words

have you yet grown tired
of these yawning streets,
asphalt relics patched
and broken and patched again,
forlorn highways
and endless churches,
liquor stores, used cars,
the whole of it
like a shameless circus show
in constant motion yet
void of progress,
the old citizenry lumbering forth
from out their tired estates
to march solemn and divested of sense
like a demential army
toward an ever elusive sunset,
tethered rightly
to the frayed elastic wires
of their own slow demise,
watch their eyes cloud with storm,
their hands trembling and uncertain,
a lifetime of reeling
toward this very moment
each and all
muttering the same dead mantra.

watch the young trample underfoot
the world they have inherited
careful as manic elephants,
crazed with life
like drunks of its grain,
junkies of its naked promise,
watch their eyes clear as midnight
squander the early hours
with dumb and vacant purpose,
in pursuit of false idols
and fleeting highs,
each containing within them
the implements of their own end,
the clock that counts
to one inevitable moment
that is not marked anywhere
upon that weathered face,
the instant bespoken visiting each
and every in its exact right place,
preordained by the thread
to which all fates are common
and singular in its exactness,
from one warm terminal to another,
the womb to the earth,
all things ending
when the end has deemed it so.

-S.C. Martinez