Joseph Pinto, the barflypoet

'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 an...

'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 t...

‘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...

'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...

'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 the...

'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 mew...

'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 delu...

'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 sou...

'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...

'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 massag...

'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 acro...

'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...

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 f...

'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 si...

'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 cal...

'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 ot...

'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 af...

'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 b...

'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...

'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, beckonin...

'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 bu...

'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...

'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...

'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 t...

'clothespin' they’d dangle like tragic tightrope walkers, splintery legs hooked onto the line, random breeze adding decadence to the danger before my eyes. would they drop and fall, these solitaire risk-takers, for what else destined would be their way? with knobby knuckles grandma added to the heart-stopping spectacle, digging deep into a stained cloth pouch, adding in number the precarious dared...