I Am Santo

Fiction, poetry, music and mindscape pictures by creative artist Jason Santo

At Your Smallest

Tiny things,
That first breath taken with morning eyes
Open
Or the way both arms reach to the headboard
In a satisfying stretch,
But specifically the smile
The way it crests with sunny realization
That there’s love in this bed,
This house,
This air.
Spring can have its opulent blooms
And Summer can pull hair,
Wild with its thick air
And stuck faceside by sweat.
Fall will endear with its poignant color
And Winter will hide secrets in plain view,
Its melt and shed layers seducing.
All those seasons strive
To capture the breadth of meaning
Latent in that lazy first glance
Across the continent of down
And mountainous pillows
Threatening apart;
How those little worlds crumble
At dawn’s assurance,
Glints of fresh sun
Spilling gold, gray.
It doesn’t matter.
Nature swoons whoever gives her time
A chaotic blush aggressive beauty
Grown envious
Of the smallest of gestures
The frailest of sweet,
Shared moments.
Let it all go green,
Fade
Startle back with imperious naïveté
Then close circle again
With the stamen’s reach,
The soft open petal,
The sprinkle of pollen lust.
It’s a whisper drowned
By the silent poetry of this subtle waking.
Try try try
All you songbirds,
You gregarious orange cloud bottoms
And creamy, seductive mists.
Plenty will mistake such arrogance
For a standard,
But four walls,
Tangled hair,
Rumpled sheets
And an inelegant yawn
Are where beauty lay,
Where every other miracle
Earns its measure against.
My love,
You are not as gorgeous
As ocean dusk
Or any season’s demand for attention.
They are only as Heaven-sent
As effortless you.

 

Cherry Sin

Cherry-dipped sunsets soften with their grenadine punch, calliope keys pressed, whistle-blowing off steam. Truth wins every time, a revolution glowing brilliant as each note played, steam crowding unprepared skies with demand. Be seen, heard. Satisfied melodies ripping through golden hour haze, dripping longing in the boughs of bent tree stems caught in eerie silhouette; how that red tantalizes as a Pamplona beast set loose on comfort, China shop securities shattered. So many pieces left aglimmer, sharp edges hungry to lacerate and spill hot lusts, pried open mouths, thighs. Dreams saunter safely as hands stay pocketed, poise like loose change jangling. It’s a quarter ‘til day’s end, murky beauty seizing light and across the sweet horizon skin cools after the blush. Hush. Unfocused passions are a stain on better faiths, so push that lens west, turn it to hone the burn and walk away while the world’s caught. Fire purges. It’s the only thing hungrier than reason. And the drift of ash lilts in waltz during settling evening, a nocturne under the stars falling like black snow, a hint of sweet stinging air and memory.watch Annabelle: Creation film now

 

Heavens Dim

This love blooms
With galaxy center force
Shaming light-stealing lusts,
Rewriting time’s relativity.
The past writhes
Slick and parasitic
But with its nebulaic charms
Birthing shimmering futures
From dusty tendril grips
And oh how the firmament
Pales in its white-knuckle press
Leaking spent wishes between
Void clogged fingers.
Lofty simplicity summons suns,
Questions quasars,
Pronounces pulsars
In weak-kneed comparison
To the heated clutch of these heavenly bodies,
The undulating fission
Where sweat and greed
Sting tongues,
Where ardor’s salted urgency
Slickens, stirs, softens.
Just let that universe shade green
In rambling, cheap verse
Because behind all that black
Are these blue dreams
Purpling with every flinch,
Each quivering vision
Of the beyond
As heights seize, crack, open
And rest sweeps celestial reach
Beneath mingled eyelashes
Clichés are forgiven,
Pasts are revealed as stepping stones
Run smooth, eroded
By the torrential bliss
Of now
Reigning like sunlight.

SPINS

These rays fall like hope, radiating from solar promise and holding back bleak nights of alone, the fierce dark embrace that presses eyes shut even as they are open, staring at pinhole starlight that careens from hearts light-years in the past, echoing from easy kisses, lust-fueled touch and eager union. What supernova bliss! How it glimmers in the untouchable agonies of now, this spin dirtying prayers for unblemished views into the uncharted lands of tomorrow; destinies hungry as the collection basket at the front pew. God’s witness clings to the story of two forever, but these winking pinpoints flinch and bob behind cloudcover realities, and the obscuring forces of foresight and careful attenuation sting with red-shift intention, exhibiting pasts that cannot possibly be so beautiful but which still stare into the present with hungry glory, eating away at communion wafer beliefs. In symmetry. In belonging. In companionship. Were it as simple as collapsing stars radiating in stellar frenzy, the simple force of gravity enough that rips titanic energies to pieces and yet cannot pull like hearts together on this head of a pin planet. We’ll die alone while in the infinite, suns swooning in their galactic certainty, bleeding light into irredeemable chaos and making dreams seem possible, tangible.

