words

go sever that thread to the almighty,
perish in a dark room
just beyond the railroad tracks,
the coal men come to collect your heart.

create your own version of events
in this dull orange light,
move against the earth
a slow body in exile.

in christ’s narrow margins
do you feel as a child of god?
do you know this day
to be a day of reckoning?
or is it only the end of things.

step lightly through the passing,
wake no shiver from the dead
and i will carry what you gave me
through to the burning
of my own mortal momentum.

-S.C. Martinez