words

remember me when i am gone
but forget me while i am here,
forget the tired wild antics
and the amphetamine rhythms,
the obsessive questions,
the inability to be,
always looking onward and outward
like a comet racing forever toward
some ultimate collision.

out there with the others
shuffling in-patient slipper steps,
easing in to madness
as if it were an old rocking chair.

forget these marks on my record
until i am all but gone from everything,
then look back and consider,
what strange clock would dictate
such behavior, such idiosyncrasy,
such bold disregard for reason,
what phase transition is this
to be so completely frantic,
the same swirling chaos must be
at the center of all things,
perhaps better insulated
in you and everyone else.

-S.C. Martinez