words

medicated the wrong way,
agony in milligrams
and now come monsters
over the low hills,
lurching and calling,
lurching and calling.

push everyone away,
speak only when spoken to,
find some quiet solitude
under which to hide
like a wounded animal
in the slow end to everything.

pressure to the point,
a fast approaching deadline
wherein all sums and sins
must again be visited,
some god, some devil,
some ultimate reckoner
to judge the quantitative merit
of this otherwise empty way.

-S.C. Martinez