHN PISCATELLA



.

MASTER OF MY REFLECTIONS

Like a mirage,
nothing appears
as it is.

Neither the trace
of my face
inside the looking glass,
nor the immaculate reflection
of my father’s
undeniable image
on the facade,
can account
for the mystifying
transformation
from being
to un-being.

From pure beginnings
drifting
to incomplete endings,
we are like falling leaves
in winter moonlight,
you and I.

The unrepeatable
heartbeats
of history
beat nevertheless,
suspended
between stillness
and the unfailing actuality
of stirring shadows.

Some images,
like motionless memories,
are shapeless silhouettes
in perpetual hibernation.

Others have structure,
like sculpted clay
molded from
an accumulation
of yesterdays.

I am
where I was
before I wasn’t
stopping time
in the mirror.

You are
where you were
before
the impenetrable glass
shattered
into pieces
of delicate dreams.

Timeless
images,
like life,
stand still
when I choose
to be master
of my reflections.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

A HOLD ON MY HEART

When next is night
and late awaits
a dreamless sleep,
I toss to the turn
of tangled thoughts
and midnight memories
of what gone once was
in almost-gone days
that simply can not be.

I hold on
to the nostalgic warmth
of mysterial moons
and imaginary landscapes;
still moments
and frail flowers
that bloom
in the sunshine
of your soul.

Though we meet
only in the poetic space
between worlds,
everything draws me to you
and to the essential
stillness of your heart.

Suspended in supple shadows,
the echo of your voice
lingers in my head,
but it is the music
of your singular spirit
that has a hold
on my heart.

Without the permanence
of timeless love
and impassioned
poetry,
days pass through night,
lonely
to be alone.


© JOHN PISCATELLA

CIRCLE OF LIFE

Every
liquid-slow minute
the perfect minute
to love
the along
along the way.

Beneath the surface,
beside my younger-self
and my soul’s companion,
lies an impatient wind,
tempered by time
and the shifting sands
of summer-gone.

But I am sustained
by lingering
hues of happiness
and a treasure-house
of good fortune
that have colored
my palette,
graced my canvas,
and deepened the depth
of my perception.

The circle of life
is fragile,
but infinitely stronger
than a straight line
to the crystal silence
of distinct finality.

I long for love lost
and lost innocence,
but am warmed
by sunshine,
from the rarest
of lost soul’s,
that lives forever
in the heaven
of my heart.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

LOVE WITH NO DISGUISE

Love is destined
not to be
for always
but is never
forever gone
from the sealed core
of a hidden heart.

To have lived
and loved
is a poem
within a poem,
the irreversible
pulse-beats
of a journey
inside a journey
that carry me
full circle
like a stem
in search
of a blossom
to the gardens
of your world
and back.

Sweeter
than the scent
of a rose
kissed
by tears
of morning dew
or the passion
of poetry
that towers
above thought
is the wish
to love
with no disguise
soul to soul
in the light
of eternal night.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

WHERE QUIET WALKS ALONE

Poetry
is my pause
between
misplaced minutes
and momentary memories.

Split in two,
like a cell
in a mitotic phase,
a half-extinguished thought
invents another thought,
until an image,
a sensory impression,
reveals
an invisible face
that no one
in the world
can see,
but me.

Mellifluous,
in the middle
of a phrase
or at the beginning
of an ending,
words,
like the music
of the tide,
take me to you
with the highs
and lows
of every note,
of every ebb
that ever flowed.

We go on and on,
forever and always,
to meet in silence
where love lives
and where quiet
walks alone.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

COSTA RICAN MOON

The sky is full of Costa Rican moon.
And now I am alone.

Lost between moonlight and memories
I am revived
by the crackling modulation
of cicadas in the tree-tops;
a cacophony of chatter
that drown out
the harmonious sound
of raindrops on a metal roof.

I am steeped
in the pure wine of aliveness
but something wonderful is missing
at the edge of my moments.
Gone is that which once was,
tendrils of magic that clung
to everyone and everything around you
like a gentle breeze
before an impatient wind.

Try as I may,
through the sensory channels
of my mind and body,
I swallow but can’t fully taste
the intoxicating essence
of the rain-forest around me.

It is invisible,
this impermeable husk
wrapped around my soul,
but it is real,
and nothing but time
can soften the edges.

In broad daylight,
if I walk with you
in the shadows
of this forest on forest world,
I am able to see the light
that transcends time
and timelessness.

I am not unlike the coral snake
slithering on the forest floor,
or a golden orb web spider
with a filament stronger than steel.
We all have our place.

