MY WAY HOME

I know certain things
but have forgotten more
than I can contain within myself.

In the half-light
of morning-tide
beneath a bow-shaped moon,
I am vulnerable
to the sweet song
of cascading rainfall
on a tiled roof
and to the muted memory
of unwavering affection,
as natural to me
as my way home.

If I have lapses in judgment
that fool my heart,
then I await the drama,
the feel of emotion
of my next breath.

Some people are takers
and have two names
and an equal number of faces,
destined to be alone
in like company.

They can be strong
in a weak way,
ignoring the reality
that actions have consequences
beyond expectations
that can flow incontrollably
like an undamned stream
to achingly unforseeable places.


Others are givers,
unselfish owners
of a generous life force
that continues in and out
of this beautiful world.
They act lovingly
and are universally
loved in return.

How lucky am I
to have breathed
the same air;
to have tasted
honey in a voice;
to know why I am
who I am
and what is on
the other side.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

SERENADES FROM MANLEY BAY

Soothed
by the photographic silence
of a pristine cove
fragranced
with frescoed sunlight,
a melody of wind
over pulsating water,
(more exotic than tango),
serenades Manley Bay
and the seductive lyricism
of undiluted poetry.

How strangely exhilarating
life’s pleasures can be
in the phoneless universe
of slow motion
and charmed space.

Things can change in a day,
or not at all
like the rhythm of life,
disconnecting and reconnecting
to the certainty
of private dreams
or the uncertainty
of otherness.

Life,
like an unfinished song,
is a blank canvas,
a repository of artistic images
created between selves,
that can only be appreciated
with the benefit of aesthetic
distance and a clear-eyed gaze.

It is ours to own,
and can be transformed
into an acutely beautiful gift
generated by generosity of spirit,
or, without meaning,
can shrivel into
a sub-world of insignificance.


If eternal harmony
is what matters most in our lives,
how fitting the words of George Bernard Shaw:
“Life isn’t about timing yourself.
Life is about creating yourself”.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

HEART-MUSIC

The rhythm of my heart-music,
like a butterfly
reshaped in its chrysalis,
is a mutated melody of myself
and the delayed echoes
of songs unsung.

My song is my soul's journey
from the periphery
of plural voices
to the marrow
of a solitary center.

My concert the repository
of wandering images
in search of tenderness
and the universal
sense of wonder.

Were the world a symphony orchestra
I would play first violin,
plucking notes of inexplicable hope
from hearts and faces
in unexpected places.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MEMORY HOUSE

Locked away
in my memory house,
behind velvety doors
of penetrating silence,
are liquid gold reflections
of limitless energy
glowing brightly,
like shards of love-light
beneath a crescent moon.

Memory is a gift;
like knowing someone
of permanent tenderness
or being loved
from the beginning;
like having a purpose
or growing comfortable
in your own skin.

Memories,
greater than the depth
of an orchid or a rose,
like the mother of my spirit
or the sister of my soul,
channel me dreamlike
to the center
of my center,
before we were enormous
together,
before I was me.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

UNCHARTED CHOICES

Better that our time here
be elastic and fully stretched
by the eroticism
of uncharted choices
and the inevitability of change,
than to be sheltered
and protected from passion
by spiritless imagination
and the certainty
of static moments.

Both the soul delicate
and the beautiful mind,
if not nurtured by
magnetically fascinating fragments
of unanticipated pleasures
that jump over the familiar,
will waste away
and dissipate,
like still rain
in hardened hands.

Perhaps,
like children,
we only remain
interesting to ourselves
when we are
on the edge of adventure,
where everything around us
is slightly enlarged,
where we chase our dreams
with uncertain steps.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MY THEN AND NOW

Hidden inside my story
and the fluency of my pen
is the memory of my heart
and the universe of my mind
floating in the tides of time.

Echoed in the silences
between my then and now
are wistful voices
of a life that overflows
like a river
runs to the sea.

