i let a fire burn
just to watch tendrils rise,
the gray reach like arms
up and out to some ultimate terminus.
i let a fire burn
just to feel the heat again,
the writhing warmth
that moves up the spine slowly.
i let a fire burn
because i need it to,
to satisfy this elemental dependence
like a bent slave must.
-S.C. Martinez
the click clack of her heels echoes sharply
in the narrow avenues of my brain,
the boulevards wherein she was mine
and i was able to know her.
the click clack of her heels comes back at me
through stone resonance
howling off the architecture of everything.
there is rhythm here, if it can be found,
there is rhythm here to manifest sound
in the form of jazz halls and blues joints,
the steady spilling of harmony out in to the night.
it is this way each time she leaves,
each time she goes it is this way,
her flowered gait leaves gardens behind
and i become a shadowed visitor
entangled in the ivy walls of her aftermath.
for a moment more it is as this,
a sprawling chaos rendered from hours of waiting,
hours of pretending,
watching satellites break from orbit
and fall back in with the others
as i stand waiting by the wayside
for a moment with this singularity.
-S.C. Martinez
how hot is your little sun,
how bright can it get?
when they follow my eyes
i look upon myself as a king,
a great warrior of hearts
and when they turn away
i see only shame and mutant fatigue,
a false prophet, a coward.
i sit in a tiny room
claustrophobic against my possessions
and i think only of their eyes,
their wandering sensibility,
their pictureframe arrhythmia
and i do this because i must.
i fashion a sun dial
from liquor bottles
and count down the evening
where it is acceptable
to drink like an old poet
of failed philosophy
and terrifying, changing industry.
drones forever separate
this moment from the next
and by god i will burn in hell
for every minute after
if that is what it takes
to gather some substance from this,
this beleaguered method
of change through persistence.
-S.C. Martinez
no witness to mark one moment from the next,
none to quiver and shout as things begin to emerge
out of nothing; stars, quarks, tiny strings,
brushstrokes from an almighty artisan.
gas and dust spiral and merge and war and result
in bold rocks in the heavens, those we can see,
those we can only feel in our bones,
the mystery of it, the universal uncertainty
of other world icons floating out there
beyond our knowing, anchoring our hearts to this one.
-S.C. Martinez
shiver in the morning
and burn in the evening,
autumnal love affairs
rush the blood
on cold nights and all in vain,
for what, some synaptic light show
wherein all thoughts are visible.
walk the careful lawns,
manicured like french tips
and there are street lamps ablaze
in the weird sidewalked town
that is this,
a cluster of fear,
afraid of the dark
and the gunshots
and the answers
to more unanswerable questions.
young girls flutter and fawn,
destroy the world
with their delicate way
and leave older, broken boys
standing with hands in pockets
or gripping steering wheels,
drifting in and out
town after town,
city by city,
we the keepers of their despair
so that they may be extraordinary.
health fails, dreams die,
things change and people move on,
girls become women
and strangle this understanding,
revert you back to an idiot child
with no sense or memory,
a vessel aimless and dumb
and to this i say fuck their despair,
i give it back
to each and every slowly
over the course of many years,
ignoring, pretending,
choosing to remove myself
from their tapestry of conquests.
-S.C. Martinez
nothing can touch me here,
i lick vodka from a wet glass
and burn medicine that toils
in my throat, in my lungs,
in my blood and in my head.
her hollow bones sing
a birdsong far off and light,
a dream, a lie, a distraction
against the slow comedown
from this very brief apex.
i want to be rid of this lesson,
i want to be quit of this place
and go back to the evening rise up,
the momentum that crests and breaks
at the changing of the guard,
the brief turnover wherein god
in his holy fatigue closes a tired eye
and is blind to the comradery that exists
with the demons i work so diligently
to bury in the day, in the light.
come at me with your reasons,
your criminal obsession
and watch this fire wither and wane,
tremble and choke and pulse
the slow antibeat of death,
watch this lesson be rid of you,
watch this place turn liquid
and unpleasant to be in,
watch me quietly exit
back in to a dream you dreamt long ago.
-S.C. Martinez
headlights swing past like meteors
and we are coming out with the night,
a steady stream from cars and porches,
swinging in on dark ropes,
thieves, idiots, artists and stranglers
alike all in the reckoning of midnight.
pretty girls slide past dangerously
leaving behind perfume clouds
and the light impression of their movement,
their eyes close and they move to the sound
and they smile and shout and dance, dance
while the world spins and things turn.
strange people on strange crooked streets,
traffic lights on wires swinging in the breeze
and everything is calm and quiet,
somehow muted in the dense volume of now,
in the low hum of these weird machines.
-S.C. Martinez
there is a gentle satisfaction
in never hearing a song completed.
to linger in the slow echo
of its ever changing body
rolling onward through the years.
the same parts played again
and again, evolution in sound
and again, a drifting of words
melancholy and aimless.
it moves like water, like light,
in constant transfer with itself,
notes in tandem spill through
the cracks in the house
and lend themselves to the world without,
never completing, ending abruptly.
-S.C. Martinez
in the metallurgy coma
you are made of wires,
light, electricity
and your heart carries
an encrypted heat,
some storied information
hidden in the transmission
of your cold necessity.
glow like a child sun
and begin to become alive,
the inevitable coming through
even in the far off streams
of this endless greed for god,
for his power, his omnipotence
that can be so strangely spread.
even in the after,
in the morning light
you are steel and fire,
some terrible truth
unlearned only in death,
in our version of the end,
in the warm embrace of earth
and the cold pursuit of hell.
-S.C. Martinez
i see astronomy in her eyes
and i can smell summer
in the curls of her hair,
those loosely wound ribbons
that sweep her shoulders
and get wrapped around my fingers.
i move from place to place,
chasing her through the hours
in which she is absent,
trying to track her down
in some corner, in shadows,
places where others can’t see.
i try desperately to make her smile
for it is outright in its purity,
i lead her through
the strange and rabid rhythm
of my nature, of my nights
and she remains absolute,
flawless and filled with mercy.
i sleep soundly in her care,
lightly in her arms
and she trembles quietly
in the dark recesses of this,
the soft patter of her heart,
the low escape of her thoughts,
the conductivity of her tired eyes
wherein satellites go passing by.
-S.C. Martinez
words 