Even the strawberry poison dart frog
and the dangerous bullet ant belong
and are friends
at an aesthetic distance
and are as beautiful as the iridescent
blue morpho butterfly
in flight oras resplendent as the colorful
giant bill of a toucan
or the cackling call of
a laughing falcon
stalking
a coral snake.

I can walk suspended bridges
over raging rivers
to visit sloths
and howler monkeys,
but lack equilibrium
and child-like wonderment
without my counterbalance
at my side.

Alone, I can soak
in volcanic hot springs
and still be cool to the touch.
Or watch an active volcano
in the golden lava-like night,
and be intrigued
but not amazed.

Like the scarlet macaws
in the mangrove forests,
I was mated for life,
and meant to fly
as part of a pair.

But solo I will,
to the moon if I must,
to see your smile
one more time,
and to find
the clarity
of my own.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE JOY OF THE JOURNEY

I centered the clay
and turned the wheel
to center myself and feel
connected to the earth
like soft rain on sandstone,
to forms and shapes
that no one sees but me.

A piece of porcelain
for a potter to throw
might grow to be an
elegant bud vase,
home to a single stem
and a solitary rose,
unless it chose
beneath sensitive fingertips,
to be a Japanese tea bowl
or a goblet
for vintage wine.

Only choice can redefine
in the fullness of time
our place in space.
Life flows
through our hands,
if we so choose,
like a river with no end,
or we lose
its meaning
or just pretend.


"To pass through is just not enough,"
she said.

The final destination
for artistry and me,
even in my poetry,
is gratifying,
but insignificant
in comparison to the joy
of the journey
in a world of wonder,
as limitless
as the human imagination.

Either we are the sculptor
or the sculpted.
The writer
or the footnote.
We were born
to create numerous moments,
wondrous moments,
not the same moment
numerous times.

"Enjoy the journey with me,"
she said.

Become the possibility.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MISS CARIBOU

After the aftermath,
a year invents
another year
without you...
Miss Caribou

Only timeless traces
of what once was
remain connected
to the other side
of never ending places
that can’t be touched
by anyone but you...
Miss Caribou

You are my book
opened only
by love
and song
and poet’s words
that long
for music to keep
while you sleep.

Next for me,
my Queen,
is the pageantry
of possibility
and the clarity
of the art of living
that unfolds
in muted sunlight
like fiddleheads
in the forest.

Without shadow,
without doubt,
the best waits for me
and my poetry.

The best of me
is you...

Miss Caribou.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

WOODROW SLEEPS

Pleasure there is in watching Woodrow sleep,
in sensory purgatory
between sanctity and sauciness,
where mandatory moments of curiosity
are split in two and put on hold
between the toss and the turn.

Such is my luck, to witness
the understated elegance
of closed eyelids and retractable claws,
and soft paws undulating silently
in the fur of the night.

But never be fooled
by silence and quietude.
Defer to a tufted tail
that is an extension of a backbone,
or ears that can move independently.

Beneath this serene surface
lies a pernicious time-bomb,
in-between the tick
and the relentless tock,
one leap away
from the ancestral hunt
and the timelessness of Africa.

A LIFE WITH STORIES

Hers was a multilayered life
with stories,
and thanks to Florine,
so too is mine.

I rode a bike to the peak
of a pristine mountaintop,
somewhere in Germany,
on a sunshiny September morning
in a companionless bike lane
aside an unbroken road.

A speck of a shadow,
in the early morning stillness
a mile down the road,
had little meaning before
mutating into a machine
and invading my space,
like a coyote
closing in on its prey.

It happened quickly,
but methodically,
in staggering slow motion.
An approaching car
wrathfully changed lanes
to trespass in mine,
until I was face to face
with violent eyes
and the stuff of bad dreams.

Before the car could make contact,
I hurriedly swerved my bike off the road,
gracelessly tumbling
into the low tide
of an abandoned field,
like a Chaplin scene
in a silent movie.

Out-stretched on the earth,
I was too shaken to feel anything,
not even bewilderment.
No one saw me
except for that phantom shadow
in the distance,
moving down the road.

I will never know
the story behind the story, that day,
but have learned,
from Florine's unparalleled life,
to fully appreciate the passage
from one day to another.

All I know is:
I keep riding,
I ride to keep riding
beyond the mountain,
in search of sunlight
and the poetry
of a life with stories.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

BIRTHDAY DREAMS

Birthday dreams
Burning in your birth month

Not in Paris or Madrid
Or even in imaginary landscapes

Beneath yesterday's rain
Above resurrected clouds
Of rose-bud whiteness

Not in Bali or Bangkok
Or the ivory sands of Africa

Ever forever in my heart

Florine

© JOHN PISCATELLA

AND THEN THERE WAS YOU

Things that go away
are not always meant to return,
but often they do
in the garden
where your story
is written and embraced
by both time and timelessness.

