words

we are strange people living strange lives
but we are not strangers,
the devil between you and i
still hollow and unrefined,
leering down naked halls
and coughing wasted breath from out crystal lungs
like some vagrant lacking cause.

each second that passes
holds the hand of my patience,
leaving footprints leading away
from my heart and taking with it
my ability to understand, to be compassionate,
my willingness to accept what i cannot change
and all things out of reach.

to look out past these waters
and into the hearts of other lands
longing for the embrace of my strangeness,
clinging to one another in the dark
and whispering lies of passion
before moving on ahead of the sun
and into nights of foreign tongue.

i leave my mark on everything
and even those who came before me
knew that i was coming,
the imprint of my being there
already forming itself ahead of my touch,
a ghosted principle working in negative.

back and forth in my throat
i feel the beating of wings miles away,
their sole purpose to give meaning
to my being, something to dignify my
having ever been at all.

i am strange and at war with it,
a stalemate of polar ends that cannot meet
in this life or the next,
driven on only by the promise
of one night never having to know that feeling
ever again, this haunted melody
that refuses to subside.

-S.C. Martinez