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.

 

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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

 

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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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#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poet #sunset #sunrays #cloudy #dusk #newhampshire #newengland #sundown #wow (at Stardeath)

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Why beat? Why strum the soul wire and set time with chest drum, the bass of your footsteps approaching like a solemnly timed dirge that creaks floorboards like dusty ivory keys in an abandoned house, deserted by a family on the run, the way rotting organs flee the dirty bones of a ribcage. It’s the music of loss, singing sweetly in the morning hours that spill soft light over the one side of stirred bedsheets, the other pristine like a home awaiting arrival. That home. Voices caught in the dry plaster springing from wallpaper tears, echoing cries setting cadence to a flipbook story replayed day after day, the deftless duty and failure of earning, the deep longing for connection, the fear of missing out on bliss at corners unturned. It’s like song, searching for an ear but revealed to be tone deaf; such malice hiding in the tides of life, those unreasonable forces pushing and pulling the hands of the needy into fist and open palm and then fall, fall, falling from such grace, winds of passion swirling in like flashfire let loose in deeply inhaling lungs. Explosion or fizzle, there’s char left behind, the stubborn soot of together covering every faith, staining thoughts and riding lyrics that drift through day and then, at the sun’s molten sleep, haunt dreams of lost kisses and sweat-stung embrace. Those footsteps make the floors whine even as they soften with distance, on the turning away, a tune better left forgotten, but as insistent as that circadian rhythm reminding always that this is a melody unsung, but beaten into permanent memory.

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#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poetrycommunity #igwriters #field #tallgrass #butterfly #summer #nature #sunset #sundown #sunflare #skyporn (at Stomp)

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There it was again. Another dusk. Gabriel was tired of beauty and miracles. He would drive by the marsh each day as the sky faded, a long nine-to-five behind him and the belt and button of his tight slacks undone for the ride home. Clouds would bloom and sway like dancers at a Renoir patio party. And Gabriel would remember the way he moved and laughed with the girls during summer nights, their hair bouncing around their shoulders and their eyes and smiles bright with affection for his silly way, his careless moves and spins, his big laughter and crooked grin. It was painful to think about now, so many years later, but the sky wanted to remind him. So Gabriel kept his eyes straight and would count to twelve as the marsh flitted by behind highway guardrail supports. With each number he’d tell himself not to look, that the mirror of day’s end was a glimpse at pasts better left behind. But he failed more often than not, the violet hour wilting too beatifully to be ignored. And those times, those kisses at the end of evenings and tight embraces and rushed breaths and whispered affections would echo through his chest as if he were a cavern shouted into by better yesterdays. Gabriel wanted the beauty of this season to end, the gawker’s paradise to collapse into Winter when the sun would set before he left work and his commute would be shrouded in the dark of his present. Just get to twelve, he’d tell himself. This will all be over soon.

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#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #literature #poetrycommunity #writersofinstagram #storyteller #sundown #dusk #sunset #marsh (at No More Miracles)

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If it’s said aloud enough, then maybe it’ll be true. Love you. Love you more. Love you most. The repeated assertion that you’re the sun around which orbit is necessity for being. The light of you breeds possibility, even in this world of reigning confusion, where clouds billow tall in once perfect skies and shed tears of regret to feed the bloom of wisdom; oh it’s pain. It’s the latest tattoo on thinnest skin stretched taut across bone. A foot, a rib, a shoulder blade. It’s the trial of being marked by permanent commitment. And you are the dried ink justice of these most cherished successes. Or are you? Is it you that sits at the front of each choice as is told in the countless fables before night swallows this busy mind? If that were truth, then would each day be entropic origami folded into itself? Would lust swim so deep in these choked veins, threatening to burst with yearning for more, better, different? No one is a moonlit night in the middle of summer over the still waters of a quiet lake. No one is that freedom to plummet, swim, stroke, hold, and breathe in naked surety. And maybe nightswimmer love is impossible, yet each decision played gambles the ever increasing ante of your future. It has to stop. The selflessness hinting at corners and plaintive claims require action, as this fumbling is Coptic spoken to the deaf ears of now. No one is listening but this cracking heart and your young one which looks this way and to the sun for guidance. May each guide you to new discovery safely. May each dispell the long shadows of a failing self.

