puncture — things longer than a paragraph
still need be said.

call beauty, call to death & dying.

(c) 2004-2010 i.m. ruzz

Sallow-skin stinking & felled as old dead-wood. lost for losing & cleaved of will to fight, now spent—you’d best to lay there till everything runs calm and blood colors nothing no more red and wanted. You ain’t enough to win. This fight comes more headed than the junction of wire keepin’ you bound. More knotted than the spine of a young lover twisting to you, away.

Cull need & fire, want & all childless hope. Put a hand, quick now, to sharper edges of what mind you still got & peel a layer of your awful stinking skin back. Winnow no more we. winnow no more us. life’ll sure cut back all unwanted growth, gangly and beset as it wants by horrible complex thread, and threat of beauty. You need’nt worry for nothing will be left hanging, or loose, or free standing when it’s fed into the fear’d-mouths of all those wrecked n wretched tiny-hearts. Nothing can survive the vacuum created when love lets out of them. Winnow no more us. winnow no more we.

Remember then, soonday you’ll be dirt & bone & gnarly joints almost forgotten & wailed—that tired old lover’s heart will’ve given up beating. complete quiet come over rivers of blood hereto eternal, no more wars—what was certain impossible is finally revealed impossible, the rock rolled down, settled. stilled.

Remember now, what was one, was more. still-born & birthed by hips thrashed & thrashing with living-breathing need. Once dead flesh lived against night & promised anything could come of just having it.

your tiny life is a finger tracing circles upon a fattened belly. In turns joy and absence. In turns all and utter nothingness. You’ll wait for the arc to lean toward the full, then burst & come a torrent of silent, weeping, aloneness.

You’ll give over these things you carry.  These listless crafts you misspent fine hours crafting. Trinkets of a vapid & common mind collected earnestly. You’ll give over the lies n fears. The broken hopes & mysteries. You’ll give them over & long dig intricate trenches full with arms & hipbones of all you couldn’t carry with you. You’ll bury up fallen will & fit-failed aspirations to have your heart beat speeding against the dead, or dying then cast off need of a meaningless division between your own self & all the things made you and begin craft anew.

birth

and i won’t hold on to anything. no more cajoling, steering, encouraging or death grips. there were too many years of that. i will take what is given and the rest of it, what was wanted, needed, or feared will wash away, forgotten. and i won’t split my energy on scarcity, or uniqueness, or ugly need. i won’t drain myself into the sea of should’ve been, wished it was, or ought to be. there were too many years of that. i’ll sit with fuller lungs and watch and wait till the nonsense i call me breaks apart, scatters, and becomes dark august soils, green mountain run-off, or the tiny beating heart driving a solitary dung beetle. or air. or the cold wetness on the soft palm of a hand of fresh snow. or the fibrous tissue of an intestinal wall shivering nutrients, or the electricity that carries the thought of love to a horrified mind. or the soft hair of a fat belly, or the silver-solder completing the circuit or should chance be so kind to atoms such as these, the life-giving pure energy of sunlight. for each need now will be new and specific to each cause, and each possibility birthed by each constraint. and i won’t hold on to any thing.

september

a thousand wings beat dark of night away, halting the hands & mouths of empty city dwellers. backed to cold brown-stones I watch as orange’d bellies overhead heft toward, thrust away, come canopy of wild heaving flesh. a litany of calls break this black-night. They lure amber traffic-lights to hold their freight for only a moment more. buried deep & weak a signal is read & sung out. run. from this now.

run.

—

I lay ugly & broken beside you.

—

i course through night streets like black love & sick sweet-orange film lines the backs of my eyes. I lay some later. wound on sheet & latent violence while a river flows quiet somewhere in my eyes. sharp pain pushes from below my heart & i steal deep breaths adorning them gold with weight & meaning as though they are my last. there is no fear or regret.

—

my fingers fan out against black paved road. a river of fingers snake through & collapse into them. an unexpected joy. the trees then shake & sigh, so pregnant with cool september air. carried leaves rustle & come rhythm following footfalls. we are swallowed patient into the unknown.

—

I contort, push my back hard into ragged-rock misplaced & lined by sharp angles. I watch this sleeping city skyline. there is a rise at her shoulder. a wane at her rib. a rise at the curve of her hip. a wane at her thigh. this city lay before me. I am compelled to lay down arms. I am of her. full with ugly lightless-alleys & their lurking troubles. I am in her. a sheet of cold white covering the old stone testaments. this city neither loves or needs me. wants nor feels. remembers nor forgets.