At home within myself
in a beautiful place,
I pass through
but remain in the world
as free as time
and the movement
of stillness.

My landscape of reflections
is undeniably untouchable.
The fluid memories depthless.
My days so luminous
they waive night shadows.

Light as the air
I am in paradise everywhere,
not only in the dreams
I dreamed last night.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

SALSA-SOULS

The musicians glided
into the room,
like apparitions
in barefoot light,
floating on gossamer
winds from Cuba
to the quiet flowing
of a restless dance floor,
as familiar as a
Havana memory.

Salsa-souls
from another time
in expanding space,
glowing brightly in white
to where begins
a Saturday night.

Bound only to the true road
of a musical journey,
they carry few riches,
except for the flowers
of rhythmic melody
that bloom in tempo
with other blooms
on a garden stage
of a cabaret.

The passage of passion,
embraced by the
intoxicating intensity
of freedom of spirit,
sings to my heart
and to the eternal crystal
of my salsa-soul.

So I go there
to be alive
in the shape-shifted
poetry of pure motion,
to rhythmically meld
my body and mind
to another,
to breathe the magic air
of a kindred spirit.

I go there
to dance the dance
of eternal harmony,
to cradle
unforgotten softness,
to never forget
the permanent tenderness
of the twoness in me
and in all things.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

HEART-SPACE

Face to face
mirrored
with the center
of my suspended
center,
there is space to space
within me
open to the rhythm
of wandering voices
beyond the stars.

If by night
I am the dreamer
on the edge of reflections
that dissolve with distance,
by day
I am the medium
that chooses
to re-enter myself
to life
with no limits
on the treasures
of the mind
and heart.

I am still me
after all,
with limitless heart-space
so willingly destined
to live fully aware
beyond
the empty air.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

If I listened to the darkness,
I would be living
in the storm clouded margins
of another life,
trapped inside myself
between the thunder
and the echo.

Illuminated
by the unforgotten treasures
from the heart
of a selfsame soul,
the candle of my twin spirit
glows
like molten gold
beneath the sun-secrets
of the Sahara.

Warmed
by a single blanket
sewn from a single red thread
(fated by the Japanese belief
that all people
are born with an invisible red thread
and only one person
pre-destined to meet
will have the other end
of the thread),
the ethereal connection
to the winds of change
is a reality that is mine to own.

Forever living
the immortality of a smile
in a world
that never ceased
to lose its charm,
I chose love above all else.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MY WONDROUS WORLD

My walls
are filled
with miles
of moon-bathed
dream smiles
that embrace me
dawn through dusk.

My doorways
with wall-to-wall whispers
of silent footsteps
that walk with me
sooner or later.

Her rhythm,
like the phases
of the moon
or the truth
of tides,
is a labyrinth
of subtleties
imprinted
on my memory
like an unfinished story
that writes itself.

Though
only a brief sunbeam
shimmering
in the warmth
of fused destinies,
the inner light
of the energy
she fashioned
fashions me.

Ever the voice
of a single
Siamese soul
floating
beneath words
wound round
with poetry,
the love she molded
molded me
from the depth
of a heart
to the heart
of perpetual adoration.

Such
is the nature
of my wondrous world
too soundless to hear
by anyone
but me.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

SOMEWHERE IN CHINA

Like a character
in a play,
I am a fragment
of my memory.

As the day
draws new images
on nomadic canvases,
I sculpt galleries
of timeless faces
in the motionless spaces
between entering and leaving
the unmistakable transparency
of an unknown world
as beautiful as the moon.

Listening with my eyes
to the essence
beneath the surface
of every turn,
from nowhere
to somewhere
in China,
I exchange secrets
and sweet memories
with the poetry
of the streets
and the words
in my pen.

Like threads
from which it was woven,
we are all a part
of the same blanket
that covers the earth
and warms
miles and miles
of infinite smiles
with a trickle of sweetness,
like jasmine
in a summer garden.