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#poem #poetry #writing #writer #poetic #creativewriting #igwriters #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #dusk #woods #forest #sundown #sunset #trees #plants #daysend #sun #solar #sunflare #nature #child #youth #discovery #silhouette (at Discoverer)

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We shared the close breath, both in the quiet solace of release and the noisy satisfaction of killing hunger. Drinking the courage. Letting our atoms spill in every direction and flailing with wild hearts; there was little to be said in the darkness afterward. Tears glimmer and streak, surmounting Sisyphean hills of cheeks rounded by son smiles. Alone is cruelty and the prison warden is this failure to see through routine, to adhere to the course of greater things. The sun makes a promise and keeps it. The man stumbles at each word, no confidence exuded and no sense of duty maintained. No matter how much truth words appear to hold, the hollow echo of their utterance carries more weight than any alluded sentiment. They are as thick as wind, pliant as rainwater and a disease worth inoculating against; a breeze of uncontainable virus sought, dissected, blamed, fought. A bit of air puffed in the face of ardor. A bit of science slighting the horizon, like dusk in the gray. Crack open consonants and each is a yolkless egg chanceless at birthing anything but the space lying between angry neurons, a symphony of rage given tempo by a lazy conductor who waves his arms like that grizzled tree standing long in the day, shadows carrying more weight than any declaration. Fool heart, how you give. Awaiting to receive. More than seed, but in a vacuum devoid of truth’s sun or water. Wretched destinies unfold. All due to the rusted stain of what’s said and what’s meant, the delicate imbalance of candied candor made sweet with sugarcoating, yet lingeringly bitter with coy deception. So it happened. So it’s ash. Sweep up the print and tidy away memory because it fails every time with applied meaning where meaning was absent; where the clutch and fuck were only that and the rhythm behind the chest was a wind up toy’s synthetic patter, graceless and predictable, but never reliable.

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(at Wound)

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Nothing’s the same. The sky runs below, and cirrus worry stretches thin over cumulonimbus climbs threatening deluge and destruction, their fierceness and fury an echo of this lovers’ hell. The world’s grown concave, perception’s edges pulled in around the infinity of space leaking from a blown open center. Travel peels away hours, unfeeling periphery pushing a blurred canvas on repeat; the whole damn thing looping with a brand of indifference that isn’t possible, yet is so fucking familar that it’s a reminder of home. What a word: home. What a fable. Collected comfort and safety, easily torn from morings by an easy tide and nothing fought for, no titanic cataclysm from which to rebuild but instead the intrusion of a predictable spill! And it all capsizes, ceilings taking on water and the basement ready to cave in from an upended foundation. Escher has nothing on the architecture of this failure. Stomach churning and salt drawn from stinging, puffed eyes, choking collapses, bent bodies curled against the shifts of light and room as well as those changes in approach, for kindness is now simple courtesy, the thank you and you’re welcome of the polite present. New context painted, inverted subjects grieve behind Mona Lisa smiles, and everything is fine, just fine. The clouds belong down there. The earth spinning overhead. The vertigo of nostalgia, it’s no bother, really. The antidote for dissatisfaction was always the shrug and resumption of duty, unphased by the signs of collapse so evident in every wall crack and crooked beam. Just keep looking down that same tunnel, dear. That’s worked so well this whole time that these immune eyes are tempted to allow the diseased vignette a chokehold on tomorrow. Because seeing everything is feeling it all again; a death laced with sorrow and bringing no peace.

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#poem #poetry #writing #writer #poetic #creativewriting #igwriters #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #clouds #storm #dusk #sky #stormy #sundown #inverted #upsidedown #fuckthis (at Upside Down)

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On approach, it’s all beauty. It’s that cheek ripening smile and uncaring laugh, so remarkable in volume and engulfing passion that the nervous air splits as it does moments before lightning strikes. Yet the receiving waters of guilt flood each corner and such moments of fine forgiveness, laid out as spotless cutlery before a grand meal, adorn chalky hors d’oeuvres, entrees of turned meat and bitter desserts that sting tongues. Wading in the dark waters, famished but surrounded by feigned kindness, those flashes of joyful iris abloom in squinted ovals shaped by laughter are a lifeline. And shaking hands struggle to hold on because truth’s thunder is a constant roar of demand that it’s right to starve; that it is better to drown. “Save me?” It’s a question asked as the pains of hunger distend this coward heart. But words are refuse on strong gales, tattered like cocktail napkins in the fierce hurricane of undone promises. And actions had long ago lost all bouyancy and drowned in the frigid seas of reflected loathing. Regardless of the book, salvation lies waiting for lost souls. Too bad life’s not made from pages, rather than the other way around. Starvation and drowning – the denial of sustenance and mercy embraced by the search for finest meals and perfect waters – weren’t endings read. They were written in the hand of a fool marked with a blank epitaph, a lonely plot for the ages.

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#poem #poetry #writing #writer #poetic #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #igpoems #sunset #dusk #storm #sky #clouds #sundown #nature #scary #sun #daysend (at Forgive)

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Tranquil horizons melt under gray turmoil, and verdant lands stretch, yawning, to recharge under inclement rolls of curdled breath. Dusk silenced by the kettledrum calls of approaching fervor, the gasp of saffron light conducts leaves to open, legs to spread for the welcoming flood. Storms exact quivering lips, tensed thighs, great exhales from starved lands searching for reawakening. Succumbing is the art of greeting life’s bounty. #irispad #day11 #sept11 #recharge #photoaday #nature #bay #marsh #portsmouthnh #storm #dusk #clouds #sky #water #calmbeforethestorm #sundown #stormclouds #poem #poetry #writer #writing (at Ready for the Flood)

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