but who ever listens..? 'tiger' caution! do not put fingers or hands into the cage! yet you fail to heed the warning time and time again. it cannot help if you now lack the necessary digits to pound your discriminatory reports under its eyes or the common sense to keep from worming back into its head. incessant you ignored the cue from its rollbacked ears and still you brandish the nerve to curse the beast when it is only wont to do beast things. #barflypoet #josephapinto www.josephpinto.com © C...
Apr 04, 2023•31 sec
just leave the bottle… ‘proof’ weakness from an old injury. the broke breaks deeper than the disobedience of soul to bone. i’ve oft tried to mend myself with white cocktail napkins and while catching the spill they could never wipe the mess. there’s not much left but a photograph of us along michigan avenue. who knows if heaven exists but something beyond our capacity to reason raised our lips skyward that day and if you think i don’t still feel the phantom of your hands when pleasuring myself t...
Mar 21, 2023•50 sec
‘obvious metaphor’ though pretty the dandelions choke and kill the lawn. #barflypoet #josephapinto www.josephpinto.com © Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved. * 'From My Front Steps,' 'Scotch and Scars' and 'A Distilled Spirit' poetry collections available in paperback and ebook on Amazon.
Mar 17, 2023•8 sec
‘appreciation’ a devil’s deal for love heart freely ripped gnarled vines replacing fruitless eyes rust weeping emaciated clouds sun refuge shovel, he handed break soil, he spoke, only now can you appreciate drought. #barflypoet #josephapinto www.josephpinto.com © Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved. * 'From My Front Steps,' 'Scotch and Scars' and 'A Distilled Spirit' poetry collections available in paperback and ebook on Amazon....
Mar 09, 2023•28 sec
'lorn' good god almighty, you widen my eyes with clandestine grandeur, salve my tongue as vessel to your unknowable ways…only to rob me lost of true fervor, my faith upon my knees before eternal night, pregnant above my ashen countenance in bedeviling possibilities? #barflypoet #josephapinto www.josephpinto.com © Copyright Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved. * 'From My Front Steps,' 'Scotch and Scars' and 'A Distilled Spirit' poetry collections available in paperback and ebook on Amazon....
Mar 07, 2023•21 sec
'lacuna' still waiting here, a blue without horizon, an awful gale without wind to blow. your name about the corners in reflective manifestations, none the direction from where we came. keeping the posture when the rain falls teeming down, the realization tread water means one has since drowned. and when the sun dries the sodden mess it leaves me feeling worse. at best. no more skipping puddles or reimagined clouds with a picket fence. hands fill the pockets but nothing overflows my heart the wa...
Feb 22, 2023•49 sec
'euthanasia' recognition, spoken through your eyes. i heard you and maybe someday someone will hear me too. years spent like seconds. i woke before ready. a long walk before i tied my shoes. spirit moves along without care to pack and even slipping you filled my arms with more than they could hold. i want you back i want you back i want you back. there’s no rushing from the house early mornings anymore. no burst of light greeting me through the door. #barflypoet #josephapinto www.josephpinto.com...
Jan 31, 2023•39 sec
'whelve' my father kept many tools i never knew how to use. little boy hands still feel little boy in adult bones. remarkably he transferred his sins into the soil of all my pores but to this day i can’t fix a thing. when he moved on i took his toolbox heavy as all the burdens he never spoke a word of and just as cool. in a side room off from my basement he waits to be mended but i’ve closed him to the dark. i can smell his curses mushrooming like smoke from diesel stacks and his words linger lo...
Jan 18, 2023•1 min
‘pernoctation’ another then another more. so much time elapsed yet you’re home in all my minutes spent. there’s no keeping glass from lips the way i can’t alter your cells from my bones. another dark eve of legs’ serenade and what can i say i’m rubbed the wrong way by my angel’s promise of our dissolution of silence. i’ll wear this floor thin, your voice and the songs i loop for you commanding my head. the house nor the crickets rearrange their patterning to my noise and that’s when i suffer in ...
Jan 11, 2023•1 min
'pneumatophany' there are five stages to grief and i’ve got two hands, ten fingers. wiggle them fast enough and it’s goodbye. i told my mother i had died. she said that’s nice and went about vacuuming the living from the room. from that point i didn’t trouble her to share the news. you have all scraped the value from my existence like burnt edges from toast anyway. pass something through flame and it’s either transformed or destroyed. why then do you pity the ashes while the new chassis denied? ...