While you sleep
trees bloom to celebrate
the absolute otherness
of ambrosial spring mornings
and to atone for the undeniable
sameness of listless,
waxen winter afternoons.

Even in the murkiness of June,
you live in luminous earth.
Composted, summer gladness
oozes from you,
fresh with the morning dew.
You are the restless roots
of tireless trees.
The builder of sugary palaces
on sculpted limbs.
The clarity of fruit ready to explode
in the ecstasy of sunrise.

Who knows why an apple is an apple
when it could easily be a rose,
I suppose, like its cousin
the floribunda or tea rose or even a climber,
like the alabaster white 'Iceberg Rose'
atop the wrought iron trellis.

Or why, your beloved hydrangeas,
planted side by side with one voice,
are diverse in color,
as beautiful in difference
as a first and second child.

I love your apple tree from Israel,
not only for the clarity of the bloom
and for the globes of nectar
that float like celestial moons
on a moonless night,
but because it is a traveler like you,
at home in the poetic space
between worlds.
A true monument to a soul bouquet.

It shares a soothing shadow
and the early morning stillness
with a peach tree whose profile
has transformed into living art;
a delicately balanced mobile
of fruit destined for cobbler nirvana.

But who can forget the gnarled fig tree,
side-by-side with a hummingbird
bathing in the fountain,
both picturesque in silhouette.
Or the fattened fruit,
a pulse-beat away
from succulent ripeness
for both man and bird.

And then there is you.
The brightest light through the leaves.
The wind rippling across
clouds of white feathers.

Who can forget you.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

CAT UNDER THE MOON

I remember
when I was completely happy,
like a cat under the moon.

But the filtered light of time
is indifferent,
and the same shadows
that give depth to moonlight,
channel sorrow
to a tender soul.

If I didn't have the poetry
of her joy to take hold of my heart,
then the tormenting pain of loss,
which grips like a magnet,
would be unfathomable,
much like a world
never graced with her presence.

Although Florine was anything
but a simple woman,
it was her elegant simplicity
and rare spiritual contentment
that made her complex and beguiling,
like a Zen garden
unaffected by the changing seasons.

Hers was a world of wonderment…
at the exhilarating power
of her thoroughbred
beneath her,
or the serene beauty of a butterfly
or a garden rose.

We all have our moments,
wonderful moments,
but rather than just passively wait
for them to happen,
she created her own,
with gusto, until she breathed
every inch of air.

Her existence not only
gives meaning to my own,
it lasts forever
in all that is beautiful.

-JOHN PISCATELLA

IN MY POETRY OF DREAMS

Dreams come to me,
as does my poetry.
And inside each,
as in a kaleidoscope,
variegated colors
overlap and overflow,
as does time,
where seconds are years
and years are lifetimes.

In my vision quest,
I share space
with singular souls;
bygone lives
that once cast
velvet shadows
on the earth
and now find sanctuary
in the rhetoric of reflection
and the magic
of primordial perception
in my poetry of dreams.

If dreams die
in the middle of a phrase,
so does the depth of love
and the clarity
of our yearnings.

Images that are erased
without a trace
between the start
and the finish
are like muted children
who will never hear
the sound
of their own voice.

In my poetry of dreams,
heartbeats of ethereal light
can vanish suddenly
in the stillness
of the night.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MELODY- WOMAN

With pen instead of piano,
I write variations to a life-song
that move as my words move,
effortlessly, like my melody-woman
in this poem who whispers
across the page and
sings to my heart.

Our music is jazz-like,
often muted, never entirely
predetermined or improvised,
but always with the depth
and beauty of consummate harmony.

The subtle but irresistible voice she brings me
is the foundation for my tone poems;
lyrical conversations with her
that are open like a turned page
for all to see and listen.

They can be neither
re-created nor re-invented,
embellished nor ornamented.
They are her reflections.
Like the image of her face
etched within her mirror,
they are beyond evanescence.

Beethoven took three years to write
over thirty variations of a composition
considered by his peers
to be predictable and unimaginative,
and by Beethoven to be trite and insignificant.

Undisturbed by time and captivated
by the elegance of simplicity,
I write endless variations
around my melody woman,
who was not only unforeseen and original,
but relevant and extraordinarily priceless.

If I had a contest
with a phantom Beethoven
to create the perfect composition,
I would surely lose, and so would he.

