words

there is nothing to kill but time
so i consider urinating
in my neighbor’s front yard,
just to see the response it elicits,
yet somehow that seems like an event
that can only end in my being questioned
by authorities and counselors
and any manner of delegates sent forth
to condemn those like myself
back among the dregs of society
to consort among our own
like flames from trash fires,
those without reason who terrorize
the world of ordinary becoming
just to keep from being sucked in to
that wild maelstrom of mediocrity.

i just sit here, waiting,
waiting, waiting, waiting
and bored, i imagine
planets aligned on a pool table
and the green felt surface of space
is dusted with blue chalk
like the ghosted presence of dark matter
and the planets go click clack
among one another
and nothing is ever resolved or understood,
no one ever really wins,
they just rack them up and begin again
and they go click clack
and it’s all so very dull,
pornography has replaced television
and even it has become mindless and
without substance,
it is analog static,
the absence of information
and how it comes to reckon itself
in black and white storms of madness,
endlessly scratching at the glass
and screaming in agonizing entrapment,
the whole of it like a congregation
of crazed spirits contained there for all time
to struggle against the bindings of electrical impulse
and writhe among one another in strained voltage,
hissing and spitting derelicts
all so that we are kept from staring into the void,
the black abyss that otherwise would assume that ponderable moment.

-S.C. Martinez