she says to him, “i want to have your puppies.”
she’s the dream that you cannot wake up out of, the name stitched underneath your tongue. and you wish you could hold her, you wish you could open her up. you want to find where all the passion comes from, how it pours out of her, even when she sleeps. how her eyes pierce you suddenly, nail you into place, make you swollen and hard and urgent and forgetful of all the tenderness you’ve mustered.
he says to her, “i’m not some sort of animal, really i’m not.”
and she laughs, “oh baby, but ain’t you just meant to be?”
All posts by manny@savo.us
bespeak of
To speak of generations. Yes begin at that. To speak of the leatherwounds so careful, like fingerfeathers along the brim, along the beachthroat, before choking, before breathing. I felt so much of some other place other than here, other than the sound of bones hammered for marrow being sucked out, being beaten out. Yes, somewhere at that, between the vocal chords and the trachea, just before breathing, before the chestrise, the bellydescent, before I forget every reasonbeing, every nuancestrand of this one moment more. Of you with your jawsnap, of your colorsleeve, forgotten, so many times over forgotten along the shore.
the summer wanes
the nights inch their way up your spine, they tingle and whisper and sweep across your eyes. as the summer draws to a close, it’s the heat that first leaves. it chills and you never notice it until you step in the void it has left. suddenly, like a promise never kept. you laugh, where did the summer go? where has all the heat gone? you settle down on the bench, hands on your knees. so foolish, you shake your head. there’s night on the horizon and it’s coming for you. and the fall, and further still, the winter. full of ice and snow and hard wind. even then, even with all the dead leaves, something of this left, something of this that will never leave. and the summer goes without ever saying goodbye.
and here the beast
and here the beast remembers all things
here the beast scratches out its trail here
the beast lives in the past and in the present
here the beast lives in all our lives here the beast
makes everything suffer in its path
here the beast stupidly plods along here the beast ruts
amongst the trees here the beast defecates
on everything it has given birth to
here the beast licks our wounds to its satisfaction
here the beast is caught
here the beast begs
here the beast suffers like never before
here the beast goes down
here the beast gets mounted
on your wall there the beast is
forgotten
hot damn, he says
hot damn, he says, let’s give it all away, he starts peeling off his tie and his shirt. he isn’t much to look at, but the shirt is nice and the tie is of the highest quality.
come right up, one day only! he shouts. he scrambles for a milk crate to stand on and while shuffling to and fro he fumbles off his shoes, a sock, tosses them into the sky. italian, with tassles. last year’s but he had barely broken in the sole.
hot damn, he says, i’m just giving it all away today, and with that he unbuckles and whips the belt out with his left hand. it’s a bit awkward but he manages to swing it over his head like a lasso once or twice before he lets go of it.
so of course you know what’s coming next! he smiles, licking his lips, he looks absolutely terrible now, standing with one black sock on, the other off, pale white ankle, so vulnerable, so weak, so exposed.
you know it people, he grimaces trying to unbutton the inner button of his pants, the one he never knew what it was for but he gets to it, and strips them off, pants and briefs all in one go, and he’s laughing hysterically.
hot damn, he says and he swings them over his head again, this time with his right hand because it’s easier that way, he should’ve known.
it’s really not all that bad, he says, choking on his own laughter, swing his clothing over his head, gyrating his hips as if he was in a hula hoop, hot damn it ain’t half bad now is it?
i dont know if i can anymore
once rambunctious, its down to the filaments, to tethers and frayed ropes. hanging by a thread or just hanging. dont expect me to sit there and watch you hang yourself, i was never into that kind of sport and frankly i find it boring. self mutilation is boring, self loathing is interesting to a point as long as there is some sort of redemption to go with it. but out and out masturbatory self-destruction, the kind that’s all tease and no delivery? no thanks, been there, done that, was once even the star of the show.
living is fucking hard. living with all the fucked up perceptions and paranoia and wild thoughts and incessant beckoning of the void is hard. that’s interesting. that’s the rabbit hole worth going down into. to be like that in a world this messed up. to be skin raked by barbed wire and douse yourself in the piss of this world and still, somehow still, write fucking poetry, shoot fucking film, do fucking whatever, to fucking go about the business of making art in the face of this shit, in the face of your own despair and the ugliness of the people around you.
that’s the good stuff. that’s the stuff worth living for. just to spit it in their fucking faces.
bee stung underfoot
it flew up right into her tiny foot and she panicked she said ow ow ow and it was stuck between the sandal and her sole and it stung the crap out of her she yelped in pain her bottom lip quivering you poor thing and i looked at her face i said let me look at your face and i was looking for swelling i was looking to see if she could still breathe and i asked her can you talk to me can you breathe and i was sure she didnt understand the question but she nodded anyway so brave up in my arms holding her so tight trying to calm her down so brave her lip still quivering ow ow ow and hugging me tight to make it go away i couldn’t take away the pain but i could make sure she could breathe i could make sure it would be alright
done stuff
all this journal writing and copying journal notes from the past and i completely forgot the done stuff, the reading stuff, the stuff i was proud of, the stuff i would read at readings. dear sweet lord, how did i forget to put in any of that?
all this practice
all this practice, all this saying, all this scrambling about. god i need a cigarette, it’s been so long. how many days now? three? four? it’s hard to tell here, they do little to keep us in track, they do much keep us from knowing. first they blocked out the windows so we couldn’t tell if it was day or night, but i tried to follow my own internal clock. waking and sleeping and marking the cinderblock during the intervals. who knows how off i had gotten during that first week. they just took us of our cells and repainted the walls.
… blech, i did this already with How it Was
always and forever
always and forever is just that, always always always. loving you always until forever, until the skin grows old, until the bones turn to dust. forever spinning outward through time, my limbs entwined in yours, my hand perpetually on your cheek, looking at eyes that look at mine as if for the first time. there have been such rocks before us, jagged and uneven, such rough patches of road where there appeared no respite. and yet here we are. five years later, over a decade later, here we are, still struggling to make this right, still finding something worthy, again and again, everyday, to say to each other gladly and without hesitation, always and forever, forever and always.