The crowning score
was written almost 60 years ago,
not in Vienna, but in a small town
in northern Maine,
without benefit of my efforts
or his genius.

Florine.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

I AM POETRY

Am I a poet?
Or have I only found in verse
that which was fated to disappear
from my life.

With eyes closed
to the permanence of truth,
light casts no shadow
unless I go back
to where I began.

I walk toward myself,
tattooed with silent memories,
visible only to those who have walked
the streets with me
and have witnessed
the endless reflection of stillness.

What remains in me was born from love
deeper than an ocean of words.
But waves of words carry me to safety,
and in them I seek and hope to find
my lost heart.

Beguiled by the beauty of art
and the art of beauty, I sculpt my life
from a silhouette of invisible energy
that travels from your soul to mine.

Not a shadow life filled with sorrow.
But one of fullfillment, not only from
the joy of lessons learned,
but from the anticipation
of what is yet to come.

Between within and without,
lonely but never alone,
I am poetry.

I am alive.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

LOSS

Sure of my life and your death,
I walk slowly towards
the acceptance of loss.
Slightly disoriented but never lost,
I have come far
from somewhere in the beginning,
but never fully anticipate arrival
while I continue to nostalgically walk back
to what left me behind.

Immersed in motion
in an effort to avoid
the bottomless reality that my house is
no longer a home.

I am a tireless traveller
on a quest
to find a worthy passageway
for your ashes and your restless soul.
Tied by destiny
to the quietness of blossoms,
you sleep, one with the earth,
in the most beautiful gardens in the world.

My personal journey may be unconventional,
but is no more unique
than the wandering of others
who are unable to avoid
the unavoidable shadow of loss
and the absence of love.
Unable to deny
the undeniable reality
of living in a world
of hours without hours,
we are all vulnerable to heartbreak.

Although hurt and pain are universal,
the intensity is likely proportionate
to the quality of the joy of love lost.
The priceless value
of the irrecoverable treasures
that sculpt the space between worlds.

I tug at memories
of a boy with his mother
and a man with his father;
of invisible landscapes
of friends long past gone;
of animals that were pets
and pets that were like children;
and children in hospital gowns
that left the party
long before the music played.

Life, like names, can fade,
as do the petrified faces
in the black and white photographs
hanging on the wall.
But dreams are in crystalline color;
reflections of my world,
gifts from my life
and my lifetime of gifts.

In my universe,
the greatest of all gifts is you.
Happiness is you, as is love
and where music lives.
You are moon
in a forest of stars.

Wedded soul to soul
my love,
you live in the garden within me.

It is a priviledge
to breathe the same air.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

HER NAME WAS FLORINE

If I am lost in April,
I can be found in Japan
under the rising sun
and the time past far away.

I am vulnerable today,
in between the poetry
of cherry blossoms paled in silence,
and her voice
whispering in the wind.

I can still feel her,
like silk against my skin,
when her last kiss
died against my lips.

I taste her scent of jasmine
in the air,
with memories of night rain
and lost poems.

She was the understated elegance
of a Japanese tea ceremony.
The sweet morsel to balance the taste
of the bitter green tea.
The simple flower in the sacred alcove
that changes from season to season.
The mysterious tranquil beauty
that exists just below the surface
of a well formed ceramic tea bowl
in perfect harmony with the potter
and the earth.

She was but one chance in a lifetime.
A combination of art forms
to not only be appreciated hour by hour
and year by year,
but moment by moment,
like color on rare silk
or the fragrance of a morning rose.

She was the essence of the Japanese character
that speaks of serenity found in simplicity...

Her name was Florine.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

ONE OF THEM IS YOU

The willows wept in graceful sorrow
the day our worlds changed.

Although the door
seemed closed to me forever,
it magically opened again
as I crossed the sea to Japan
to enter the Torii gates
of mystery and wonderment
that, until now, exisited
only in the garden
of our dreams.

I see you everywhere
and nowhere.

In the vast gardens
of pines and maple trees
dotted by peonies and azelas.

Amist the bamboo forest
sculpted in filtered sunlight.

On the volatile crown of Mount Fuji
temporarily frozen in time.

In the elegant voice of a geisha's walk
down the streets of Gion
on her way to perform
in a Kyoto festival
to celebrate the rites of spring.

You are the perfect precision of a Zen garden.
The calm of eternity unaffected
by the change of seasons.
Designed by an artist,
brush strokes were restyled
to become three-dimensional,
like the journey through your life.

For you,
master of your own mind and body,
nothing ever remained constant
except for the change
of constant motion
and the motion
of constant change.

