words

do you feel the eyes upon you
when you sleep in your bed,
do you share this country
of inward dreams,
are you alive or just pretending.

are you a pale gift or ransom;
don’t pretend, don’t brave nothingness
for the sake of boredom,
you bloom in this dead season
whether or not you wish for it.

don’t sell the world from under you,
don’t pardon me;
my love and hate run parallel
and danger close,
often touching for a beat,
a brief burst of portent stimuli.

my hand in your hair
is poetry from far greater poets
and words shy from my pen
as i hasten to capture them,
to capture you,
this moment, all moments.

i am rain in summer,
i am a nocturnal moth,
i bleed doom and drink strangeness
and i care for little
yet my heart is great
with injustice
and it never rests.

this vernacular of skin and teeth
holds demure rhythm,
an element of its own accordance,
caustic bond of blood and nerve,
a shiver,
soft escape of breath,
a shudder,
depraved resistance,
a ritual letting of divine commerce.

you are an hourglass
in a house of clockwork,
a sun dial bearing the
circumferential swing of pendulums,
i a monster of slow motion,
steam engine derelict,
a passable machine of little effort.

i am the continental divide,
the spine of the earth,
a raving concord of day and night
with cancer wielding hands,
a superstition,
tarot card,
a creature of consequence and regress,
prose you may soon neglect,
words you will one day forget.

-S.C. Martinez