words

we once were the night,
perched upon branches in the dark
my associates and i spoke
well in to the morning hours,
the source of so much smoke and sound
and so bright we were
that the stars watched us
turning round and round
and for fear we may replace them
they burned hot with a new and envious fire
for it was god who spoke through us.

he sits behind a great wooden desk
drawing out the follies and triumphs
of our little lives, crumbling bits of paper
and tossing them out in to the ether,
god with his smeared and scribbled notes,
a cosmic cigar glowing like the sun
dangling from betwixt his lips
as he draws lines and shapes
and drinking the way that tortured men do,
with a slow urgency of encroaching agony.

he began to mark us out one by one,
his own failed and weird design,
we rare men who would unthread the universe
if we could but find a loose string
and so it was that the first of us died
that set off a long and arduous stream
of expiration and madness
until soon the night was empty
of our brilliance and once again
the stars held dominion over all.

-S.C. Martinez