According to local folklore
and the dust of destiny,
like the revered 1001 standing images
of Buddha in the temple...

one of them is you.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

O HUMMINGBIRD

O fearless hummingbird,
hovering over the canna
and the honeysuckle,
only a few hours
away from starvation
at any given moment in time.
Today is not your day to die.

I have seen your spirit before.
Your fight for survival.
The ability to remain irridescent
as the colors of the rainbow
in the heart of a storm.
Your voice of uniqueness
in a world of ordinariness
that touched time
like no other.

I have seen your spirit before,
sweet hummingbird...
her name was Florine.

If only time could fly backwards,
like you,
she would repeat on this star.
Were infinity to begin again,
with no borders
to restrain her resolve,
threads of light
from her window of life
would shine like fire in the night.

Like lightning,
her smile would be etched
upon the earth.

Her laugh, not teardrops,
would be my river.
Her voice
the sound of spring rain.

Her passion the scent
of wildflowers on the mountain;
Her rhythms, a feast to feed
my homeless heart.

Absence of her love
is the cruel cost
of promises lost
in the infinite space
between memory and time.

O hummingbird.
If only time could fly backwards,
like you.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE ECSTASY OF SPRING

To think
that I am here on this earth
without you
is a thought never contemplated
nor imagined.

Had I died
instead of you,
little would have changed.
The seasons
would still come and go,
wet with dew and wonderment.

You and Woodrow
would be discovering
the joy of morning
again in the garden.
The ecstasy of spring at sunrise
humming in blue-green fescue.
The tranquil canopy
of a peach tree
overflowing with pink blossoms.

I would be the only red rose
in this peach cobbler dreamscape;
A monument
to spring's last orchid,
had I perished instead of you.

I would be the polished memory,
worn smooth over time,
that is everywhere
and nowhere,
had our circumstances been reversed.

But you would be the one
my love,
entering the secret gates,
searching for deep-rooted serenity
and the ephemeral beauty
of faraway gardens.

Finding comfort in spring cherry blossoms
from Tokyo and Hakone
to Kanazawa and Kyoto.
Showering my ashes,
my celestial dust,
alongside the sweet scent of jasmine,
on earth kissed softly
by spring rains.

When visiting Mica
and her daughter Mina in Tokyo,
wondrous memories
would flood your senses
of the year she shared our lives.
Knowing that your kiss
would be my kiss,
your embrace my embrace.

Remembering always
that the stars contain me,
as do the sun
and lunar gardens.
Looking for me
in the moons of mountains,
and in the endless foam
of overlapping waves
in ancient seas.

Finding me in your heart
and your imagination,
in the timeless seasons
between our worlds.
Residing with me forever
in this purified rarity
called love.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

OUR LEGACY OF LOVE

In one enormous moment,
in the muted transparency
of predestination,
the perennial friendship
that lived
in the summer
of my heart,
disappeared
like daydreams in twilight.

The magnitude
of this vacancy,
of living for even a minute
without the sound
of your voice
or the radiance
of your smile,
touches me
beyond words and comprehension
and begs one simple
philosophical question:
Would I still be me
without you?

But truth be told,
our souls
are tied together.
Our legacy of love
is beyond dissolution
and the shapelessness
of extinction.

Heartfelt love traverses
the clenched sadness and emptiness
of a permanent void,
by-passing
the endless corridor
of unfulfilled dreams.

Even in the half-light
of darkness,
you live on my skin
and in the marrow
of my bones,
in my mouth and lips,
that taste of wine
and first and last kisses,
and in my hair,
that was impenetrable
to anything
except your soothing fingers.

Even my footsteps,
which sustain our journey,
are compelled
to wander through
an upside-down world
in the fullness
of the moment.

That's how it is
for us.
When we are written
off the page,
we will surely
be written off...
together.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE SANCTITY OF SILENCE

I must confess.
I talk to memories
and animals
and faded pictures
of memories
and animals.

I also profess
that I am relieved
that my conversations
are not protracted
and are one-sided only.

I don't hear voices,
unless it is the sound
of my own voice,
which is music to me
when the sound
of silence
mimics the ubiquitous ache
of a small pebble
in my shoe.

I don't feel unbalanced
because I initiate
the exchange.
It is not as if
I have an alien device
welded to my ear
that decrees,
by a Pavlovian frequency,
that I salivate
on demand
to something other
than my own cuisine.

I don't have a beeper
or a beeper
that beeps my beeper,
nor a phone
that phones my phone
or induces withdrawals
when we are estranged.

I am not
goose-bumped
to orgasm
by titillating sounds
from anything
that can't
share a good
bottle of wine
with me.

