Jason Santo:
The unborn hopes of a future came to them as a child from the clouds. Arms spread and hovering benevolently over the still waters of their present, they stared in awe, hands held tight for the first time since their trouble began. "Is it possible this cou
Jason Santo:
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 i
Jason Santo:
Be my moon. Be my guide in the grain of dark. I can move with you, baby. We can milk the evening of song and breathe in unison under your glow. There's home ahead, in the confused tangle of circumstance and failure. Light the way, baby. Find a way to brin
Jason Santo:
One day the color of your soul will catch up to you. And you'll burn in the fires of hate you deserve. You'll be wrapped in the yellows, reds and oranges of disdain and the simple pleasures you robbed from trust will peel away skin revealing the black hol
Jason Santo:
I am the fire king, nourished on tendrils of burning loss. Smoke animating my shuddering presence, I dance to the rhythm of misfortune and scare hope away, tearing into dreams with a carrion-stained beak reeking of swallowed torment. Yet I starve here in
Jason Santo:
A million fall. Swept up in moments too grand for their tenuous grip on where they'd grown, they catch gusts of passion, take flight, and inevitably tumble. Lost roots, lost security and familiarity, their descent plays against myriad others littering day
Jason Santo:
To Justin on the occasion of your third birthday. I need to tell you, son: I love you in ways so unique they sometimes frighten me. Your smile sometimes makes my eyes water, partially from pride and partially from a longing to be good enough to deserve
Jason Santo:
Adjacent to useless in the dead of frozen light, a cold slab of granite unworthy of a headstone or the pause for which it was crafted. Mistaken placement, or perhaps context changed, avenues widening as interests tangled, branches extending into the choke
Jason Santo:
There's something to this. Lost moments reconstructed in artifice. The too hard attempts at bringing beauty to shared moments. Nature is throttled into presence as behaviors are betrayed. No sunrise worshipped, but cathode bleed instead. Crop, edge, burn
Jason Santo:
Pinpoint eyelight in algae irises. Feral reflexes threaten the calm. Windows bar freedom but dispatch would bring death, so the battle is nature and we sit together at odds; roommates with claws drawn and accepted trust keeping war at bay. Fight or flight
Jason Santo:
I can touch Heaven, yet only believed in Hell. The mirror taught nothing, costumed in a pyre of disdain with eyes vacant of faith in anything but a deserved torment. "Burn," it would say. "Burn and know you earned this." And so my soul turned to ash, brit
Jason Santo:
Flush with beauty. Sun-kissed, body thriving. Dreams of Heaven's corridors, so close. So close. Falling. Sought and found. Careening bliss. Hunger exposed, appetite sated. Sweat and breath. Longing. Sleeplessness, worry stones heavy in stomach. Plummeting
Jason Santo:
Home. Where frustrations are familiar, the security of the well-known both comforting and restraining. A place littered with what's been taken for granted. Intimacies disbanded, seconds grow into weeks of solitude and confinement of hands and thoughts. Re
Jason Santo:
My sea is the sky - the crests of waves, clouds, the currents, turbulence. I'll scale fathoms, grip a handful of atmosphere and taste the salt of it in my palm before I ascend leagues to the depths of thickest blue, the threat of black surrounding every j
Jason Santo:
A ruby eclipse and the stuttering ghosts of a vernacular ill-equipped to combat solemn notions. Swig the crimson, toasting the grim light and allowing bellicose yearning to tear spirits from limbs, souls run into hot exposures where they burn like scalps
Jason Santo:
Countless dramas play beneath our sky scars, unseen worlds of disorder and routine, tugging souls into orbit and loosing them in a terrestrial dance echoing the great play of the cosmos. Uncaring, unaware, perhaps unwilling, ghost thoughts linger in the
Jason Santo:
Words fail. But that's what they always do. A sharp inadequacy, a demonstrated shortcoming where we can stand -long in light and hopeful - and still come up short. Where moments are pregnant with the impending birth of truth and we fumble, spilling stamme
Jason Santo:
Life stems from fire. All of it burns and dances its way through unrepentant Hellshade to grab hold of something glorious, a day's worship, the hour's promise and a minute's delight. The sky spills her desire, a flood of careless lust and the seas lick at
Jason Santo:
Keep going, kid. The old men with their medals polished, their uniforms pressed, pride worn as prominent as the folds of age lining their faces - they all smile at you. You're the home they fought for; you're the dream they hoped would be realized as thre
Jason Santo:
The clouds in the puddle. The sky if your mind. I'd give you everything, have given so much, but it's not enough. I tripped, fell flat on my face and saw the blood of my mistake spray across the finest dreams, tearing them from Heaven like discarded mobi
Jason Santo:
Every moment now is art. Passively letting days slip away unnoticed in the haze of disappointment and anger is yesterday's sin. Now the world bleeds onto my canvas by the hour. And I soak it in because the knife spreading its wound wider is this pain, the
Jason Santo:
I'm flight. I'm leaves torn by the season's gale, strewn on the asphalt of your path, your dream. Wasn't it such a betrayal, the rapid dissolution of cozy afternoons into the flee for company, the mothering of your troops. You always knew the war was com
Jason Santo:
My spirit exposed, a pin-hole camera recording the subtle striations left in mid morning's wake. Rays of beauty too slight for periphery sorrow, only unflinching hard attention - rebuked affection and a dilated heart. Can you see it? The smallest hint we'
Jason Santo:
Bent brick, rail thin, rationalized structure in a convex eye. Sinking fast with uproarious tragedies, the kind that allow laughter as echoing ghosts down close wet alleys. Shapes here and there, fleeting in the bounced orange leak of city light rolling o
Jason Santo:
Hang on. There will be harsh wind and cruel rain. Hang on because letting go will fade us like sun-stained newsprint, our story lost. Cling to me. Show nature your tenacity and weather each graceless intrusion, a sky crowded by the rolling cotton of mista
Jason Santo:
My fires burn the sky. They melt air, turning it to a confused tumult the color of an expiring sun. Tendrils of hope stretch for daydreams, but the chorus awakens with its homilies of a false prophet giving saccharine advice. "Heed your heart," he claims
Jason Santo:
Crisp, grey November. Flatter senses with the death of seasons, seducing with the tightened chill of truncated days. We bundle warm intentions, shoulders bunched and necks made stiff behind scarves of red, orange, brown and black. Candy love promises and
Jason Santo:
Hey. Shine a light on me. Hey, hey, son. Shine a light on me. I can't be down any lower than when my soul fell free, so hey! Shine a light on me. Know these days end as waves crashing on night's beach. Where time sticks like mud in the seabed's reach. Wh
Jason Santo:
The cold drove you away; the reality of winter hiding the sun's gifts, robbing the day of sweeter scents and bare skin. Huddled for a season, for a lifetime, we'll dream of longer days where words drifted languidly on humid air caressing our egos, our sex
Jason Santo:
Scattered angels litter ghost feathers, onionskin intention and the balance of hope. Searching for the craze of flesh, the drunken whirl of freedom, late nights and bold decisions seduce from shadows borne of daydreams. The quake of release teases each mo
