words

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

the eyes of god are upon you
and you can do nothing
but drive faster, harder
into the heart of it
like some mythical beast
who is only conquered
by blood, bone and gasoline.

the world flattens out
and the road straightens
for miles of empty space
and at night the snow
erupts like phosphor
in the bleary gaze of headlights,
an endless plain beyond
of a wet and glaring white
and dead winter grass.

you have no home, wanderer,
drifter from couch to borrowed bed,
carrying your belongings
in a plastic grocery sack,
a pint of fire in your pocket,
hands grip the steering wheel
and the world at your whim.

———————————-

i smash a roach
beneath the bottom
of my whiskey glass
and i watch quietly,
detached, calculative
his final moments expire
in a thin silent twitch
through the smokey brown murk.

i smash the night
beneath the heroin weight
of stone tired eyes,
sucking the dark
from each moment
until a barter can be met
and sleep can be had.

i disturb the agreement
at this quiet locus,
brewing lightning and gridlock
in the clogged receptors
of some tangled neurology,
twisting, shaking,
falling and drowning
in the mystery beneath
like a case of bad brains.

———————————-

i make helter in the country
and bring skelter to the city
and at night i can feel my heart
beat hard against my chest
and i can hear it like a war drum
hollow in my ears.

the days are good
but the nights are better,
filled with a violent or criminal
juxtaposition with philosophy
and necessity, the weird
with the ordinary,
some viral benediction.

i awake to the staggering certainty
that this is who i am,
this and no other man
was i meant to be nor could i be
no matter what lies
the devil may tell.

———————————-

a cold halo circles the night
and the city lights in the distance
lay like fallen stars
perched on the horizon
and this mortal clay is warm
by the friction of love and war.

girls made of liquor
walk around in high heels
daring the world to crumble,
the soft nothing of their eyes
threatening everything
and the cold air crushes your bones
while the girls go moving on.

the trees stand by
like watchers over the road,
gnarled fingers reaching out
and here death is a sound,
death is a whisper
you understand only too late.

the universe exists
so that i may exist within it,
in ego, glowing this amniotic cosm
and i know now i must pay back
every ounce of this anima debt,
sin by sin, person by person
before the world will turn
a full revolution and i with it.

-S.C. Martinez

i go to the diner
because i enjoy listening
to the hardened women speak.
they rattle off complaints
like bullets with no regard
for who is near.
long hours, low pay, shitty men,
whores for coworkers
and assholes for customers.
if you sit at the counter
you will be hit with expletives;
it is a social contract.
money, lovers, dirty dishes
and wet, gnarled hands.
their teeth are lost
in the slow cycle of decay.
they smell of addiction
and sour childhoods, bad memories
of daddy and every man
that has come after
and they take out this aggression
on hash browns, sausage patties
and egg shells.
the names of children tattooed
on their wrists and necks.
stretch marks and mean faces.
the endless hiss of oil
and the rising of steam
accompany the clang and clatter
of various instruments,
the scraping of utensilary madness.
arguments are had, alliances forged
and broken in the span of cigarette breaks.
they count down the hours
with a harsh fatigue,
add up the dollars
and perform simple arithmetic
to determine the level
of that day’s misery.
hair pulled and pinned,
lightly dusted with grease.
skin taut and wrinkled nerves
and their eyes hold fire.
ain nobody got no hours,
pull two bacon, a weird language
in the back and forth economics
of breakfast with strangers.
they scratch their arms with long nails
and make crude references.
i suck down my food and exit.
the world is not so bad.

-S.C. Martinez