words

shiver in the morning
and burn in the evening,
autumnal love affairs
rush the blood
on cold nights and all in vain,
for what, some synaptic light show
wherein all thoughts are visible.

walk the careful lawns,
manicured like french tips
and there are street lamps ablaze
in the weird sidewalked town
that is this,
a cluster of fear,
afraid of the dark
and the gunshots
and the answers
to more unanswerable questions.

young girls flutter and fawn,
destroy the world
with their delicate way
and leave older, broken boys
standing with hands in pockets
or gripping steering wheels,
drifting in and out
town after town,
city by city,
we the keepers of their despair
so that they may be extraordinary.

health fails, dreams die,
things change and people move on,
girls become women
and strangle this understanding,
revert you back to an idiot child
with no sense or memory,
a vessel aimless and dumb
and to this i say fuck their despair,
i give it back
to each and every slowly
over the course of many years,
ignoring, pretending,
choosing to remove myself
from their tapestry of conquests.

-S.C. Martinez