—

i am no more with body now. no more with rolling flesh. i drive my hips into this night & knowing is with-out me. scented heaving sounds rise & fall upon me. I watch & sometimes put a hand out to them. i sometimes put hand to flesh that moves so & press into it to feel a steady pacing heart.

—

my balance wavers, slight, as i fight away & through throngs of unmarked young flesh, so fine & pinning me to this ugly wall. storming glared light & wood-sweat stench invade me. I ceaselessly count beautiful women hidden in fashions & clothed in the distance from my failing body to theirs. the long brass arm of the bar becomes a salvation line & I pull myself along it while a strobe ignites white-red against brick wall, freezing forever, three friends easy-laughing.

—

I hold fast your throat. feel air begin atop the curve of my forefinger & thumb & carry slow & steady down soft passages into all the sorrows & joys of life. I squeeze. wiggle fingertips to the pulsing. squeeze & threaten to stop the mechanics. I threaten to stop the violence of bodies coming together against one another.

—

there comes unwanted a violence against me. kneeded & broke, a scream & curl from deep ‘tween rib & fat. under dappled flesh & forgetting, a silence binds me from everything that is not of it. I take long pulls from her to soothe it. I bring knees to chest & try to drown it in scalding waters. I cover it in seed & cloth. I extend it. contract it. I cannot close it. cannot abide it & i am lost to it.

—

my weak thighs are ocean & night is shore. I break myself against her darkened lines. there is no more space to consume. no more fear to conquer. no more weakness to be shamed by. I wind & froth & curl. rail & wither. throw myself against hard rock & gritty sands coarse like goose-flesh. I have no want or need. I have no shape or meaning. I am momentarily free of all I carry ever with me. I count the lashes of her full eyelids & listen to the a howl of breaking waves. I cannot go on. I cannot stop.

—

through sharp wire, wrought steel, littered woods & scrag rock, my eye follows coursing water. follows lines of branch to leave & leave to sky & sky to water. follows gold to green & green to blue & my worries are bark breaking ugly from the branches of black spruce.

—

you take my fingers in your mouth & I watch your hips move. I am overcome.

ain’t got no one who much cares for my pains. ain’t right it’s so, but it is so.

demons of love

demons of love, © 2003-2009 i.m ruzz

she’s set there in the slack and sallow amber glow of a single interior car lamp. surrounding her a sheet of black gloss; the night weeping dark rains. her hair pulled tight to her brow but for an errant skein of wispy brown suggestions. he fusses, shifting awkawrd into the envelope of orange yellow, and settles next to her.

i wasn’t sure it was you, he said. it’s me she said and smiled. He paused long enough to warm some or study the raucous tremolo errupting from unknown origin within his body, then shifted the car to drive and pulled them onto the night black road.

where should he go? he asked. she said wherever as he slowly turned the car. Wherever you want.

he set to with no path through this dark and its complications. No bridge to cross. No map lamplit and specked to lead them hurtless and deliver him to her long hair, arms, and need.

He drove deeper into the night and the reflected streetlights followed, racing alongside on dark pavement rough and unending, unshakable.

They found the rest of the night waiting on them impatient

They found their way through deep-red wooden bannisters, hard-worn railings and haggard waitresses working short unexciting weekshifts. Through rains and long silences. through memories, good or undetermined. through the deep chasm of space from one to the other till birthed into the early morning hours with squared cutglass tumblers filled of the remains of other unsolvable nights, heavy with intents with no means to act upon them.

he watched as if a bystander at a horrible car wreck as she leaned into the rounding of his shoulder and left him alone with their bodies. he kissed the top of her head and said quiet all the things pregnant in him while she slept. He sat a while longer in the growing western-blue morning light, then pulled himself again from her and set to.

the wolf, the fire and the cold cold night

lovesong #51 by ruzz (© 2009 ruzz)

“sometimes i find i get to thinkin of the past” - tonght will be fine, L. Cohen.

festooned upon a scraggle of rock & litter of breakwood you push on. the sun about you is a mouth closin & killin. & with closin & killin all the sound & warmth of kind meaingsome words is a dying memory. the dimming light gives way to a play of fire flickrering. a fire built by others, but ever your’s to maintain. & the silence, bringer of night & all her gowns, knotted solitudes & grace unwraps the world of light & places it dark at your feet.

