What’s Ours, What’s Theirs
We’re crafting big Hells
In little packages,
Gift-wrapped by hands
Aching with pride,
Bones undone by the delicate task
Of inviting suffering
Where tenderness was required.
I Am Santo
Fiction, poetry, music and mindscape pictures by creative artist Jason Santo
My rage is a Hellfire won. It’s prophylactic temerity. Taste this seed where the yawn and ache demand. Be here in the presense of a thousand years of stammering bliss. What the evidence portrays again and again with reckless disregard is that this never mattered; that each and every uttered word, committed action and kindness offered was a snowflake melted on an upturned hand; incidental and insignificant. Enjoy the latest snowfall. Let those lovely shapes disintegrate in your alleged warmth that hides such sanctimonious greed and oh how hate urges to devour your liver, your kidneys, your heart. Oh how these teeth bared grind against each other like knives on the sharpening stone; just die. Go far away into the abyss of memorials, I have nothing left for you, your taste or your anguished fuckery that clicks and clacks like stilettos along the long, empty corridor of promise. What degrading mirages we strived for. Such horrific heat ripples on the forever sands reaching into failed forever. The greatest trick of love is that it meant something at all. Like an eclipse bathing the world in dull amber or a funeral shawl drawn over pulled shut eyelids, everything is transition, a darkness that too will abandon to greater forces of Science or God, some fictions spilled like carelessly poured whisky that burns like your craven blush of affection. The only truth is death, each flickering second a footstep toward the absence of breath, of faith, of love. May it eat me alive and spit out these tinder bones for the fallen’s inferno. Like you did. Like everyone does. At least then the pain will end. The body no longer able to scar. The mind no longer able to remember. The heart, thankfully, no longer able to beat.
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#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poetrycommunity #igwriters #collaboration #winter #forest #wintersun #sunlight #frozen #newengland #death
(at A Death)
All lights go out. Whether it’s approaching day mercifully silencing the hum of illumination or simply the filament, the incandescent heart, failing, all lights quit. Quitting. It connotes a decision made, a conclusion reached. If an end is inevitable, maybe giving up is the only control to be exercised. Stick with it and prolong suffering at the hands of fate, destiny, God or whatever fictions keep the nightmares of loneliness, of emptiness, away. Call it, fold the hand, walk away and at least there’s a clean snap, like bone, that can mend and heal. Alas, the heart ain’t bone. The heart is stubborn and flexible, it beats because that’s its job and the days pain-stretch on the hope of maybe, possibly, with any luck. But it’ll stop, see? It’ll quit whether told to or not. The brave keep it going, like a sun hidden behind the sternum, a glowing, fiery, astral carnivore of darkness trying desperately to guide otherwise blind travelers through impossible nights, out of crushing depths. Yet someday even stars die, spew supernova rainbows into the wonder firmerment and gleam like celestial scars, reminders of massive histories, hard-won-and-then-lost loves. Beautiful. A dream of destruction and heavenly yearning sated, but inevitable in conclusion. All lights go out. All fires stop burning. All passions wane. But everything leaves a scar. And those last a long, long time.
#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poetrycommunity #igwriters #lensflare #streetlight #snow #newhampshire #dovernh #nighttime #evening #winter (at Dimming)
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.
