words

i remember the sun in a remote way,
through a thin film of helical pictures
the memory of the come before,
soft and very faded,
and compare it to this burning monster
in the death of autumn, unchanged,
unchanging, and i sweat
even though it is so far out there.

do you hear the future calling
or are you to expire in this generation,
will your memory of the sun
bleed through to the next,
or will you take it with you.

i am breathing in a double violin,
exhaling in D minor while the car hums
a terminal hum and the waves touch,
gently in the air just before your antenna
and now it is all so very short,
it is all so very long and drawn out
and re-entry is a burden.

i elect to drift lightly along
some ultimate breeze,
getting lost in the waves,
drifting as they drift,
approaching the source
but life is so very long
and each new cycle
brings with it a wearing out
of the heart,
burning at the lungs and stripping the thread
of what contraption holds this all together,
centuries of it and my legs are tired
from the endless march.

–S.C. Martinez

outside
i can feel the world
pulse with rhythm
as cars float like cells
down the vascular stretch
and the verse breathes,
expands and contracts
in the infinite beauty
against that terror
held in hydrogen arms
that seem to suffocate
with love and fear
indifferent.

even as i drown
in the mess of myself
i am anchored to the light,
the origin,
desperate for the reconnect
to recollect
that which has gone missing
from my heart.

as i watch the stars
and consider their reach
i am struck
by the recursive loop
to those points of light
that are in me
and i am rendered speechless
by this ultimate of all reckonings.

-S.C. Martinez

at 9:01, a moment late,
the first wednesday of each month
the sirens set to wailing,
raising up
out of the cloistered morning
a ritual mock fear,
a test,
a reminder to remain vigilent
even in the calm breath of september,
the awkward blind spot
on the backside
of the summer nuclear
and just before winter returns
with its penchant for dead things.

a simple tone
at some thousand hertz
that sounds so peaceful
as i lay here
dead in all but definition,
waiting with schizoid abandon
for the day
those sirens sound unscheduled,
perhaps a thursday
when everyone is off guard
slouching toward the weekend
and unbelieving
that a disaster should occur
at such a kinetic time as now.

the cycles diminish,
denumerate
and the silence settles in,
then the insects,
the birds momentarily still
wondering if this is the day
long storied in their blood,
forever echoing
through the narrow chambers
of their little hollow bones
and i lay back
and commence to wait
like so many patient parishioners
for the waiting to be ended.

-S.C. Martinez

the further down i go the clearer they become,
unbleached words drip slowly
from stalactites hanging deep within the weird neural complex,
in the dark where these thoughts condense acidic
and wear away what host axions exist or don’t exist.

further down, deeper in where they cannot be retrieved,
where nothing that goes may ever return from,
the infinity of uncertain shapes colliding
in the firmament that rages in temporal waves,
surges of that which god has put there.

the powder rushes out and halos,
a ring doomed to serve the gravity of the father,
tiny elements
of the thing which gave them the engine of their purpose
left to observe forever the etchings of before.

the least of matter stands footed in the larger chaos without,
what celestial bodies present in the iris geometric,
some ocular stroma eons away in the cold dark of everything,
filamentary highways out there waiting.

-S.C. Martinez

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

loneliness is easier,
with the leaves, the empty room,
the silence.

little yellow pills collide
within the id
and disintegrate,
integrate with the molecular traffic
and off swiftly to what narrow streets
of grey matter call,
here, these circuits are native,
these patterns are familiar.

when everyone knows everything
there will be nothing left to talk about.

the echo of our own thoughts
so impressive
we must spray them
over wifi and cellular clouds
so that all may bask
and breathe this collective mist
of networked quanta.

-S.C. Martinez

often, when someone speaks to me,
i get lost in the thought of
what it must be like
to not have a mind wrecked by self-mutilation,
obsessive-compulsive fantasies,
an addiction to addictions,
a mind without trenches and gulleys
well worn by the transit
of stoned little messenger molecules
losing their way,
forgetting what they had to say,
exhaling their breath of chemistries.

what it must be like
to enjoy a day with no direction,
rather than chasing abstracts
forever dividing
down the fractal wilderness
of terrible possibilities,
lymph nodes enflamed
with pre-cancerous embers,
blood cell traffic jams
in the great loop.

often, when someone speaks to me,
i find that i haven’t processed a word,
too busy wondering
what it must be like.

S.C. Martinez

every night
i try to steal a little more from the day,
an hour, a minute, microseconds,
as much as i can get.

i maneuver until all moves have been made,
and i waver at the staircase,
watching my shadow slip along the wall.

in the kitchen i open cabinets
and consider what goes best
with an 8 dollar bottle of riesling,
or a buck fifty quart of beer.

every night
i measure meaning by the apogee of the sun,
by the moon, the planets, the stars,
as far out as i can get.

-S.C. Martinez

the lights in the parking lot
have been out for days,
and the bulb by the door blew
some time ago,
so here in the mostly dark
a young stray attempts to banter,
odd little vocalizations,
thin fur, lank,
bones visible,
she rubs against the chair longingly
and then retreats at my slightest movement.

the neighborhood cats
want nothing to do with her,
they hiss and riot and wander off,
but still she remains, begging for attention
as i pen these words
in the mostly dark.

she bends this way and that
and her angular bones push violently
against the delicate feline coat,
while nearby insects orbit unperturbed,
searching for the light,
certain it was here only days ago.

a chorus of housebound cats arises,
aware, curious, beleaguered
by the very existence
of this exotic, liberated,
one-eyed creature.

she is a sickly thing,
hungry for anything,
and like all feral beings
were i to bring her in
she would go mad with the concept of walls,
doors, the sadistic heart of a window,
so i finish drinking elsewhere
and leave her here to inheirit the mostly dark
from our little nighttime parking lot.

-S.C. Martinez

i’ve never quite understood
the seriousness that most people inhabit
at work.

it is as if through their morning ritual
they are imbued with this
somber weight
that must be carried
through the long arduous hours.

and by the simple act
of tucking in a shirt
they are bound to some agreement
whereby you may be contracted
to share the burden
of their tone.

i wonder if architects,
when designing these floorplans,
imagine little, flat,
two-dimensional employees
drifting forever
through the blue hallways,
mingling momentarily
by the precise measurements
jutting from the walls,
ducking beneath notations
to fill paper cups with blue water,
or if they envisioned some modern,
aesthetically pleasing dungeon
whose chains and spiked instruments
have been replaced with the slow,
pulsing, painful squeeze
of the seriousness of work.

-S.C. Martinez