words

is this a casualty or product of windswept war,
mixing the good thoughts with the bad
and drinking them even and impartial at six a.m.
on a thursday morning,
scrawling algorithms on the bare walls of the mind,
carbonizing strange nodes of fear
with thoughts like flame and words like iron,
a slow burn of wanton anger,
conjuring up lions from the intricate maze
of this ridiculous paranoia
and slaying them in an orgy of blood and laughter
at some incalculable cost.

all aspects of this dilemma of but smaller battles
in a greater broad scale war
and it is difficult to differentiate between the two
until the outcome has been made clear
with victory and with defeat,
definitive lines drawn and acknowledged
by all sides having been reduced to this moment,
leering at the smoke and the carnage
and breathing it in, the ambrosia of spirit
to be consumed at whole
and at some incalculable cost.

all things are an extension of this principle,
all things, and this is of no exception,
and if i am wrong it is only so
inasmuch as being right is flawed and negative,
a swift soulbound weariness
that cannot be mistaken for any thing other,
these wars having different names and borders
but the same stakes, the same results
being only the ones to exist
and i am a warrior to this degree
and i am no stranger to this conflict
and i am a painter of this truth,
contingent to the kernel of indelible facts
at what incalculable cost.

-S.C. Martinez