words

i must implant this thought
in a seed, a bud,
within the blooming heart
of an orchid
whose petals open wide
to let in the sun.

i must encapsulate this moment
within the soluble walls
of a pill, broken apart
in to milligrams
and put away in a bottle
with other similar moments
to be unhoused
at some more pressing time.

i must till the soil surrounding this idea,
drop it in a tiny earthen hole
and enclose it with dirt
to come back months later
to great rising stalks of genius
which i must then hack down
and gather and consume.

i must wrap this sensation in a cocoon
to keep the instar safely hid,
waiting for eclosion,
waiting to pump fluid in to its wings
before escaping quietly
on the edge of a breeze,
sailing about the night
like some lunar native
on its way to some greater cause.

-S.C. Martinez

i drew an ak-47 in the dirt
and called it love,
i circled it with a heart
and made annotations
in the margins of the grass
to extrapolate through the act
some more complete idea of this,
of you, and you, and you.

i am drunk before the sun has set
and i watch the road
for the headlights and dust
of your approach
and seeing nothing i turn inward
this external need for a connection,
this shorting of asynchronous circuits.

i watch the evening bleed out
through blood red curtains
and i drink more and feel less,
swirling about in my own memories
i am thus a man of fire and alcohol,
burning every way as i write
the same words over and over again
because i think the same thoughts
over and over again,
the same forward progression
of you, and you, and you.

my tongue laminates
the dull shade of my teeth
as i glean grains of wisdom
from the daily labor of your memory,
your fingers moving rapidly
through dollars and wine bottles,
i echo your economics of alcoholism
and amoral self-indulgence,
praying the night hides my sins,
this impressionist of bad habits.

-S.C. Martinez

drunk on wine in the afternoon,
it is sunday and the sun has been to church
and elected to take the rest of the day off
and so this date belongs to the clouds,
all gray and ridden with promise,
the wind picks up here and there
and re-arranges the early leaves in this autumn,
the cancer leaves that fell first, the drunks,
the drug addicts, the idiots and fools
whose fire climaxed too soon and now
they are doomed to crumble and blow away.

dogs howl war songs, battle cries
at the lawnmowers and the walkers,
at anything and anyone who dares advance
uninvited upon their carefully crafted homes,
their graveyards of buried bones.

drunk on wine in the afternoon
and i can hear a change in pitch,
i can sense things shifting
like the innards of an old clock
and though i am ignorant of what this means
i am obligated to follow,
what else is there to do on a sunday
but chase the rhythm of the universe
to wherever it ultimately settles.

i crisscross city and state like a bounty hunter
in search of some metaphysical capture,
some essence to keep back the roaches
and the businessmen, the lurid women
with casually indifferent hearts,
the waywards of my arrested development.

drunk on wine in the afternoon
i stand up to greet the evening
as it approaches slow and altered,
drunk on the wine of its own afternoon
we engage in a brief reminiscence
before each departing in the direction
of our respective ephemeral engagements.

-S.C. Martinez

we once were the night,
perched upon branches in the dark
my associates and i spoke
well in to the morning hours,
the source of so much smoke and sound
and so bright we were
that the stars watched us
turning round and round
and for fear we may replace them
they burned hot with a new and envious fire
for it was god who spoke through us.

he sits behind a great wooden desk
drawing out the follies and triumphs
of our little lives, crumbling bits of paper
and tossing them out in to the ether,
god with his smeared and scribbled notes,
a cosmic cigar glowing like the sun
dangling from betwixt his lips
as he draws lines and shapes
and drinking the way that tortured men do,
with a slow urgency of encroaching agony.

he began to mark us out one by one,
his own failed and weird design,
we rare men who would unthread the universe
if we could but find a loose string
and so it was that the first of us died
that set off a long and arduous stream
of expiration and madness
until soon the night was empty
of our brilliance and once again
the stars held dominion over all.

-S.C. Martinez

she turns each page with a care
reserved for newborn mothers,
never bending the corners to mark her place,
never dodging that without meaning
or stopping short of knowing the fates
of those paper worlds,
digging past the surface
clear through to the other side
without so much as pausing for breath
or some lesser necessity,
she must know the end
once she has been to the beginning.

her skin softer than pale shades
of lamp light in the evening regress,
her hair a river without source
or destination but of itself,
she is a story i could never compose,
for it’s far too beautiful
to see myself in those pages.

-S.C. Martinez

slide across town in the early rain,
the first day of fall,
floating over the roads in the afternoon
on the edge of greatness.

i drink piss wine from a plastic cup,
bad wine and worse fish,
the sun creeps down and the moon up
both to watch at my window
as i do the things i do.

i wrestle with the light,
i smother it in my arms
and sleep for four hours
then wake confused and out of place,
spend what little money i have
on what little food it will buy
then finish the piss wine
and open a bottle of red,
keep the night moving
like an assembly line.

i burn the hours like grass
and i latch my presence to a full moon,
lunatic in verse howling wild
and endless, i see birds now
only in their fleeing
as i chase ghosts round and out
from this haunted summer.

