words

i am a burning god,
a lightswept devil
moving out from the night
all smoke and flame
like one bereft of decency,
a casual observer
to this depraved congress,
this odd circumstance.

through the gray veins of dawn
i rode the sunrise up
and watched it sear the darkness away
and paint the world about
with cars and roadsigns
and trees and insomniatic raving,
a black mass of birds
conjured from the night
to keep watch over this stretch of day,
beating heavy and dissipating
into singular agents of flight,
tilting and flaying the selfsame twilight
i watched congregate in your eyes
in rapid velvet strobes;
i move toward the morning
like a fugitive in negative repose
fleeing some immense greatness
that elicits a heart within my heart.

the sun sat the edge of the world,
liquid fire burning there
red and ubiquitous,
could i but match its brightness,
this angry eye of heaven
fuming burnt orange rumor
of other worlds,
higher still and silver,
i come apart in this light,
a supposition of something greater,
unraveling strands of arachnid architecture
watching this daybreak
bleed itself of night’s hallowed seizure,
yet still i am but an anchorite
apart from this odd circumstance
that i feel such strong compulsion
to document and to destroy.

-S.C. Martinez