whatever was given is again taken. always taken. what ever was seen is again shrouded & whatever was warmed is cooling to cold again. you’re no more surprised than when an open eye closes slow.

theres no loss in the passing. no robbery in the giving & taking away. you know this in your browned hairs greying, your strong arms thinning. you’re lovin heart opening & closing, forcing life deep to your very innards. theres no loss in the living, only the living.

its a truth your mind will reckon & reckon, toiling itself all the night-long about what’s lost. ain’t a thing to do for that sorta truth but know it & not give any more than it takes without your sayin so. your mind’ll do as your mind’ll do. you aint your mind.

it isn’t any matter anyways—the only truths you can live are in your skin, & teeth, & aching muscle.

maybe others’ll guide you by way of better intents than me. they’ll tell you earnest to take some heart from the things that were, find in them somethin for yourself. a gratitude of kinds for the blessin of just having anything at all. they’ll be lookin after you best they can & maybe you ought take their words if you can make them fit into the folds of your belly. if you can holster them by your cock & draw them on what comes for you in the long cold of night.

if you can do you oughta do, the ends the same whatever road you choose.

but if you can’t find a hold on their slip’ry words, can’t make em part of every step your gunna have to step hereout your best to leave em in total. you can find that much out your own self if you need to.

you’ll soonday come to it & see through this passin. see through the promise & sweep of emotion (which neither are you or your makin) & come hopefully to understanding the flecks of dirt spinning round & round in the wane of the day’s light & the flecks of thought spinning same in your mind aren’t tempest, nor harbinger, nor augur but only life being life & never more.

sit stolid the night, feel the cold & watch for the wolves who’re sure to come. think no more for the day gone, her softness, nor anything more than the wearing of your flesh & beating of your heart.

to sick to pray, lord. (part 2).

Untitled by ruzz (© 2002-2009 i.m. ruzz’ favorite sin)

“Oh and if there’s any love in me,
Don’t let it show.” - Noah and the Whale

a quiet voice calls incessantly, weeping out of the long arc of a meaningless life. begging without need, wanting without desire. a twisted knot of hair-thin thought tangled in the opening & closing of a tired & filthy mouth. just make one true thing.

a promise. ever promise, not fullfillment of promise.

he sits night-long on heaped & worn burbur carpet alone but for his weakness, mistakes & the things which live off him. tired eyes hold to the faux bronze covered candle holder. unfashionably intricate with spires & curves of metal. wrapped in glass & stains of smoke. he holds tight a lone match but never moves no more.

make a true thing, and be saved whether yer inclined to be saved or not.

hard aching nests behind the fourth & fifth ribs. binds to every cell & becomes every thought through pure violence. a snake of tissue thick & scarred winds from hunched spine inward. this riverbed of damage dry so nearly perfect & once flowed heavy with artifacts of death, & her children. large shoulder spasms send the body unto a chaos of compensation. an arm falls weak & numb suggesting future ends. small wounds appear & scar, or fade away. raped for blood by the night. or just a pimple. no way be sure. this body holding the miracles of the universe, the science of life & mechanics of beauty goes unheralded, slowly falling apart.

step to & speak, making a true thing, never a thing true.

a collection of mishaps mishappen. problems. episodes. loss. mistakes. oversights, or attacks. each misfortune woven to it’s sister, each loss to it’s mother, each misery to it’s great-long-dead grandfather & becomes fine cloth. it’s tacked to walls, folded neatly, carried in bags or lay’d out under young girls come undressed. it comes fine with contrast. comes a suggestion with out focus. adornment or cover, you can’t ever ken for sure.

hope’s a promise you need but ain’t strong enough to admit you need.

a great torrent of wills put the fires out. each one after the other. they smoke & fester but burn nothing anymore. soonday, you’ll forget they were threatening. soonday, you’ll forget you were ever this close to burnin. smoke will swirl & make unfathomable patterns incalcuable. soot & ash will fall away to new life. the heat will while away one night & never a trace of what happen’d here will be seen again.

truth can’t be reckoned till everything that might change it has ceeded.

soonday you will find friday night has come. dark, full of fresh spring air & invitin you to the week end. it’ll tell stories about olden times. it’ll wet its tongue & press itself against you. into you, & invite with all it’s charms. a key will unlock the math of time & space & your entire life will fit ‘tween the thighs of friday, & the sleep filled eyes of monday morning. you may be overcome with fear or you may brush against knowin your misery is a list, your sorrow a manifest. or you may find a match, broken & burnt, stains your fat fingers & the possibilities are too great.

