words

i am a dead battery,
each alarm a shot
of electric shock
in to quiet corners
of my head.

i grow further weary
through lack of sleep,
no sleep, only moments,
short interludes, reboots,
not enough to keep
this idiot machine moving.

a narcotic need
to power down,
process in smoke, in syrup,
alcohol and glitter.

i break a little
each morning, eyes red
and face white,
dying for sleep, for rest,
wanting it more than words,
than women, than understanding.

i rise from the floor
and commit a ritual
that is bound in blood,
one agreed to at conception
with some infinitesimal god
and i burn with fatigue
in this slow rotation,
grinding down to minerals
and little else.

-S.C. Martinez

cake and wine, dancing with spirits
in the country dark evening,
spilling over into the kitchen,
smoke and words, reaching an agreement
with the dead, sound and shape
suspended in this medium.

we sit in the trees
and scream in eagle dialect,
looking to find some rhythm
to the day, some lesson from the night.

pale light and easy movement,
too far out from the city
to feel the warmth of it
and so we make fire, we burrow in
like woodland rodents
or derelicts of common law.

in the dampness of suburb
we form like morning wet
as the evening progresses,
we eat cake and drink wine
like idiots beset with royal blood
clustered around some musical offering
and we spill out in to the night,
smoke and words, sound and shape,
suspended in this medium.

-S.C. Martinez

keep walking if you must, dear girl,
my morals are quite sound
inasmuch as morality can make noise
and though i smell of resin, caffeine,
women and demons
i am a man above all and as all men
i aim to own the earth and all things
contained within it.

you will ache for the way
in which i breathe fire,
you will long throughout your life
for the burning of my soul,
for the way in which i ignite,
the electricity my fingertips possess
and the rush of static and turmoil
as my hands slide across your skin,
through your tangled hair
and across your elastic borders,
all of the immoral acts
that live in the coursing of my blood
you will desperately want,
you will require what you have forsaken
in order to feel alive.

this is what life is then,
a series of negotiations
with your head and your heart,
weighing heaven against hell,
trying to find some reasonable compromise
and yet in this you have chosen space,
time, the cold certainty
of your nice and normal future,
quiet nights with boring men
who will never know you or your heart
in the way that i could have.

keep walking, dear girl,
if that is what you have to do,
work that stride into worlds
owned by other, more tolerable men,
men more suitable to the calm
and measured pulse i have made rapid
and felt beating hot in your neck,
keep walking beyond the reach
of my terribly deviant hands
and try to outrun
the desperate pace of my heart.

-S.C. Martinez

welcome back to use without thought,
the endless changing of the television
second on second, frame by frame
the thousand channel madness
that brings days to a slow drawl
and nights to a definitive pause,
this infomercial insomnia.

there’s nothing on, never anything on
and we stare, we stare like the dead
at this mess of mediocrity and sadness,
the kardashian curse, this encephalopathy.

change, change, always the same,
flat faces and canned laughter,
color and sound all floating by
impressionless, uninspired,
something to keep the mind moving,
something to fill the empty hours,
anything to keep from looking at the sun
and counting down this certain doom.

flicker in and nothing out,
it all gets caught up and fed in,
the brain on fire, smoking and looping
at this terrible need for a shock,
a buzz, an instant gratification
for an action that takes no effort,
requires no depth but gains everything
in the space of a blink, a blip,
an acceptance of transmission through
to the center of some primitive circuitry.

flip, flip, keep searching
for the hit that will bring it all
to a climax, a necessary splicing
of all these frayed wires, loose connections,
flat faces and canned laughter, choices,
all these distractions, all this waste,
all this redundancy and meritless stimulation.

-S.C. Martinez

change color at my command,
i’ll haunt the pale shore
of your very delicate shoulders,
the soft rush of your neck,
the ivory tremble of your
very neat and very elegant stomach,
any place that you allow me to touch.

i’ll follow your eyes,
your wide and hypnotic glances
that are sweet and flammable
like ether and the more you look away
the longer i must linger in the after image,
some bizarre and shapeless blur
needing your gaze to hold a form.

intangible, the persistence of your memory
and yet i am powerless
against the ebb and flow of your will,
the casual tide of your fascination,
the sunburst of your skin
and the erratic manner of your hair
that brings me to a pause,
a moment that lives within itself
while i wish desperately
for you to never take it away.

-S.C. Martinez

my hands are stained with grease
and everything makes a sound,
everything is wet with meaning
and i get high and float around,
a desert emptiness in city streets,
a grit and grime of back and forth,
a smear that eventually dries and hardens.

-S.C. Martinez

what is it in this
that i find so anomalous,
so outside the paradigm,
that brings me back again
and again, every evening,
chasing her through my thoughts
then catching her in my arms.

tracing my fingers
down her slender back,
the curve of her spine,
her skin is so soft
it feels dangerous to touch
for fear there may never again
be something so terribly new
and delicate as this moment,
this girl so strange and wonderful
that when she leaves my embrace
i must fall in to a consideration,
a series of long hours
choked with thoughts.

she is something tender,
with a mind that hums with electricity,
a brightness to her that blinds most
but leads me crawling to its source,
her heart beats a quick pulse
and her eyes consume everything they see,
blood pure and pretty grin,
she is far greater than i should bear witness
and so here this is, some reference
to the curious longing of my affections.

-S.C. Martinez

close to the devil
in the fire and ether,
shaking and hissing,
chanting, eyes rolled back,
this rhythmic compulsory madness.

roiling ink on every page
and a cigarette clamped
between jagged and angry teeth,
a product of this environment
divided back into our terminus.

the devil lives in vodka and smoke,
between tangled sheets
and he dances along a violin string,
rapido, rapido,
onward come the night
to hide our very terrible ways.

-S.C. Martinez

every night this decision must be made,
to break in half or take it whole,
this small ovular mechanism
that will regulate my thoughts and actions,
my words, my many wasted dreams,
my general momentum.

several factors must be taken into consideration,
more than are fully understood,
how many terrible thoughts were there today,
how many will come tomorrow,
how much damage was done,
how much time spent chasing phantoms,
considerations, factors, formulas,
an endless coil of principle mathematics.

i witness, i crave,
i prowl the affections of women,
this delicacy of swollen hearts
and coming up mostly empty
i endear to swallow it whole,
every milligram of false persona,
this medicine to make me normal enough
to live among them for a moment more.

still i spin nodes ever indiscriminate
to the turnings of this catharsis,
exercising ultimately every energy
until i am but this,
whatever this may be,
a self-important self-indulgence
with no other definition than is.

-S.C. Martinez

they lord, forgive them for what they do not know,
forgive them for their conceived notions
of your will and your testament,
they lord, they know not who they be.

they lord, let them clamor across the earth
from city to city, desert to desert,
locking arms and swaying in the dead air,
let them counsel and murder and usurp
like a slow moving mold over everything.

they lord, help them understand your deity,
let them see you are not as they say you be,
you vengeful titan, you caring parent,
let them see you are but globs of antimatter
that will destroy everything if you become too great.

they lord, they know not what they know,
they know not your faceless effigy
swirling and burning out there in all that dark,
consuming in ultimate finality without judgment,
not a being but a force that has shook the universe
without so much as a breath.

they lord, they cannot grasp divinity
and seek only your infinity, a scrap of your essence,
they lord, let them wander endlessly
in search of your estate, your cathedral of stars,
they lord, they lord, they do not know you are not they.

-S.C. Martinez