-S.C. Martinez

i’m going on a bender.

it has been decided
by powers greater than mine,
some form rubberstamped
and sent through the channels
of bureaucratic bullshit.

i’m going on a bender,
that is what is happening next.

the liquor store has wine
15% off on wednesdays
so i stumble in from sleep
with wild hair and tired eyes,
wandering the long aisles
of bottle after bottle
calling my name,
whispering to my lips
each wanting a home
within the curious trouble
of my way about.

i’m going on a bender,
that is what is happening now,
so i spend the grocery money
on a bottle of red,
a pinot grigio, a riesling
called “cupcake”
and i put them on the counter
and the liquor store girl
looks at me in appraisal
that i accept as i pay and exit,
clutching bags within a bag
like it were christmas
and i a bearer of gifts.

this will end somewhere dark
for this is only the beginning,
the liquor store girl
will soon go through a series
of considerations, back and forth
between fascination, curiosity,
indifference, disdain, and love;
this is the normal progression
within the curious trouble
of my way about.

i’m going on a bender
and no one can stop me,
there is no other way
than to bleed this need
of its strength, to push forward
and through the frenzy
and the fervor, to come out
on the other end wet and reeking
and covered in the placenta
of yet another birth,
shaking off the fetal residue
of this eutherian repetition
and having learned nothing
i am doomed to repeat endlessly
a reincarnation that moves me
further from the light
and as i stumble listlessly down
this dark hallway i think of only
how far we have come,
how far we have come.

-S.C. Martinez

the city takes small bites from my heart
and so i find myself drinking gasoline
and pissing engine coolant on the side of the interstate,
drifting across the road like sand in the wind,
fragmented and coalescing here and there
then breaking apart again to spread myself out,
to cover as much distance as possible
before i must disappear back to the desert
from which my origins lay claim to.

i descend upon the country like a heathen
and on the margins of these rural highways
dead dogs lie sideways, bloated and stiff,
cooking in the late summer sun
and here the plans are laid bare,
a weekend to put blood back in these arms,
days of mineral deposits and fossils,
nights filled with needs as old as the earth.

in the evening of my advent i am wise,
heavy-lidded and stretched out in the sunset,
hand in the lake and head in the clouds,
breathing deep the endless breath of life
and hoping against all evidence to the contrary
that i may never die, that i may live forever
among the weeds and the crooked tree limbs,
the gravel roads and slanted old houses,
my sins forgiven, or at the very least ignored.

gathering steam at the coming of night,
the darkness puts diamonds in my eyes
and smeared lipstick sends chemical warheads
rushing through the narroways of my blood,
i carry secrets in my pockets
and i must take what is not mine to have,
a dark haired damsel with envy in her eyes
and arms wrapped in art, spinning the night
like a spider with lust in her heart,
click-clacking her heels
against the antique stone of existence,
she grinds away the hours with her hips
and crushes the sadness between her tits,
burying the night beneath sweat and money,
she takes another turn around
and then sweeps my dollar from the ground.

vinegar in my lungs and rum on my lips,
barreling down the road in the darkness
trailing red lights and mad laughter,
close calls and odd circumstances
guide me safely in where i sit in the dark
and relegate emotion to the lesser parts of me,
the parts no one can see, drifting in and out of sleep
where i dream of purple horses and brunettes
of murderous intent, dark eyed beauties
who steal the night with their charm
and their knowledge of its inner workings.

i awake each morning with guilt in my stomach
that i must dispel and this day is no different,
i redact some suitable version of events
to present as a brief history of my time
and then i am on the road, splitting borders
between the tread of my tires,
leaving an etching of my presence
for lovers to fall in love with,
driving home hungry in order to make it home at all.

-S.C. Martinez

on the water we are magnificent
like winds blowing over the surface
for miles and miles, never lacking,
never losing a moment from hesitation.

the sun does not set but melts and drips
and drains in to the water a golden mess
and then this is how the night is made,
from burning drops of blinding enigma
comes a darkness in the sky
and then the water is turned to champagne
in the waves we make stranded in moonlight.

and in the morning, the sun congeals slowly
and through great effort to bring itself
up from the quiet depths of its liquid rest
it is born again and rises newly round
evaporating the loose wetness of its slumber,
burning and ubiquitous, solemn,
the word of god if god were a word.

on the water we are as the sun
burning and fading, rising and falling
by some temporal mathematics, a circadian algorithm
we are not to understand but simply follow
as a clock from dusk to dawn and on and on.

-S.C. Martinez

i drove through the city in search of a drink
and i found it and i moved on, deeper still
until every corner owned a liquor store
and rows of black eyes stared me down
from the sidewalks and front yards,
but i listen to the blues, brother,
i know the taste of poverty,
i know the smell your dreams release
when they curl up and die,
i know the heat brings madness
and the cold a deep dark hallway of depression,
i know, i know, so i turned up the radio
and rolled down the window and rode on
like a broken down john wayne with no bravado,
drinking my drink and breathing the wind,
watching sunsets burst in lavender and vanilla,
yellow and blue like a bruise against the sky.

-S.C. Martinez