too sick to pray, lord.

it comes to you late one night. not eniterly a thought, or feeling so much as what you know in your skin, your hair. it settles over you quiet and coarse—this sickness without beauty. once had, and sure’d, and known it’s a light you swing around you. A hard arc of sadness and loss built on your mother’s belly & breasts. your father’s slick’d hair and stained shirts. you chase the absence of beauty down a line of blood and see how beauty protects itself from the likes of you and yours. you are not beautiful. you are not granted long simple nights of touch, nor aching hips from unseated passions. you are not welcome here.

you find the lazy eyes of your grandmother in the coldness of your bed. or the pot belly of an uncle, or the worn flesh of a grandfather, are cylinders in an unescapable lock of blood, bone and privilege. beauty protects herself. she waits in the night for more of herself and you lay invisible at her feet. unwanted. unneeded.

and this knowing sits with you long into the emptiness of winter. never leaving. never promising. never relenting. never claiming to be anything more than true.

the bringing

this dead man’s face
lilt & graying
breaks like waves
of wet kisses
& absence.

soiled & so broken
bound in skin so thin
felled, not fallen
for just one-last
alabaster night.

& we homeless kings
absolute rulers
of sewn lips,
glued eyelids,
tend columns of fallow meaning
reliable as old-birth-hips.

till grey skin
lilt & light,
bleached charcoal bone,
scoured white,
darkens blood red
& cowers

before the bringing.

i.m. ruzz (2004 | original author date, unknown)

as i lay dying

the fall is not the flesh hurtling through the open air as you always feart. it is not punctuated by cracked-bone vibrating through young blood. there is no half-moon of shocked watchers circling silent. no grey stone & metal above. it is not an end remembered, missed or much worried for.

there is no sway in rousing from halting sleeps. it does not rest, await, in the crushed footfalls of raucous mass of men come to quiet the promise. there is no promise. no throat grown hoarse & full of words half-birthed.

go on, throw from your sheets, your empty bed, arms flailing & cracked feet kicking. the fall is not a fight. it is not fought on stained & worn bur bur carpets in run-down tenements. it is not lost in cold white corners buried deep in the heart of river valleys. go on.

chase ghosts. go on.

seek warmth for cold untouched flesh if you must. count on stained fingers the ones got, got away. sum slights and inflate things left & given up to things given. skew the tally. build a stone school of new maths heralding a calculation rendering all insubstantial brought substantial through ceaseless litany of concession. a prayer of lies. the flesh will not warm from without. imagined fingers knot the hairs of your chest & still the falling comes harder while lists of names are recited. go on with it if you must.

i know you must. but this this is not the fall, nor its avoidance.

nearly thirty-five (poem)

fit-filled and restless sleep.
dreams of red dress betrayal
and beating that man insensible
with old hard-wood
and running, screaming lies
into the song of summer’s last night.
then waking with arms
dead as frank sinatra
while feeling marches cold
down my limbs
like death.

early 2006

a note (poem)

you may:
kiss a lip
a thigh
a hip
a breast

the softest flesh of the throat

finger tips
or a clitoris

you may not:
kiss an eyelid
a cheek
the forehead

or the bulbous tip of a tiny nose

January 10th, 2008

heavy machinery of meaning

this time you can’t just load up, tighten your shoes & walk. this one you can’t. go on & walk till your sore but you ain’t makin no ground against it. you ain’t gunna see the end of it. you can fight all you want. it’s almost sweet how hard you fight. forget it. sweet-hurts. forget it, this was decided before you licked your first fattened-thigh.

soonday you’ll be dirt & bone & gnarly joints almost forgotten & wailed—that tired old lover’s heart will’ve given up beating. complete quiet come over rivers of blood hereto eternal, no more wars—what was certain impossible is finally revealed impossible, the rock rolled down, settled. stilled. won’t be long thereafter everything you spent your life trying to hold tight to, steer, & form will have come loose, free, & it sounds now like some kind of nightmare. you grow heavy just to think. but you won’t walk around this one, so grow heavy.

anymore than now there won’t ever be a place to rest or be. you won’t find warm hands, soft hearts or fine love to lean on. don’t matter anyhow if it will come cus it sure ain’t here with you in the quiet dark of last night. if somethings coming to cast a light, its too far off now to ken & you just hurry the blood let for wantin. what was whole won’t never be so again.

