words

paint a smile about your lips,
precious phantom.

my hands are endless
tapping out morose thoughts on the tabletop,
in the air, upon your translucent skin.

the wine infects my mood
and i am savage, wise, mean,
a bastard at the turn of a wrong word
and everywhere i go there are faces
i do not like.

my words melt together
like wet blades of grass
and everywhere i go
there are faces i do not like,
an inescapable climate of old hazards
augmented by too many cigarettes
and my fading reflection
in the eyes of their memory.

the spirit is robust and red with madness,
perched on my shoulder the devil of my behavior
speaks only evils and i can not shudder him away.

i am a black maned lion devouring the night
and i roar in deep protest the coming of light,
and know this, know this,
i am infinite in wild blood
and i am easily frightened to the point of flight or war,
i frequently remove myself from the collective world
at the spark of my will and this is irrevocable.

i see it coming and i ponder its approach
but there is nothing in the way of governing
the sway of my spirit should it become estranged,
i simply am no more.

-S.C. Martinez