Dec 13, 2022•1 min
'sciamachy' and will we be? and will we be? and will we be? and what will we be, aside the nothing we are. round and round slaughtering the sheep and perhaps i’d sleep had not blood steeped this bed. sliver of moon about the only thing cutting this head open to rationale. settle in, and down, and dream, guides say from beyond the veil and i would had they left instruction. instead crickets rub their legs with a scratch above more than i can bear and punches thrown across the wall go ducked. i wa...
Nov 29, 2022•1 min
'corps' it’s never been about the good you have said but the supportive you haven’t. frayed on the inside, the diligence of tying ribbons round ribs like souls lost to war and never coming home. you wouldn’t know a thing of my patriotism in the teeth of your heavy fire. pockmarked soul the price of incoming shells and i’ll no longer be the outgoing saint i’d been. somewhere in those fields the mewl for momma while dulled surgeons and scissors fumble to cut the cord. you have failed me in such ep...
Nov 17, 2022•1 min
'thermal' between nest and sky you caught me at my weakest. advantageous you kept a suggestive mouth. cunning i filled it where the living no longer walk or speak and i despised the taste of myself whenever we kissed. you nourished my irresoluteness until fragility took to your words. i harbored resentment even as i worshipped your breasts. you never understood the rational that migratory and delusionary patterning would take me away. entertaining your flawed notion that all raised remains home,...
Nov 10, 2022•1 min
'ya’ aburnee' over and over, forced into me. be. just be. know no hour. no day. slip moments over your head like a well-worn sweater. i stand with no comfort. passing seconds make me feel no better. so dug soil percolates through my nose and here i know i will rest. eventually. your face shimmers in a glass in a palm in a mouth and all i cannot speak repeats from my gut through my heart out my soul again. i am dying without you witness to my withering. i suppose it’s all well off. animals expire...
Nov 03, 2022•1 min
'ma’goa' morning carries an inching mustiness from the eve before like a secreted child. hand in hand, i walk you to school. the cool dew has slicked the leaves and i’ve care where to step. merrily you chatter on and on, the waking blue jay only more resolute than you to be heard. a glaring bright the moon slipping from full and it seems so misplaced but your knowing palm becomes my sun. we cross the street together cause you’re so small the cars so fast and what needs slowing fled me when you w...
Oct 26, 2022•1 min
'drumsticks' clear-eyed from the distance but obviously you’ve not looked quite close enough. machine gun rat-a-tat-tat marring my whites like crows stealing ahead of october night. your words still catch my lungs and not even the waking wisps from neighbors’ chimneys can clear them out. slow or fast, my feet keep the rhythm of your pounding, a redundancy without regard to the resistance of massage from fingertips to sole once shoes kick away. and there they lay on the floor, my favorite pair an...
Oct 20, 2022•1 min
'cortisone' reflected in the glint, your face especially longer than the expanse of which i am used. hold still, big pinch coming and if ever in the history of understatements was there such a grander lie then i am at a loss. once upon another lifetime ago, my parents bought me a dog until mother decided she could not handle eyes imploring for care and so stage right exit left went dog and up across my face a new space for tragedy and cheap plastic acceptance. luckily i hid eyes imploring answer...
Oct 11, 2022•1 min
'helicopter' i must have lift. i must have a force moving me upward. but i’ve lacked it all, and all my life, the reminder of it a steady beat within my chest. whoomp whoomp whoomp whoomp i imagine a parade, a marching band, endless columns of feet with gum-stained soles and taut lips that should be smiling. i should be smiling, had i ever been taken to a parade, had my soles ever been allowed the mileage to step in gum. it rakes my ribs now, a prisoner with a tin cup and no matter the pleas for...
Oct 04, 2022•1 min
i've been reflecting on a good many things lately. so although i wrote this a year ago, this is as good a place to pick up where i left off as any... 'mirror' lately you’re the only one i turn to for truth. it’s not as often as i’m sure you’d like but it’s something and something counts. so many things get in my way and yeah you’ll say i’ll make excuses for hours. funny i know what’s coming spat from your throat and that makes it harder. but you’ve a way of waving your pungi and all the snakes i...
Sep 27, 2022•2 min
'ghostcore' it’s you and me and all left never said expired between us. it’s the drinks reanimating the fringe of lips and the abnegation that makes me drink them down. it’s the cool side of your cheek and the smart flash through mine. once i could raise the past without it haunting us. now it seems shadows stick where no wind blows. you persist spring buds from your tongue while the periwinkle signals my stay of sentence. destitute of vision i cry smoke, smoke but when have you ever stood close...