This is a world
of exquisite warmth
that is mine
for a little while
before I hear her voice
among the angels.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

LOVELIGHT

My soul unfolds
like the petals of a rose,
but is out of scale
to its surroundings.

What I feel
in the sudden season,
within the limits
between pure shadow
and slow space,
is the irrevocable movement
of time and fate.

Whatever joy emerges
from the heart
of sorrow
is mine
in the high hours
of a day
never intended
for uncertain sunlight
or absent smiles.

I am the voice
behind the words
that whisper
nostalgias
of ordinary mornings
and golden afternoons.

As a mindful messenger,
I search for memories
and metaphors
that breathe
the poetic emotion
of free verse
on this page
and the next.

Speaking with shadows,
I ask for nothing
at the end
of the day,
outside of lovelight
and one more night
with a heart tied to mine.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

WE DANCE

Serenely
in the stillness of motion,
my step reaches out
for the anticipated downbeat
hidden among the riches
of preserved sensations
and the free rein
of secret reflections.

The clarity of what
cannot be explained
holds me,
as does the interwoven language
of a secret rhythm
stealthily stirring,
born in the recesses
of my soul.

A look,
an inspired glance,
the simmering simplicity
of a chance connection
between bodies,
like the color of voices
in a musical motif.

So we go there,
where the night insists
that footsteps never waver.

Where we are alive
because music is alive
and more and more perfect.

Where we are enormous together
in pure movement
and silent delight.

We dance.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

DREAM-KEEPER

When I write,
thirsting minutes
ripen into unquenchable hours
that drink not only dreams
of vanished voices,
but the voiceless whispers
of veiled promises
and shrouded secrets
that exist just below the surface
of a never-ending poem.

The hours own me
and all dream-keepers.
Champions of dreams undreamed.
Guardians of miles
of absent smiles
and forgotten silhouettes.

As life goes,
their words are now mine.
Their goodness a testimony
to the unattainable,
the clarity
of the unexplainable.

In distant things
I find myself
sheltered
where poetry lives,
where love showers
shadows on the earth.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

EVER FOREVER FRIENDS

I dream the moon
for two,
but drink the sun
for one
wherever the light
leads me.

My shadow
wanders the world,
but my moments
mirror memory
that find voice
down the back
of my mind.

Not even delicate dreams
hidden in my own heart
can resist reflections
between your time
and mine.

We are our memory,
but what is now
is mine,
secret yet visible,
like unwavering wisdom.

Perpetual paths
like distant stars
echo shared footprints.
Night divides
what destiny doesn't.

Ever forever friends
my love.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

EVER ORCHID

Restless are the blooms
within winter’s spring
in memory
of sweet mystery
on a single spike
held in a hollow hand.

Aside a weighted heart
cosmic time
is past faraway
beyond the scent
of soul
under a vanilla sky.

Santa Ana winds
bring voice
to simple leaves
with parallel veins
in shimmering light
shielded from shadows.

Fiery florets,
waxed and moulded
to perennial perfection,
dream a smile
of silent delight
whispered long before
the dawn of dust
on the far side
of a graceful garden.

Only you,
ever orchid,
ever flower.

Forever Florine.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE VOICES OF SICILY

How the world has changed
when nothing as something
as somewhere
ushers in the morning rain.

Bordered
by the moon and sea
I am drawn to you
Sicily
in search of me
and the voices
left behind.

What once was
never may be again,
except for traces
of treasured faces
that pass into
the myth of memory
and now stand before me
at the morning market.

In the market place,
where musical threads
and melodious cries
are weaved
between vendors and buyers,
songs are born
at first light
and fill the air
with nostalgic scents
of smiles
and Sunday dinners.

Standing within the fusion
of reality and sentimentality
in a world between time
and timelessness,
the seeds of solitude
and ripened dreams
are trapped
inside the night-tide
of my mind.

The past,
more faraway than near,
can fill the margins
beneath a fractured surface,
but only life lived
with ambrosial smiles
and second chances
can fill the space
in my heart.

© JOHN PISCATELLA