words

is she real, or have i made her
from the strange raw fabrics of my thoughts?
did i stitch her together
from different patterns that converge
into a great madness of heart?

she pulls the thread of my being
as if to unravel it
with obscene prejudice,
perhaps to recycle these frayed strings
in to some other thing altogether,
something less like myself,
something less aligned to the abstract,
corporeal, esteemed,
free in such ways as to advocate
a higher form from the lining of my soul,
a man less dark,
less shrouded in shadow,
less obscure with a realness of heart,
such strange entities existing somewhere,
existing in theory, in form.

her cigarettes lay like bullet casings
in the ashtray on the floor and she is a killer,
a formidable adversary
from concrete village
drinking the hours from green bottles,
married to the sound, the playlist,
caffeine and nicotine and dirty clothes,
vegas in her eyes, whispers of cash,
dollar bills and neon lights,
postcards and tourists, showgirls,
an american complexion of unyielding wildness,
modern unknown, red skin and bite marks,
claw tracings, eroticism in powder form
neatly packaged for my consumption.

where is the chord of this fury,
upon what instrument of the world
does it reverberate
and what hand plucks the string?
there lies in me a fixity for such luxury,
things that must be had,
the curves of her form,
the shade of her hair
and how it falls like midnight
upon the surface of timid waters,
some lake of inebriate recollect,
or perhaps conjured from no memory at all
but imagined wholly to fill in the bare spaces
where i have failed to properly risk;
her eyes are blood diamonds,
pearls in the sand
watching castles buried under tide.

i am slow death,
pouring smoke from my skull
like a volcanic tantrum of prehistory
with cancerous plans of self destruction,
born in an era where mediocrity is truth,
logic novelty and science myth,
the world slowly ceases to spin
from the weight of such revelations,
the friction in the air from so many passing words,
blood digital, brain binary,
flat fingertips and milky eyes
locked in caged sockets,
the sum of my worries,
each bottle a link in the chain
bonding blood to soul, the sundown of my evening,
the fading of my voice.

-S.C. Martinez