I only raise
the intensity
of my voice,
Pavarotti style,
in the shower,
never in a church
or a confessional,
or a train
or a plane.

Never in a restaurant
or a funeral home,
a bank
or a movie theatre,
or in a supermarket
to phone home
to discuss food groups
or preferences.

If I am important,
I am important
with or without
my phone.
In fact,
I was important
before I met
my phone,
at least
to my baby.

She loved me
even when I whispered
or had nothing to say.
She would love me now,
despite my idiosyncratic
transgressions.

Love,
like life,
seems to grow best
when it slows down
to a trickle,
like reluctant droplets
of honey
cascading from a spoon.

Only then
can one enjoy
the perfection
of unvarnished stillness
and the sanctity
of silence.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE BLUSH OF A ROSE

I moved in your atmosphere.
You moved in mine.
Together or alone,
we merged
from petal to flower,
in the depth of a single heart,
to the heart of a single rose.

We made our own circle,
from friend to lover
in our sweet youth,
from lover to best friend
in the measureless hours
of forever.

We were like
expanding stars
in cosmic time
that light the night
and flow like rivers,
not only into shadow and space,
but into each other.

I can't hold your hand
or touch your smile,
but I can visit you
in my poetry or prose,
or in the blush of a rose
in the quiet beauty
of our garden.

Love never vanishes.
Love worth loving
is worth loving
for always.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

A JOYFUL MAN

What I have lived
I unlive this day,
except in my heart
and my poems,
and in the gardens
left behind
that carry me to you.

These are not petrified gardens
of melancholic monuments.
They are living testaments
to a life well lived.
They are an ongoing tribute
to a lifetime of offerings
in place of acquisitions;
of friendship without motive.

Often, I confess confusion,
but never with this irrefutable truth:
From the day I met you,
until the day when I become
a shadow and a dream,
I have never been,
nor will be,
abandoned by joy.

Joy often hides
behind ephemeral clouds,
or occasionally flips upside-down,
or even whirls,
in a spiritual journey,
like whirling dervishes.

But what it never does,
even in spells of loneliness,
is leave me.
Joy is always with me.
It will always be
because you were here.

You are in my heart
and in my poems.
You live in my center,
as both the girl
and the woman
of my story.

I know this,
I never tire of dreaming
or writing about you.
I never tire of being
a joyful man.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

YOU ARE ORCHID

More than beguiling
are your orchids,
as they slothfully awaken
from the loving silence
of a kindly California winter
to greet me
in the half-light
of a snappy
February morning.

Morning and our garden
have merged
to come of age;
the cycle of living
naturally transparent
in this corner
that was once home
to your footprints.

Time stands still
at the moment of separation
between night and dawn.
Your orchids,
which occupy the same space
as they did one year past
when they bloomed
only for you,
now blossom
in a different dimension,
somewhere beyond myself
and the shifting tendrils
of illusion.

I water them once a week
and feed them once a month,
as you did
in the graceful shadows
of distant yesterdays.
I have conversations with them,
much like I do with Woodrow,
our whiskered counterpart,
and they answer me
with their efflorescense
of beauty
that have more meaning
than lost poems.

You are orchid.
While you sleep
orchids bloom.
You are one
with the morning;
every garden
I have ever known.

Yesterday's spikes
were suspended
in quiet anticipation.

Today's buds
are in a perpetual state
of boundless freedom,
open to the beauty
that is in all of us,
and the ramdomness
of destiny.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

YESTERDAY'S ROSE

To some,
my poems are songs of sorrow
that can make dreams weep.

To others,
they are moonbeams of hope,
that not only shine
on the sanctity of breath
and the silence of death,
but on the importance
of the space
that comes in between.

For me,
they are the children
that we never had.
The flowers that made
a garden between us.
The treasure-house of dances
that come from her song.
The music of her name
that I can touch
with a thought or a smile.
The vivid colors
of the emotional palette,
deep-seated in my heart,
that echoes the rainbow
that wraps itself
around her soul.

They are the conversations
that flowed seamlessly,
Cross-word puzzles
and wine at 5:00 PM.
The sound
of the night rain
on the skylight,
The refrain of Woodrow
purring with pleasure
on the lap
of his most devoted admirer.

As long as I write,
she endures,
as do I,
and her memory
will never be erased.

As long as she is a dream
where forever remains,
not only on pen and paper,
but in the hearts
of those of us
who loved her,
she will never become
yesterday's rose.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

A JOURNEY FOR JOHN BOY

When I am alone,
the hours are larger,
but not as large as
when I can't sleep or dream
in the protracted hours
before dawn.