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This is graceless,
A heart made of ash
Reduced by the fanned flames
Of self hatred
And the inferno of
A loathed mirror.
How can it not be mud
When mixed
In waters of forgiveness?
Siphoned whoa,
The guilty thirst for kindness
As verdant leaves cup
For early morning rain
A gray sky delivering bounty
Alluding to certain heavens
Where the drip, drip, drip
Allows thr parched a sip
And deems unkempt worthiness,
A runoff spilling down
Lips, chin and chest
Searching for the heat
Of a tugging heart
Pulling at the edges of forfeit
And instead discovering
The rising distraction of sex,
That rigid stand-in
For the swept up refuse
Charred in countless
Self-started fires.
Oh this match has done gone
And expired
Before igniting a hint of
Long-lasting ardor.
But there were enough smiles
To grant that pitter-patter
Of sweat and release;
A warm flow of
Frenzied body whitewater
That stings the tongue
But suffers in the sticky resin
Of charcoal belief.
How black is this night?
It never knew day.
And the land is dry.
The land never knew rain.
The invective kicks up again,
Blast furnace winds
From lungs and chords
In solemn vibrato,
Never sotto voce
But forte,
A scream above ever gentle wet
Tearing through throat
And lips trembling
For kisses,
Oh die, starshine fool.
Too hot to burn for long
The light hits welcoming eyes
So long after the oxygen fled;
So long after astral loneliness
Choked belief
Right out of the bright,
Marrying it to the vacuum,
Marrying it to the endless void.
And whose hands seized
The bruise-laden neck
Of a fallen star?
These hands.
These crooked, dead hands
Stained with carbon clumsy
And atrophied into claws
As the spat-sung bile
Of reflected derision
Echo in the infinite dry
Of celestial loss.

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I want to dream of you
I want to wake to you
Thoughts won’t be enough
But it’s all I’ve got
A pocketful sleep
To bring me nearer
The hours blinking by
As eyes close night away
And these longing thoughts
Of your perfect breath
In my ear
The sigh of your pleasure
An echo from certain future
That cannot arrive soon enough
Like birthdays for children
Or the first trip to the beach
An expectation like thirst
In the desert.
We’ll stretch the edges
Of faith
And bend them into
Bought time,
That pocket of loose change
Spent on today
So it will race to tomorrow
And treat me now
To you
while I await
You.

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You have all the chance loaded
Like Vegas dice
In a casino just off the strip
Filled with desperate souls
Stained with cigarette dreams
And the faith of felt tables.
Truth is,
The death of me
Is that woman
Writhing in language,
Swimming in metaphor
And gambling
With dangerous curves,
The rounded bend
Of ass, breast, thigh
Beckoning like the dinner bell
In a Laura Ingall’s Wilder tale
When dusk played gold,
Men were men
Children were children
And women held silent reign;
Respect paid for the work done.
And yet she works,
Carving the untenable into possibility
And diving headlong into the improbable.
Maybe that is crazy;
Maybe it’s standing too close
To a fire pit in a desert.
But truth will always arrive
Like flame at the end of sparked kindling
Oxygen game.
Friction set.
Conflagration match.
So let’s roll the dice
And see how long this burns
While we dance in the heat
Of our torrid wager.
Praying the story goes timeless
Instead of dissipating
Like smoke;
Words written in ash
Without fame or memory
To hold it in time,
To move this lust into love.

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There is nothing unreasonable in love
And isn’t that what this is about?
That bubble of warmth
Like the swallow of spirits
Disarming the overcranked mind,
Lulling it like a babe at dusk
And opening the thick skin
Of jaded indifference
And such callous belief
That the heart,
Encrusted in the rigid carapace
Of longing
And resignation
Should crack its malignant shell
Despite whatever seeks to thicken
Such hardening hardship;
Those cursed miles,
The winding roads
And rage sworn hills
Between there and here,
Today and tomorrow,
Always and never.
Sweep such constructs away
Like butterflies on late summer wind
Caught in the fading gold of day
Fragile and beautiful
Demanding of sweet delicacy,
Kisses that taste of understanding;
Sweet but rich
Hinting at lusts strong enough
To crush bones and wisdom.
Let it.
Let the maddening sweep of bliss
Blind and crack
Like the rumbling caution
Of fear’s thunder
So late after the flash
Of hot white yearning.
Get struck
And live richer,
Stunned by the freedom
Of the shattered casket
The still contents of which
Once eulogized
Beats again.
There’s nothing stealing
The rhythm
Of this thrumming pulse
But the pickpocket deceptions
Of belief in limits.
Find faith
And watch wealth grow
Oh so reasonably
That it could even be
Taken for granted.
/
.
/

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Why is it even a word,
this haphazard misappropriation
of allegedly bulletproof opinion
that skulks around solemnly
behind the bold charisma
of loudest claims?
If the sky hates mercy,
then let it bleed
its mercurial happenstance,
fling great clouds of fact
into obscurity
and beach solar entitlement
as of it were a hopeless whale,
drying and gray
on the fine sands of belief.
That dreadful sun.
How it wrings
the necks of the onlookers,
ties hands behind the backs
of the unarmed charitable
and punishes,
with its squalid bright,
the scarred and hopeless,
the unattractive
and imperfect.
Dawns love the beautiful,
kind light
shone on the flawless.
But dusks favor the beasts,
that great majority
so looking to shine,
but loosed only
in the caustic rage
of tectonic cataclysm.
What delightful darkness
their ugly faith dispels.
What igneous hope
lies encrusted
in their splinter-dust bones.
/
****
/

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Covered. Cold. Sin is in season. Disbelief in the evidence. Laid out and direct. Like sunlight on a cloudless day. Blinding. But obscured by the thick frost of derision, that chill of hate for the mirror that can’t crack soon enough. Right there. A blind man could see it and yet, reason vanishes and the tumble wins. The suffering. Embraced. Grunting long into midnight. Sweating hard agitation when softness attempts to lull. The muffled honey voice of care and blessing. There. All around. Unmistakable and then failure. Communications down. Hypnotic livewires skittering across wet avenues begging for mercy. Against these titanic beliefs. These etched-in-stone commandments that won’t crumble, shatter, sift into forgettable sands but instead cast the fiercest, suffocating shadows. Sinking unimaginable black. Sea bottom agonies. Crushing. Hear that. Hear it. A siren wails longingly. But these stones in these pockets are home. Unrisen. Drowned.

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