words

walking the worn gray steps of countless sad bastards,
parking fees ahead and the mingling
of other wasted lives, indigents,
clutching to words like prayer and hope and will,
false prophets each and every
haunting the narrow shit-smell corridors,
reek of death and dying, ultimate sadness.

outside among the birdshit and homeless
clouds of smoke issue from idle visitors,
a strange premonition eats the air
and red-eyed drug addicts line the walkways,
itching, itching, searching for angles
and easy dollars to put towards
things to put in their veins
and food if there is time to kill,
the stench of failure and heartbreak is overwhelming.

the poor and wounded shuffle about in poorly tied gowns
stained with blood and vomit and unidentified hues
of brown and green like pastoral landscapes,
clutching boxes of cigarettes and pulling with them
machines tied to their veins, keeping them quietly alive
even if their wretched frames have chosen otherwise,
hacking into closed fists, leaping phlegm and spittle,
bits of the body fleeing these sinking vessels
of flame and ire.

watching IV bubbles race to lanes of blood,
some biological super highway
whose vehicular citizens cluster and brake
in capillaried confusion, joining the fray
without regard for the outcome or the reason,
following the road to its terminus.

hair falling out in slow retreat,
eyes dilated infinitely and an equilibrium strike
against the warehouse rationale of brain and body,
falling slowly and a slow deviation from the idea of a god
whose love is boundless, whose blueprint is without fault
and whose will has put you here
among the piss and shit and elevators and beeping machines
and has placed your life in the hands of an animal
no different than you, no direct line to heaven,
no knowledge of the string to which all life is thread from.

know that god is not watching or waiting
to witness the outcome of your slow demise,
he is too far removed to hear your rolling moans
and your strange stroke dialect,
this house we have constructed to push away the inevitable
will crumble around you one way or another,
such is the way of things, no matter how greatly
it pains me.

-S.C. Martinez