words

the wine burns the barren pan
of my empty gut like a lavaflow
and i draw pull after pull
from a cigarette
and my soul is heavy.

i lie in bed naked
drifting back and forth
the locales of inner deep
and my mind stretches thin
and my skin is cold,
the air is plagued
with faraway thoughts
and i flood the room with smoke.

scratching at the world
like a stray dog
lost to the politics of it all,
dreaming dollar signs
and tender voices
that call me to distant cities
but the wine burns on
and my eyes dry out
and this is all a passing sigh.

-S.C. Martinez