words

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 sweat, a hot wet malignancy
wherein there exists a motion of hand to glass,
glass to lips, liquid to throat
and throat to soul,
murky embers to keep the night igneous,
to keep the day rolling and clean, neat.

i am the father’s regret, his waste,
never what the lineage pronounced
but enough to keep the flame alive,
a white rival to moonlight,
a madness kept in bullet hearts
released in smoke and blood.

-S.C. Martinez

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 is only this,
a quiet life near water and wilderness
where wild things creep from the night
and sleep in your narrow dreams,
the shout of restless doom
and i must keep moving,
keep breathing and keep burning
day on day like war
and there is no end in sight
so in the space between
i will blur these days together
and draw sound and shape
from whatever i remember.

-S.C. Martinez

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 breathes in
my tired antics.

-S.C. Martinez

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 down,
removed from the high highs
by days among them,
forced to communicate,
to listen, to compete,
i float down
a little lower than before.

-S.C. Martinez

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 the ink.

the bone monsters,
criminal journeymen,
carnival mayhems
from this brain horror,
marauders conjured
by chemical process
and medicinal invocation,
chasing my echoic mania
out into the ink.

-S.C. Martinez

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.

she cries softly
in the evening shade
and i am certain now
that there is no justice
in universal law,
only her sadness,
only my shame.

her lullaby haunts
this quiet night alone,
this self imposed asylum
and the space between us
stretches and grows
while the world around me
draws back, collapses,
turns in on itself
taking her song with it.

-S.C. Martinez

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 are not meant to gather.

in the light scattered mess,
the city trembles and hums
and we get lost in this,
grids of beggars and junkies,
watchers and monsters
like childhood paranoia
come back at last real and deep
to haunt the eternity,
the certainty of getting older.

they say overcome, endure,
but they are dull and sterile
and we restless and potent,
profound, built for this purpose
we can know no other way,
isolation and addiction
the common truce between us
and if i had a cup of poison
i would share it with you.

-S.C. Martinez

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
wherein all sums and sins
must again be visited,
some god, some devil,
some ultimate reckoner
to judge the quantitative merit
of this otherwise empty way.

-S.C. Martinez

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 with great confidence,
“just pour it in the fucking glass.”

that is how you drink wine,
that is how you enjoy it;
drink it and speak of other things.

drink it straight from the bottle
if they’ll let you, otherwise,
pretend a glass is just fine.

drink it and stumble and fall,
drink it and knock things over
and break hearts
and make rash decisions,
drink it and forget to pay the bills,
wake up too hungover to move
and go to work anyway.

drink it and smoke cigarettes
even though you quit so long ago,
drink it and make inappropriate phone calls
and stomp through the gentle garden
you’ve worked so diligently to maintain,
drink it and rip apart the world
and all its pointless intricacies.

it doesn’t matter the vineyard,
the age, the bullshit aroma;
drink it, pour it in the fucking glass
and drink it so that i may go on
with the rest of my evening.

-S.C. Martinez