words

in the long columns of sunlight i am stranded,
in shade i am stranded, in downpour and desert
i am stranded in this painting, poem, or song.

it makes no difference where i go,
i drive day and night aimlessly,
i follow street shadows and blistered pavement
through black and grey skinned hazard,
i follow crooked merchants up and down sidewalks
with their assortment of philosophies,
i watch white women in bright classy shoes
chatter endlessly to the air,
tossing a sunburst of brilliant hair
carelessly over their shoulder like an explosion,
i hear black girls with harsh loud voices
putting back the struggle and the drama,
the endless tragedy, mexicans with wide hips
and dirt devils dancing through their blood
and tattoos on their tits, i endeavor
to watch and witness them all for no other reason
than to pass the hours, swerve through the days
like a mirage through thirst and sweat.

i hide death beneath a black beard
and i wake every morning with it on my mind,
cancer, car wreck, plane crash, shotgun sonnets,
an atom bomb in lymphnode nurseries,
how it will come is already written yet
i cannot find the words to keep back this trauma,
this certainty i must grapple with hour on hour,
day by day in the endless chasing of my thoughts.

i miss ashtray women and wine bottle battles,
broken nights and apologetic days, long sunsets
spent in bed wrestling the agents of our own doom
in an attempt to suffocate them beneath the sheets,
drown them in our sweat and deafen them with shouts,
anything to ultimately rid ourselves
of their dark and depressing presence.

i long now more than ever for some halving
of this burden, some chemistry to dissolve it with
and some stone to bury it under,
some morning built on a smile and a sundrop
yet here we are, stranded, driving down the hours
behind engine growling greed, a psychopath in protest
reserved to remain in outlands of loneliness
to keep the monster quiet, to keep the timid tame,
to keep pulsing this machinegun heartbeat
for fear it may slow, then stop, then fade forever.

-S.C. Martinez