sirenize

 

sirenize

 

a sea, a sea of freckles and it is between them i wish to trace your mythology through my tongue, to bring forth your sparkle the way you cast out all my dark. fingers dabbling in the wet i leave behind and if you and i have a name by then we’ll reimagine ourselves a thousand times. unhurried revolutions i will part your sphere of flesh and take you to a depth of essence you never thought you’d find. be mine. i want to gaze upon you nightly and know something in this great expanse makes sense and is all for me.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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apple

 

apple

 

what does your sleeve feel like? i imagine it must be so warm. autumn flashes her teeth and you hide your arms under layers, so when i bare my vulnerabilities why do you not take the same care? wine tasting like all couples do this time of year except i’m five fingers short of holding your hand. you’re fawning over nuances lathering your tongue and i’ve got jesus christ and blood in my mouth and neither blesses me save the sunglasses secreting my eyes and a checklist of varietals into which we feign our interest as we have done nearly every day spent together. laugh it off, it’s okay, we’ll wash our hands the way we rinse our throats of grapes but i fear we are thinner than those cups keeping sparse water and my pant legs are still damp from eight seasons ago (when i started counting). within me there is a flesh so ripe and tender that you’ve allowed to sit atop the counter until the worm got to its core. i see only my face at the bottom of this glass, not your eyes i am void of or that fuzzy sweater i wish you’d rub me across to remind me i still shine.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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steak

 

steak

 

i take it, masticate between jaws until temples throb and consternation leaks between teeth, and still the nerve of you there, hard like rock that knows no footfall, memory woken to you but gone the way smoke from flame, chew and chew and chew while throat beseeches relief from the fire valley, and something dies in order to serve so you char the guilt and fat and all semblance of sense from the rebuttals resting on the block, and my mouth should water but my eyes cry over excessive vowels and grill time. a napkin waits not so far away as i nod compliantly, desiring to discard you into linen bowels, but i’m full of sinew and leather and the thought you can kill anything that moves.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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philocaly

 

philocaly

 

i know november by the way wet leaves fill my ribs and how a sinking sun takes more than it gives and when that dark funnel of crows goes churning i dream i’m their last center spark of bright before sweep of day flees. eyes set shallower in my head than before and while there’s no shame admitting my door slowly shuts i prefer to think i’m transitioning. the cynic points out the false show at my feet and sure all has collapsed but where else has the end seemed so sublime. it’s like my insides have turned out and i’m kicking bones instead of stones in search of something irrefutable in whatever i might leave behind. finally found and with a new wind gone, gone. only venus is sage enough to figure i don’t belong here. yet here i return.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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trauma

 

trauma

 

when i didn’t like it, i’d cross it out, when it didn’t go my way i’d scribble it a hundred times until self tore and the pen fell through, smeared smiles and rehearsed lines and i’d be alright cause mom said i’d grow out of it, well now i’m up and out and fallen into something else, they all believe i’m alright as evidenced by the ascending notches along my height chart, i pleaded until coke turned to sprite, why worry my parents with carcinogenics stalking the gums when i could pass silently reading the scars on flipped hands, don’t fret your pretty head or stagger that fleeing footfall of pity asunder, i’ve chosen ink over poison now, it leaves quite the mess, i pray you’ll recover my notebooks once i’ve moved on, the guilt of many many missing sheets corroding your teeth like the soft guidance and kool-aid  you forced on me as a kid when all i asked for was the clarity of a glass of water.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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serotinal

 

serotinal

 

the warmth flees above my head on two wings and an itinerary i’m left to question. was hope held steady-handed or burst breathlessly through the gate secure in the knowledge i’d not be boarding. stuck up my nose the stench of fresh cut grass but no one seems to grieve these corpses. oh, they’ll come back, so the blade makes it painless and easy to wait on what has been taken to fill back in. days expire quicker now, this turn of my heart more prickled than before. but i’ve long sleeves in case faith dips at night along with the common sense to realize my bourbon and booze will not run out quicker than you have. this pocket of charm i sit in, full of rubbing legs and soulful beaks, does its best to remind me it will all be just fine. and who am i to question their wisdom. so i raise my snifter first to air then to this awful nothing that’s been nesting my chest. i swear even the leaves turn their backs to my eyes now. deep within what moves me, i know a bleak winter awaits. another sip, another more. i close my lids to the jets i am not aboard and the slow rounding logic shorn things sometimes grow back greater.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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new edition of Dusk and Summer

Yesterday (November 1) marked the start of pancreatic cancer awareness month and with it the 3^rd edition release of my novella ‘Dusk and Summer.’ I wrote this in 2008 and after a number of years, the publishing rights have reverted back to me. And so now I share it with you! Trust me, you will not read another story quite like this. I’ll be donating a portion of proceeds from my book to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer research in honor of my father.

 

‘Does Heaven await beneath the waves? One man needs to know.

 

When his dying father whispers a cryptic message to him, he has no choice but to summon his courage and begin the quest for a lifetime. It’s a race against time to realize his father’s wish and fulfill his own destiny; it’s a discovery of the unbreakable bond between father and son. It’s a journey of the heart that unfolds where only the Chosen exist – in the moments between Dusk and Summer.’

 

click here to purchase Dusk and Summer.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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boardwalk

 

boardwalk

 

slowly i say goodbye to summer, to the sheen of sun slipping down limbs and to hopeful magenta brushstrokes across september sky, whimsical reminders we can find our way back. so it begs to be asked back to what, the sparkle and glimmer of your mind, the lazy low tide of your thoughts or the shoals that keep secrets begging to be gathered before the fickle moon employs its pull. if you were a shell i’d hold you to my ear and wait until you collapsed into my name like you used to do. but we’re both split between personalities and circumstance and veils and truth be told i’m nearing my thinnest. i want you spread across me like sunscreen. i want you atop me like tan into my pores. it hurts that just as your fingers drag along my burning notions you turn jack frost again. as if i haven’t suffered long enough i now dread the same slow turning of the leaves. it seems a long time ago i was handed three darts for five dollars to go win a prize. now still with the taste of vanilla ice cream and warm waffles spun like a ferris wheel at the back of my throat, i can watch the season shift coldly away and you can go on throwing holes into my heart for free.

 

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘From My Front Steps,’ ‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

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grievous

 

grievous

 

steady hands but the keener eye spots the tremble straight off. there’s no shame in a spot of liquid courage. the fallacy is that it keeps muscles from reverberating. truth is it rids the shit from the stench of giving less than anything that was ever returned. to some degree i love you all but you’ve given me nothing worth collecting save for painful life lessons and a bitter aftertaste from the karma leaked down from my head. i won’t miss any of you. there’s crumpled photographs and empty envelopes and christmases full of sitting at a table feeling i was april fools. clearly it explains why i chose rabbit holes to stain my palms and took comfort against the dismissive cool of a bottle. comfort finds you through the seduction of understanding, which is why a whore will win your world with a smile and a priest hurries along her last moan of redemption. there is something nothing short of utter anguish knowing i’ll pass on some day one half of my whole while no one remotely close to me ever recognized a fraction to the sum of my parts. do not cry for me. i’ll not allow my name on your tongue. understand this is all well thought out. the sinews quiver not from fear but the jolt of realization i am finally free of you all.

 

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‘FROM MY FRONT STEPS‘

now available on Amazon

 

#barflypoet

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© Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

 

‘Scotch and Scars’ and ‘A Distilled Spirit’ in paperback and Kindle ebook at Amazon.

subscribe to the audio barflypoet YouTube channel https://tinyurl.com/y2stm5ms