#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poetrycommunity #igwriters #woods #forest #newhanpshire #dovernh #sunset #dusk #winter #goldenlight (at Eulogized)
A careless fire, this blister-founded lust chews mercilessly through the dogeared days of apart; of longing for one another in the soft glow of morning, before the hard shadows retreat and stretch and the fight of hours quake minds preoccupied with petty things, the digressions, the supposedly important tasks of responsible souls with rents, loans, the odd piece of material nonsense that drags like a lifeless body through unstirred woods, picking up pieces of flim and flam and weighing it all down, an anchor to free living and immovable even with the most ferocious of tugs pull, pull, pulling with the tenacity of Helios and his solar chariot, a deus ex machina of failure to unshackle from the torture rocks crack, crack, cracking but never breaking, uncrumbling, resistant to this blissful ardor arousing senses and grand seas of emotion that flood, capped and crest-waving, the threaded clouds of belonging mixed with the brine of release, the saltsweat stinging on tongues and the tidal wash of such smooth imaginings, like polished stones, a communion bathed in alter wine and somewhere He laughs, the grand joke of distance, of years and miles, such cruelty that the afflicted lose their blessings, cower under parchments consumed with blast furnace passions. Alone they wish for answers, their begging like snowflakes on their tongues, the taste of each appeal as cold and vanished as their constant goodbyes. It’s twin-soul yearning, this filament illuminating, heating, bringing light where darkness governs; a plea like a star fallen from a galaxy. “See us? We are light. Together we are home apart from Your design.” And the dark, weakened by their rapture, surrenders, a light-year devotion blinding the scared and empowering the dreamers, the lovers, us.
#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poetrycommunity #igwriters #forest #woods #trees #winter #snow #snowstorm #blizzard #noreaster #winterstorm #newengland #newhampshire #dovernh (at New Star)
A careless fire, this blister-founded lust chews mercilessly through the dogeared days of apart; of longing for one another in the soft glow of morning, before the hard shadows retreat and stretch and the fight of hours quake minds preoccupied with petty things, the digressions, the supposedly important tasks of responsible souls with rents, loans, the odd piece of material nonsense that drags like a lifeless body through unstirred woods, picking up pieces of flim and flam and weighing it all down, an anchor to free living and immovable even with the most ferocious of tugs pull, pull, pulling with the tenacity of Helios and his solar chariot, a deus ex machina of failure to unshackle from the torture rocks crack, crack, cracking but never breaking, uncrumbling, resistant to this blissful ardor arousing senses and grand seas of emotion that flood, capped and crest-waving, the threaded clouds of belonging mixed with the brine of release, the saltsweat stinging on tongues and the tidal wash of such smooth imaginings, like polished stones, a communion bathed in alter wine and somewhere He laughs, the grand joke of distance, of years and miles, such cruelty that the afflicted lose their blessings, cower under parchments consumed with blast furnace passions. Alone they wish for answers, their begging like snowflakes on their tongues, the taste of each appeal as cold and vanished as their constant goodbyes. It’s twin-soul yearning, this filament illuminating, heating, bringing light where darkness governs; a plea like a star fallen from a galaxy. “See us? We are light. Together we are home apart from Your design.” And the dark, weakened by their rapture, surrenders, a light-year devotion blinding the scared and empowering the dreamers, the lovers, us.
#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #instawriter #writersofig #poetsofig #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #microfiction #poetrycommunity #igwriters #forest #woods #trees #winter #snow #snowstorm #blizzard #noreaster #winterstorm #newengland #newhampshire #dovernh (at New Star)
It’s all owed to you. The carry and sacrifice and the frightening tear of nature that untethers life from your own, like planets spun from suns. You, that sun, that center around which we orbit, sing and dance. How you are loved. Don’t you know? Regardless of the way we drift, as if comets loosed from your tenacity, the return is inevitable. Forever connected, your pull rivals gravity and denies physics. Say “I love you” and the heart blossoms in a way no lover can nurture, no friend can prop up, no journey to the sea can impress. Whatever seed this all sprouted from, there’s your gracious illumination and limitless patience feeding the breach of soil and embrace of life. How you perform miracles! How you foster and enchant, your care the template for affection to be followed closer than any book’s law. Your allowance builds magnificent arrogance in the face of nature. Your permission grants progress and endeavor. Your practice is divinity governing over the success and failure of every day’s cycle of breath. Celebrated and ignored, loathed and awarded, embraced and forgotten, time cannot refute connection even if biology plays no part in this great theater. Sire nothing from your own womb – be a man if that’s fate’s gambit – but mother, for the root feeds our splayed fingers grasping for fistfuls of tomorrow. We are born starving and fed hope, a debt never expected to be repaid, but instead are imprinted to teach through our own informed hearts. We love because you did, our stars proving there’s light in the dark of forever.
