words

i burn memory like a photograph,
the image distorts and curls in on itself
like a dying insect
until it is gone completely.

i chase down those dreams
where unwanted spectres reside
and snuff them out
until they are gone completely.

monoaural misfit, nonforgiving sound,
i bury the haunting resonance
and soft whispers under silence
until they are gone completely.

the tired hours in the presence of none,
for all the world completely alone
like those poems you referenced
as pointing to sadness
but were in fact passion and longing.

drifting in and out of this,
a footnote in other people’s histories,
a common memory recognized after the fact,
after this has been weighed
and measured and puzzled over,
a stranger living among them
quietly standing just outside the frame,
nodding and smiling disingenuously,
waiting out the minutes
until it was deemed acceptable to retreat
back to the reclusive tremor
from which i emerged.

i live quietly now without the clamor
but still among the squalor,
i shed light like a creature of the night
shuddering the hard truth of day,
beleaguered like a merchant
condemned to carry all the weight
of this life’s redundancy,
emerging thus some primal thing
hot and aching and determined
to remove all that this world possesses.

i will bleed my heart of every fucking word
before this is over,
i will tear down the image and the sound
until it is gone completely.

-S.C. Martinez