nothing was and is ever enough. not promises, not kisses, not even blood. talking in the dark a solitary lamp in the corner that could have been hundreds of miles of away. passion spent, the nausea of the inevitable, the beckoning night laced with roads leading away from everything. I pull on this cigarette with a desire that my body can only suffer.
All posts by manny@savo.us
believer
there is a wound i’ve tended to for a very long time. full of pus, a sore that could not heal. and i poured vinegar and salt on it to keep it from healing. but the wound reached outward and split open the lips of people that i love and i found myself weeping as if i had been the victim when the truth was that i was the cause of it all. she reaches out to me in the dark because she needs me to believe. and in the dark i hold her to learn how to be someone to believe in.
make peace with the bones
you make peace with the bones or they make peace with you. you need to settle dust and learn to breathe because this moment of clarity is fleeting and before long you will be in the harsh light again.
reminiscence over and again
months later he realized why he could never let go of the sensation that he had already met her. he had: in a different place, a different time. and she had destroyed him then, broke open the world and revealed it all for what it was. she had taught him the second lesson, the first being handed down to him from his father. he had become estranged to it all at that point, a violent trembling that had racked through his body and he had been so terribly cold that his teeth had chattered in the spring sun. the last lesson would be the one he taught to himself, the turning away without stopping.
all that has been written on you, will happen again, and by your very own hand.
the walking man
i don’t know who the man is, where that particular voice comes from. i don’t know if he means me harm or does me good. but he comes, every so often, this hardened voice, this voice with no compromise or remorse. steady but thick like gravel. he knows all pain because he’s seen and lived through too much of it. i only know that he comes around from time to time to steady me, when i feel like a lost boy in search of his mother. he reminds me there are no mothers for men like us, there are no siblings, no family, no hope. he reminds me that ultimately everything is a choice, our loves, our friends, our words, and the choice is solely mine. then he goes, disappears into the ether, into the dark part of my mind where all the demons need tending. he disappears back into the woodwork and i move on.
you abandon this
you abandon this, like everything else. you leave things. undone, wrecked or even barely begun. works in progress, works of incompletion. walked away, without stopping, without ever turning back. with the sense that all that you’ve left behind is a narrow road of despair.
suicide math
not a day goes by where i do not calculate the math of my suicide. i tally 401k’s and savings accounts, i estimate funeral homes and burial plots. i pour over the fine print of insurance policies and the period before the dispersal of funds. and even in death, i still come out up short. the sum of it, or rather the difference is, ultimately my family cannot afford my death, cannot afford for me to pay what is truly owed.
valentine’s day massacre
i expect no valentine’s, i expect no promises. i’ve broken every one i have ever made, i’ve been broken down into unrecognizable parts. i sift through joints and fissures, i misalign and fail. nothing fits. i no longer fit. i am trying, i am still irrevocably broken, off set, a juxtaposition of betrayal, of something once human, once tender. i am hysteria and rage, i am the drowning thing out of the sea and gasping for relief. i’ve run out of denials, i draw strength from losing time, i draw strength from my time being short. i expect no valentine’s, i expect vengeance, i am pleading to be judged and rendered.
valentine's day massacre
i expect no valentine’s, i expect no promises. i’ve broken every one i have ever made, i’ve been broken down into unrecognizable parts. i sift through joints and fissures, i misalign and fail. nothing fits. i no longer fit. i am trying, i am still irrevocably broken, off set, a juxtaposition of betrayal, of something once human, once tender. i am hysteria and rage, i am the drowning thing out of the sea and gasping for relief. i’ve run out of denials, i draw strength from losing time, i draw strength from my time being short. i expect no valentine’s, i expect vengeance, i am pleading to be judged and rendered.
surface skin
I’m dead on the surface but I’m screaming underneath. – Coldplay, Amsterdam
and i wake out of storms to find the surface tension of your skin taut along the palm of my hand the beat of drum whose rhythm i ignored because i countered it with my own the echo space that mimics silence but explodes into grace