so he scratches at the dream for the dream the way sick men do their lesions to get the blood out to get the poison out he scratches feverishly to escape what he has built to bring himself and them and all that he loves into a better place better than what he is made of but all he finds all he is left with after he’s taken the last set of crumpled one dollar bills out his pocket is colorful pieces of perforated cards promising nothing other than the scratching itself
All posts by manny@savo.us
abandon
the night, the night. it beckons me, promises me anonymity, a safe haven to forget everything, to disappear. she asks, is it really that easy to leave us, to leave all of us behind? i pull from my cigarette and sadly smile, that’s why i’m still here. and to speak it makes me dust, to breathe it reveals i was never the man she thought i was. i was never half a man at all.
make a world like this
you make a world like this. you breathe, you open your eyes, you reach out. into the void, grasp onto to something, anything, make it what you will. it begins with desire and pain. a longing for to heal, to cross the rift between her and there. you might never arrive, but you need to leave to get anywhere.
she has endured
she says to me, i’m afraid that you might be faking it.
and i feel tendrils snake out from under my ribs and clench around my neck and smother my mouth until i choke and a current shoots through my spine and i secretly pray that one day i suffer like she has, that I whip myself into the same torment she has endured.
i now am, am now
i can do this, i ‘ve done this a million times, in a million different lives. night air crisp, walking through the canyon streets, she asks, have you killed yourself before? and i lie, i lie holding her hand, i lie as i put a wrinkled dollar into the hat of the jazzman playing on the corner. i lie as we turn corners and watch beggars sift through the city’s garbage, so clean of life, of anything edible. i lie down in the morning and feel the sun etch angry fingers across my face. our daughter leaps into bed while my son cries from another room, cradle stranded. she asks, fingering open my red red eyes, are you alive daddy? reaching for the curve of my wife’s hip, i now am. i am now.
mundanity
chicksaw and rapture, a divine tuning of the senses, of taste, of hearing, of touch: all the things you cannot see, that she cannot see, that he cannot imagine. a wind howls through me, leaves my mouth gaping open until the lips stretch over the teeth and the tongue dries. unbelievable, like christ traveling across the world while his body rots in a cave. men dig my neighbor’s yard, they pull thick yellow cables under and through the ground raising the amperage, more pulses for the dead heart of this town. sitting beside me she says while fingering the splinters of the bench on our porch, did you ever expect this, did you ever dream? choking i reply, i stopped dreaming the minute he died.
dream home
he falls into sleep with his children in his arms and his wife by his side. he awakes, startled but rested. in the dark she whispers, you are home, you’ve always been welcomed home.
grave robber
as she fingers the roots shot through her ribs, she wonders if it was a question of need or circumstance, the dying of petals, the swallowing of over-ripened seeds. and from her belly sprung out mischievous cattle that ate upwards the soot and mulch breaking a surface into the sun. beside her grave, he runs his hand over winter hardened grass and pricks his fingers with the memory.
ares rc.firewall.local
#!/bin/sh
# Used for private firewall rules
# See how we were called.
case “$1” in
start)
## add your ‘start’ rules here
# COPFILTER START – do not modify
/etc/rc.d/init.d/copfilter_proxsmtpd config_fwrules
# COPFILTER END – do not modify
### planetary / mage
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPOSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.3 -o eth1 -j SNAT –to-source 72.68.153.10
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPOSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.4 -o eth1 -j SNAT –to-source 72.68.153.12
### apple youtube fix
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d iphone-wu.apple.com -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d gdata.youtube.com -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d fgpq.vp.video.l.google.com -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d vp.video.google.com -j ACCEPT
### citibank
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d .citibank.com -j ACCEPT
;;
stop)
## add your ‘stop’ rules here
# apple youtube fix
/sbin/iptables -t nat -F CUSTOMPREROUTING
;;
reload)
$0 stop
$0 start
## add your ‘reload’ rules here
### planetary / mage
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPOSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.3 -o eth1 -j SNAT –to-source 72.68.153.10
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPOSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.4 -o eth1 -j SNAT –to-source 72.68.153.12
### apple youtube fix
/sbin/iptables -t nat -F CUSTOMPREROUTING
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d iphone-wu.apple.com -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d gdata.youtube.com -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d fgpq.vp.video.l.google.com -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d vp.video.google.com -j ACCEPT
### citibank
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A CUSTOMPREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -d .citibank.com -j ACCEPT
;;
*)
echo “Usage: $0 {start|stop|reload}”
;;
esac
love twine
deny it all you want: desire lingers like a stain. years go by and there’s no erasing it, a scar on the skin that only fades but turns a brilliant white in the sun. i tried to turn away from you out of fear, out of an imagined loneliness only to find myself in you. shattered meat, a ghost of a man, held together by your belief, your religious tenacity to never let us go.