Behind closed eyelids,
I see lights,
visible like stars,
that sparkle and wane
like the sun and the fireworks
across the bay.

I think of things
that might have been
but never were,
and sculpt reflections
of places and spaces
that vanished and were forgotten
but now seem unforgettable.

I saw Joe DiMaggio in Yankee Stadium,
with my Dad and my brother Joe,
play in his last season of baseball,
with a rookie named Mickey Mantle
at his side.

Across town at the Polo Grounds,
on another day from another train,
we saw a young Willie Mays
bedazzle, with his sheer athleticism,
fans of all colors and persuasions.

Four years later I felt the same surge
when I hit a home run
in the Little League All Star game.
I can still hear the cheers
and feel my parents' pride,
as I rounded the bases.


Manny, at his deli,
smiling and laughing,
as he fixed me a pastami sandwich
with a half-sour pickle,
as I stared at the numbers
etched in his arm.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream.

My nine year old friend
and next door neighbor Billy,
who fell from a motor boat
and drowned in a Connecticut lake,
and now lay,
dressed in a uncharacteristic suit,
in a satin-lined casket
never intended for anyone his age.

The first polio vaccine,
in the shape of bullion cubes,
that I ingested, like jell-o,
because Jonas Salk
found the cure.

My first kiss.

Whiffle ball in my back yard
with my best friend George.

Playing catch with my brother,
before girls changed
the strike zone forever.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream.

The sunken faces
of the fifty year old indentured farm workers
from Jamaica and Puerto Rico
who I picked tobacco with
for .75 cents and hour
when I was 14 years old.

Walter Cronkite and Eric Severide,
when we had real reporters
and real news,
long before
it became unfair and unbalanced.

Rocky Marciano
when he knocked out Joe Lewis
and Cassius Clay
before he was transformed,
like a butterfly,
into Mohammad Ali.

The sickly stench, still in my nostrils,
of the convalescent home
that we visited
every Sunday for two years,
to see my grandmother.
The sound of my grandfather's last breath,
as I stood with my family
by his hospital bed,
when I was 16 years old.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream:

Cheerleaders at my soccer games,
chanting lyrics worthy of a Stephen Sondheim musical:
"what a fella- Piscatella, go John-go.

A young black man
in downtown Hartford Connecticut,
violently draped over the side of a car,
abused and harassed by two policemen,
because he was the wrong color
at the wrong place in time.
The race riots in the north end of Hartford.

The sadness in my mother's eyes
the days that President Kennedy
and then his brother Bobbie
got assassinated on national television.

The golden oratory by,
and the inevitable eulogies for,
Martin Luther King.

I see everything and nothing
when I can't sleep or dream.

Fort Campbell
after enlisting in the Army Reserves for six years.
The plane ride to Kentucky
in the middle of August,
because Canada was too cold
and South East Asia was too hot.

The bus ride, three months later,
to Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
the day of my brother's wedding.
My first , and only, sighting of an armadillo.
My first, and only, granade launcher,
strapped to my shoulder,
like a bad rotator cuff.

The pain I felt
when my fiancee and I changed course.
San Francisco
where I searched
in vain for myself.

Connecticut
where my search ended
at age twenty -four,
when a twenty-one year old girl
named Florine
in a mini skirt
designed by God,
walked by my desk
and into my heart forever.

Oh what a Journey
for John Boy.

A name unsuited to my years,
but affectionately given to me
by my Babe
the day my journey officially began.
The mere sound of it,
even from my own voice,
makes me alive
between paragraphs.

I heard those words
every time she walked through the door.
They were part of a package
that came with a smile and a hug,
and love,
honed to a fineness
that had more meanings
than an orchid or a rose.

I have crossed the universal seas
at both ends of the same day.
Now I am my memory.
Now I sleep.
Now I dream.

Oh what a Journey
for John Boy.


© JOHN PISCATELLA

PERFECT TIMING

I have come so far,
but I am not quite sure
if I have arrived.

Travel and sleep
have not come easily.
I find my focus blurred
and my jet-lagged eyes,
weighty, but unlocked.

Although tomorrow
is promised to no one,
I always have hope
for what tomorrow may bring.
But without the splendor of sleep,
I feel worn down
by the accumulation of time
and the absense of tomorrows.
I am so tired from living my todays
all night long.

Sluggishly, I succumb
to the sanctuary of my chair,
too drained to overcome
the shadows of my own thoughts
looming in the distance.

At this moment,
the fine art of forgetting
seems off limits to my mind.
Just as I am about to be touched
by a smattering of regrets in the air,
I feel the welcome weight of Woodrow,
in his oh so graceful state
of feline completeness,
sink into my lap.

