words

the drunk blathers,
white kid college charisma,
cheap thrills
from modest risks,
the hiss of the grill
and the drunks babble on,
talk over one another,
loudly, louder,
the louder they get
the clearer their point becomes,
augmented by repetition
and decibel level.

matters of love, family,
of life and death
should be discussed exclusively
where everyone can hear
how important your life is,
at shitty little diners
at 4 am
in summers
drenched in white heat.

-S.C. Martinez

in a crooked house with crooked teeth,
a bad heart and paper skin
you watch the presence of specters
with their vapor trails
go ambling through the yard.

sleep for hours, sleep for days
and ignore the skittish infection
rifling through your brain,
bury old ideas in the dark
and listen for the remote insect lullabies.

waste away, the shell of before
now peels away slowly, piece by piece,
the trees rise like unearthed bones
to an overhang of evolutionary birthright,
what else is there, what else should there be
and the stomach eats itself
like a horse consuming a horse.

the clocks breathe out seconds
and ever so often their pulses meet
and everything is slightly askew,
this crooked house with its crooked inhabitants
and the ghosts of old men
peering curiously through the stained and broken windows.

-S.C. Martinez

firebreather, shake that blood from your heart
and if you hear of my approach
let the others know
the boy is coming home.

we cling to some low hanging vine
and i sobered up from the midday drunk
before coming to watch you go,
nestling in my adequate liver
the same poison that will carry you off,
listening to the pneumatic hiss
of your final breaths,
the last words we will share.

quick shallow intake, terrible output,
eyes locked in a waking REM cycle,
your heart beats a fading rhythm of survival,
that which kept you alive in alien lands
and here now as in there then
the opioids move through you,
they have come to collect.

no direct line travels now from i to you,
it has been severed in your crossing
and when i now listen
there is only some primordial static,
the white noise of infinity.

keep a light out for my approach,
remember my face
and in the after we will speak
as we did not in the before.

-S.C. Martinez

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

i sent wave upon wave rushing through her,
flushing at the base of her neck
came blood tsunamis
from the epicenters of her breasts,
her pale skin translucent, embryonic,
pebbled by the brush of my touch.

her irises pinwheeled and constricted,
the whole world for a brief depraved moment
spun far out and well beyond
what her frail fingers could hold
while the spirits of dead matriarchs floated by,
caught at the lip of that other place,
powerless but to witness
the devil devour their soft heredity.

a stain on futures,
a genetic asterik of indiscretion,
a lesson learned but soon forgotten
in stead of safety, pastel skin,
eyes tired from forever concealing
secrets of youthful waste.

-S.C. Martinez

watching headlights drift past
in the drunken streets,
unfunny cartoon characters
and too many eyes follow me.

so hard to hide now,
must blend and quietly exit
until they track me down again,
chasing endlessly
this object of turmoil.

i will bleed for anonymity,
bleed dollars and dimes
for quiet evenings in the sundown,
drifting slowly sideways
from the whiskey and the breeze.

-S.C. Martinez

waiting for evening to strike,
the twilight’s permission to drink
and drink heavily and alone,
to come to an understanding
with the circumference of my swing,
how elliptical my reasoning may get.

amber lights of poverty,
the backyard dog calls to keep back,
stay on my side of the road.

now at a state of rest,
watching the shadow of a guinness harp
float lightly on the surface of foam.

the night arrives in contrast,
through conflicting shades,
headlights burning like eyes
bloomed in fire, an old and creaking
greyhound moves through,
its hackles rising in dark twos
behind the shade of its windows,
time wearied travelers
of old world methods and ideas
getting off here, for good
or bound for other interludes.

little pockets of the city
that never stop burning, always lit up
and powered on by the wayside,
off highway exits, crossroads
for crime and midnight debauchery.

too old for idolatry,
at some point the gods
must come to rest,
at some point the rum
must catch up,
in the present swing of my circumference
the world must turn faster
to keep up with my ellipsis.

-S.C. Martinez

old demons released
in rising curls of smoke,
old demons released
to complicate things,
my fingers dance
over nothing, invisible keys,
muted melodies,
sound without sound
while i hate even this,
this expression, this waste,
energy unspent, poems
that amount to nothing,
literally nothing.

-S.C. Martinez

the shadows are in their front yards
while white figures play volleyball
at the nice white church
just down yonder,
a few houses over
in the by-mile neighborhoods
of these strange highway folk,
the edges of their driveways
flanked with stayback orange reflectors
warning wayward drivers elsewhere,
an existence carved
from southern pine barrens,
people long forgotten and mostly invisible,
committing their odd outland rituals,
inside off the road houses of the holy
under ominous fluorescent guidance
they gather to witness in these,
always the last days before the rapture,
the weird and angry words of god.

-S.C. Martinez