Aug 03, 2022•59 sec
'billiards' first error, believing my guise of patience to be a coat of acceptance. there’s a rack hung in my closet smelling of cover’s mistakenly judged and bargain buys. hey if it fits you wear it and i wear it worn without posture. from corners i see you circling like a shark. i might be bleeding but i’ve yet bled out. call me twisted but i’m head over heels with the notion you believe you call the shots. oh babe you carry the big stick and that’s well and fine because the words i set up per...
Jul 26, 2022•1 min
'anslutning' chitter chatter i’ve no part of and a mainstream bearing no inclusivity to my name. there where the paint hides flaws i find solace, side-skipping the shallower crevices into which my eyes won’t get lost. appearances are a thing so it makes sense now why certain fabrics scratched my skin. i hated layers but hated even more the peeling of self. downward glances and shut out all that other stuff like you’ll grow up and out of it one day. what if you don’t grow up and out of it one day...
Jul 14, 2022•1 min
'closet' today i am not quite sure what to wear so i will slip indifference over my head. it’s ill-fitting, yet another reminder i’ve put off discarding things i’ve so overgrown. all goes black as it crosses my eyes and if there’s anything the years have taught me it’s that it still squeezes around the neck. how i love to flash it before you, so garish, so proud. sadly it’s one of the few feats afforded that brings about the instant sterilization of my space. you’re so outdated, you are wont to ...
Jul 07, 2022•55 sec
'understanding' what you do with it is on you, i don’t give a fuck either way, i can’t polish the platter any brighter or embed it into your dna because your bones lack my matter. and why should it factor it comes delivered lacking white gloves when a bourboned tongue does just fine. true, i’ve won no points for style but i’ve always been one for neat palms and dirty knuckles. my father left his backhand imprinted upon my youth and so i aged fearing nothing. though as god is my witness i prayed ...
Jun 28, 2022•48 sec
'appeal' snap your eyes shut. open. keep me in that briefest of moments between peace and mottled dark. a luminous lulling that all is okay when it is not. my fingers full now until the winds empty the lot to which i’ve clutched. free picking for crows once bones lose their shelter, the clicking you hear my joints pointing the way. to where as lights descending, to where as distance grows. snap my eyes shut. open. i lose skin like seasons and raked as fast. demeanor a bridge between turn of noti...
Jun 07, 2022•46 sec
'asomatous' beset by shapes of smoke i drift through, above, beyond. twisted such as rope my hands, knots. all i touch, drifts, drifting. inside out i, open, spills, spilling backward to self. secrets like dogs e’er faithful waiting for walk, and walked, ne’er collared. sshh, angels talk, where, where trumpets blare in quiescent hearts of which no such beats ears know. grand void beckons, beckoning while apparitions of sham turn heads oh, was he ne’er e’er there? #barflypoet #josephapinto www.jo...
May 17, 2022•1 min
'dishwasher' some things require a sponge, some elbow grease and a good scrubbing. some things just find a way to pile up. take the dishes in this sink, for example. crusted over by food i never tasted. isn’t it a shame you took all that time to prepare a meal but not the care to season? presentation like a pageant queen but a poison pill upon the table. sure the meat is the perfect temperature but my flesh is still raw. you deny wrongdoing yet the well laid track of my shoes out the door says o...
May 10, 2022•1 min
'abscond' before your eyes, a snifter, a bottle, long draw from the neck, disparaging swallows so the expenditure of your vowels won’t dry your throat as bad, i’ve beat you to the punch, turned my insides inside out, you’ve nothing to invade but the invasion of self and know that violent clash within the recycling bin won’t carry my resonance, shatter like that of halloween bones and tricked twice as bad but the mask deflects the shards and yet leaves a sliver slit for further ingestion. #barfly...
Apr 26, 2022•32 sec
'golgotha' i knew you came to slay me. my tarot spoke such. across my altar i fanned your volatile air but my guides would not yet snuff our death. there, across our timeline, i finally recognized my flogging, the crown of dissolution upon my brow. stripped of all sincerity i once bestowed you, we marched parade to illusive golgotha. you hung me there between your present and past chimeras, denied me grief wetting wine. broke not legs but my chest. callous to nails, i endured only the betrayment...
Apr 14, 2022•1 min
'ledge' like a cool glass of water providing relief from the bowels of august, i can never get enough of that breeze bathing my skin so intimately unlike the callousness of your hands. throw up the sash and it’s all right there beyond me. the escape, the relief, the utter end. my father once scaled a step stool with such a haunted look in his eyes. four feet to the floor but he teetered changing that lightbulb as if standing tippytoed in the teeth of everest’s upper troposphere. i get it now. he...
Mar 29, 2022•1 min