His timing, as always, is perfect,
and my sense of reality is restored.
I find comfort in his spirit,
because his spirit is yours.
Even though you are far away,
paradoxically,
you are so close at hand
that when I touch him,
I touch you.

He wraps himself around me
like a coverlet.
His third eye lids close completely
as he approachs nirvana,
and he kneads my stomach
in time to the synchronized
drips of raindrops
that spread like tears
across the pane.

He kneads and kneads,
but at this perfect
moment in time,
my need for him,
nourished
by my need for you,
is greater.

I close my eyes,
and like Woodrow,
I see nirvana
in the distance...

and I am at peace.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

LOST POEMS

I never tire of walking
unfamiliar streets.
But of all the streets
I have walked,
with the center
of my soul
at my side,
most I have walked
for the last time.

Untethered to responsibility
and enamoured by self-indulgence,
I move to keep moving,
at my own rhythm,
in novel directions.

Balanced
between the boundless freedom
of back-alleys and boulevards,
I discover and undiscover myself,
like meeting an old friend
for the first time.

I glide over fear
because I am fearless.
I can't be hurt
because I am numb
and feel no pain.
I have lost the irreplaceable,
and I survive.

I am resilient.
I am untouchable.

Like a drought anticipating rain,
I forage,
with utmost urgency,
for sustenance,
wherever I can find it.

I chase
after chrystalline prose
and dream
of the power of love.
I drift
through the glassless windows
of my imagination.

I listen
to the whispers
of the world
for the undulating silence...
of lost poems.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

HOW PERFECT

How brief the time
as it stood still at dusk.

How soft the breeze
that kissed my face,
as I left
my unaccompanied footprints
in Thailand,
on the white sands
of Patong Beach,
on beautiful Phuket Island.

How enticing a world
suspended in supple shadows,
while the colors of daylight
dissipate to darkness.

How bewitching a wavering moon,
that games hide-and-seek,
behind the shifting clouds.

How finished the focus
of an individual moment
of translucent silence,
while memories
slowly trickle away.

How wonderous
the poetry of spirit
that endures
long beyond our vanishing.

How flawless my dreams
that can never be disturbed.

How perfect my accumulation
of matchless yesterdays,
on my journey...

to matchless tomorrows.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

ANCIENT INNOCENCE

It is next to impossible
to lose my spontaneity
when,
like a jazz-like composition,
I am steeped
in the aromas of change.

My brain is on fire
with the sights and sounds
and scents of Cambodia.
I am alive, uncertain, but so alive,
and emancipated for the moment
from the known,
and totally seduced
by the richness of the unknown.

Undisturbed by space or time,
I move forward
like a sleepwalker,
but always with my love,
my twin soul,
at my side.
My years of having loved
and been loved
have prepared me
to ride the waves of transformation
and to savor the opportunity
to, repeatedly,
give birth to myself.

My air was always rich
with the fragrance of your smile,
because your smile was a reflection
of your soul.
So it is no surprise
that I search for mine
in an alien country of smiles
from those who have lost so much
and have so little.

I take solace
from ancient innocence
and find it to be a perfect, simplistic balance
to my world.

My path continues to meander
from country to country,
like the mystical Mekong River,
but I linger only long enough
to say hello to history
and goodbye to my baby.

In uninvaded silence,
as white as the spider lilly
by the water,
we are connected, as always,
between ourselves and the earth...

beyond the years and dust.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE YEAR NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN

As I walk
through the dimness of daylight
as a solitary man,
I am here to confess confusion
for the year 2007.

I can only trust that the invisible
cloud of sadness that saturated my soul
the day my lady left,
will not drift in a strong wind,
across the sea and back,
for an extended visit in 2008.

I alternate between being
and not being.
Like a metronome
in need of repair,
my tick and my timing
are slightly off.
Even so, my music resonates
because it is Florine's music,
and my voice is wedded
to hers, soul to soul.

Although there were many moments
worthy of nostalgia,
the essential thing missed
in the year never to be forgotten,
is that hers is the only music
that I have ever understood,
and, without her poetry and mine,
she would be silenced forever,
like the dark side of the moon.

Her love song
will neither vanish
nor reach its final note
while I have her music in me.
You will hear her melody
and taste the symphony of flavors
that reflect a life of value and substance.

Her odyssey is mine,
and mine is yours, if,
among the multiple paths of life,
you choose to walk down
the streets of my world with me.

As I listen to my heart,
I find lost poems
that give voice to a love
that had a beginning
in a distant afternoon,
and an ending that never was...

or will be.

© JOHN PISCATELLA