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Sincerest respect and love to every mom of every type out there. If you nurture, this one is for you. But especially you, @ssblueseyes. Not just today, but every day.
#poem #poetry #writing #writer #poetic #creativewriting #igwriters #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #igpoems #mobileartistry #mothersday #mother #ocean #sea #beach #shore #dawn #sunrise #child #winter #snow #latergram (at Origin)
There’s a home in that sky,
Blessed and cotton dream-like
Where ribs aren’t broken
And poking from the deep cuts made
By their gilded edges.
They try to trap these secrets
These small madnesses that lay silent
As dormant volcanoes,
Apparent but ignored.
Small cities of hope spring from within
Looking up with reverence
To an unfurling Heaven,
And futures as improbable
As the permanence of these lands.
Pristine clean white bone
Like the snow and fallen ash
Freeze and choke ideals, hope, love;
It can’t be allows.
Find the strength in the firm grasp,
The taut muscle shaped by each coming year
And battle the break, the snap, the failure
Of these gray cloud minds
That echo the sky only when
Day mutes shadow
And eye unshielded stare straight into tomorrow
Viewing rusting bridges,
Cracked roads,
Fallen buildings
Laid to ruin by unleashed nature.
We are born weeds.
We will continue on.
Thriving in our reach for an elusive sun
That rises forever tomorrow
Yet steals today of joy.
Please fight.
Rest, mend, heal.
Listen, be vigilant and on guard.
Hold sticks as swords
And perry ghost thoughts
Haunting each crooked threat
That eyes and mind allow.
Stay calm and your Vesuvian fate
Can starve while your heart grows
In the enriched soil of knowing
Love, self, good fortune.
And from behind the scarred cage
It will beat stronger
Staring at skies of daring blue,
The color of youthful eyes
Shaded with faith.
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#poem #poetry #writing #writer #literary_imagery1 #poetry_addicts #poetic #poet #words #igpoetry #forest #woods #winter #son #boy #child #kid #innocent #wonder #hope #love #snow #ice #gray (at Fight)
The dream of the sky vanished. A coin toss lost, it’s unwise to look back as the fog obscures the straight lines of our history into a confused monochrome tangle of deadwood. Dried and brittle, cracked and coated with the sins of Winter, it’s enough. The eyes have seen enough and search ahead because there’s a world in death losing to relentless gray behind. Soon even the totems will dissolve as if shipwrecks joining seabed. The overnight stay ten years to the day, the New Year’s of unexpiring lust, the sands of the empty beach caught in toes, the ribbon-cutting, the falling snow of last rites, the call of action, the busy sterility of his arrival. The joy and union. The look and laugh. The caress and curl. All the whispers of affection now without echo. Lost to the nature of a merciless season. Faded photographs, we wilt, lose definition and flake under the winds of new life, scattered to places far afield from where we’d taken root, strove together for the sky, and failed.
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#poem #poetry #writing #writer #literary_imagery1 #poetry_addicts #poetic #poet #words #igpoetry #forest #woods #branches #winter #gray #death #sadness #trees #sky #clouds #fog (at The Rot)
Draw the wind in as breath, filling the lungs of this broken land, feeding the underground with a chill that threatens to seize all life. It’ll just freeze – death is too merciful – and eyes become frozen puddles staring into the turbulent gray, trapped in a purgatory longing for warmth. Bring back budding youth, the curious play of clumsy advances and the quickened pulse accompanying first touch, first kisses, first satisfied sighs. Entwined in a summer of fertile gifts, borne of adoration and respect, the sun retreats suddenly, unexpectedly, a brachial shock emptying health. Stasis remains, along with the trace of better seasons, love that breathed. #tree #branches #winter #sky #storm #clouds #leaves #backlight (at Empty Breaths)