well, need to see about gettin on, drifter, no anchor, a series of departures that move away slowly in circles, headed back to figure some human calculus, need to see about gettin on then. -S.C. Martinez

oblique evenings explain the ribald path of my fire, burning through city and country alike and indifferent and all a means to some end that cannot be immediately identified, i watch the slow drip of kidney expulsion and kind eyed acceptance, a cycle of passage, this moment through to the beginning of the next. whiskey…

burn a mutherfucker down, burn to stay alive, burn complete, burn alive and every breath i breathe is borrowed, an accrual of bad debt that i will not return until it is forced from my lungs in a harrowed gasp, a struck chord, a vibrating string that will disappear when it ceases to move. it…

sway, in the morning and in the evening, swing from side to side like some aimless paraclete, mingle and mutter among the mattress people, sober up and do it again. feel it in your blood and in your bones, through your fingers some reverb from the soul, good whiskey and white water and the air…

i cannot exist, adequately, in the company of the earth. i fail to adhere to this, completely, a mutant of normal human behavior. i am the only one, i am the only one and the letters fall from my fingers in great suicides, preferring the end over any thing that i may offer. i float…

the red army bleeds from out my skull, charred and smoking in the midnight black, each little red devil carrying some terrible thought out into the ink. tearing open the night they claw and chew through and through the raw matter of this, each little red bastard laughing at me, dragging my delirium out into…

tiny shadows of nuclei falling like dust, swirling in the light and i can feel my pulse against the pillow, this indicator of existence even while i am uncertain of just how real this is. she sleeps quietly in her sunday dress, this nimble girl i have broken like a doll in my childish hands.…

move like gnats in orbit, a heart of little winged things in the dim light of now, aimless, at odds with the trajectory we have calculated for to follow. the rats and the liars move in together, a common agony, tracing a skittering mecca along baseboards and behind walls, in the dark places where we…

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…

i appreciate now more than ever the one who came before and taught me to drink wine. not just to drink it, but how to drink it, how to enjoy it. so now, when strangers in good dress with no humor come at me with a bottle and say, “will this do?” i can say…