Joe Bisicchia

There is likely hesitation,
but he takes the cross.

A voice can only say so much.
...

Having mastered complexities of math, science, and alphabet,
all that education now comes down to this:
affixing one and one together late on Christmas Eve,
hooking up latest kids' gadgets with no sense of ease.
...

And what awaits to be seen,
faraway as sky,
close by as the backyard,
ever closer to the heart?
...

And my arteries run;
they race with the streets,
my depth chasing the lines underneath,
my arms chasing my dreams.
...

Rocks have personalities
I think
maybe.
Got to get to know them.
...

My face to the morning mist,
again I misplace what I could see,
my little sailboat of dreams,
out there so close it had seemed,
...

We felt her voice lift joyous from that deathbed.
She wasn't a poet; but was. Her last poem: her final breath.
It left without a word, as if the most peaceful sound ever said.
And we wept.
...

face, face, face, face, face.
face, face, face, face, face, face, You.
face, face, face, face, face.
...

We've walked.
And I forget we've walked on water.

You've fed the multitude, raised the dead
...

I find it in my voice box deep in the dark of my cellar,
at first only a whisper.
It asks for the vast outdoor sky above our small world.
And so,
...

Back then, I chose to be engraved. Through hue of pride I hoed wet cement in my own way, vandalizing worse than regular blackened gum chewed hard and from me spent then stamped to pavement. Becoming pavement itself.

Now what remains? Have I dared to hear the passing names, the children, the silence, the birds, the buses, the pulse as I have hardened my heart?
...

So much goes unseen, until seen.
A lie, like a teardrop goes there.
Like water through pipe.
Up street to spigot through duct till exposed.
...

I can imagine what he suffers, I think. I know more than thing or two about anatomy and morbidity. I didn't go to med school but I can tell he barely breathes.

There's the apparent dementia, or aphasia or whatever divide betwixt the cognitive and the communicative, maybe even my own fatigue or misdirection, and all of it shall collide here where all the sea meets Ventnor to stay or to leave.
...

That summer in Ocean City my teenaged son
was Mickey Mouse.

And into the nights as the boardwalk swelled,
...

Time flies.

If only I had been a fly on this guy's previous wall, then I'd know it all. His ailments, his anguished bones. I could then give the blind side due hell. His demons might fall with justified smart bombing. And yet, what of any collateral damage? What of children still stuck in his head?
...

In the darkening blue, soon black like smoke, he pulls stars from sky and makes fire. This man, my father, has shown how to gather. His sinew, his arms, his hair, his voice of thunder may all be mine in time as sun is meant to rise.

His lifelong mate, my mother, her eyes so kind, displays for me what belief can be. Her strength is seen in our shared stirred flame shooting warmth to our hands.
...

Some of this is make believe.
Or at least, it starts that way,
for we all need to believe.
...

I am speed.

I want
to run
...

We see each other.
Ball bounces.

Busy world
...

In the mirage,
in sun's bending of street,
when the racing stripe
...