this aching puncture, a promise, wants, needs, asks in baby-girl breathless sighs can’t you just come die in me. know nevermore were the muscles in your thighs meant for thrust. nevermore to tear through with hate, love & lust. you can’t forget this. or fuck it till it closes up and pulls away. or lay stuck halfway, unborn, flowered and covered in your own stink and weak. you can’t let shorter breaths catch on before the beat is found.

there lay dead sure, in the gasp of rustling winds, in the heartbustin lull of wavering light, or the long-black night-hum of life living, a rhythm ascending.  a sick constancy unsaid, unheard for theres never any a moment not wrapped up and delievered to you in it. a hard forward rush of life beat beating everything apart, together. die in the vale of it.

explode past the headland. there is this sea. just past. just-so thicker than your need of it. just past. here you’ve no need to come clean, be healed, be full, or strong. here you’ve no need of her, the sweet hymn or all the that heavy machinery of meaning. there is motion & life and never a want of anything else.

tremble with terrible flames.

my knuckles are hard white. my hands pulse, a dying heart with dirty fingernails. clasp. open. clasp. open. it doesn’t help. it can’t.

there is no language thought to hold you. no words to lull you or call you or deliver you. i twitch. close my eyes. pull air so deep so long pink lungs grow orange and alight. fat tired eyes ease, release. hand, again, clasps. opens. white and red dappled flesh and pocked hand wrapping a promise of protection. it crushes what it cannot protect. i hold my breath. pray i am not crushed. am not lost. am not too far gone. think empty. wish the lock could unlock itself. wish something, anything, went how it ought to.

we ride fat black tires. hard and fast. we look each other in the eye and promise till its dark. promise to stop for no one. nothings going to make us stop for no one. measured beats mark each mile. i hear the wailing and it finds my deepest reddest heart. i bounce in my seat, alone, like a child unbuckled on a tilt-a-whirl. hard edges and blinding lights. gold and green and red and blue, september flys by. it runs from me while i watch you breathe. it hurts to ride this hard. parts unhealed throb, threaten. i try to hold on. i can’t ever just hold on.

i put my hand to your throat. words fall out of my mouth. i watch. they blossom on your breasts like aborted thoughts, broken vows. i throw myself into you. against you. i throw myself into the light. i put my hand to the dark. i muffle the sound of my need. open. clasp. a pulse runs through my back and legs. my eyes are open, when did they open?

a flock of silver white birds circle a thousand feet overhead. all a glitter and swirl, wings lost to the burning sun. sliver specks twisting hurtling. i am falling. twirling. losing. they become a raging heartbeat throbbing in my eyes and i can’t hold on. i can’t hold. i put my hand to your throat. open. clasp. i find your lips in the dark. we pray we are not crushed. we pray we are not lost.

my eyes open. it’s not you my lips press into. not you breathing hard on my chest. my hand has not found your throat, your heart.

i am alone.
a dying heart with dirty fingernails.

you walk upon this river

you walk soft upon this river full. a life rushing. a pulse beat wet and deep and full and real. you walk upon this river and hold fast to breakrock and scraggle. you hold fast to late night goodbyes with cabs a wait. you hold deadly to i can’t and it’s complicated. you can’t hold on any longer and are swept passed. away. past away. who won’t let go for love for night and the cover of dark and heart and the light. who won’t?

you walk upon this river a rush. a rushing through heart and hope and foolishness and failure and weak. you walk upon too much to little, life undone and every sort of lie. too old. too real. too full. too fat. too weak. too man. too rushing. too fast. too late.

you rush upon this river and in the wake it swallows. so hard to lie. so hard to live. so hard to be until. until we weep and full and thrash upon this delicate heart so open. so dead and kicked about. so stupid so weak so in love with your flesh so needing you tonight so alone in deep bowness roads and thrashing streets so here so lost and lovely. so true. so unforgiven  so untenable and broke. so needing and giving and full empty. a throb unheard un handed un needed un want.

a word and the beg. a word and the please. a word and the come to me. come to me. come to me. come to me. trust. come to me and see. come. hold fast your hurt. hold weak your loss and come. come with me here tonight. let go to the night. let go to the current. the heart. let go and come.

i’m worth less than my best promise. my most earnest moment till you break through. redeem this weak flesh and heart. forgive this impetuous moment forgive wanting you with everything. forgive a fool his foolish hope. forgive the wandering heart, hand, eye, night. forgive stella and her need and anger and..

slip unto the night. slip unto the river till your flesh come cold and alone and wish for more.