words

in the long columns of sunlight i am stranded,
in shade i am stranded, in downpour and desert
i am stranded in this painting, poem, or song.

it makes no difference where i go,
i drive day and night aimlessly,
i follow street shadows and blistered pavement
through black and grey skinned hazard,
i follow crooked merchants up and down sidewalks
with their assortment of philosophies,
i watch white women in bright classy shoes
chatter endlessly to the air,
tossing a sunburst of brilliant hair
carelessly over their shoulder like an explosion,
i hear black girls with harsh loud voices
putting back the struggle and the drama,
the endless tragedy, mexicans with wide hips
and dirt devils dancing through their blood
and tattoos on their tits, i endeavor
to watch and witness them all for no other reason
than to pass the hours, swerve through the days
like a mirage through thirst and sweat.

i hide death beneath a black beard
and i wake every morning with it on my mind,
cancer, car wreck, plane crash, shotgun sonnets,
an atom bomb in lymphnode nurseries,
how it will come is already written yet
i cannot find the words to keep back this trauma,
this certainty i must grapple with hour on hour,
day by day in the endless chasing of my thoughts.

i miss ashtray women and wine bottle battles,
broken nights and apologetic days, long sunsets
spent in bed wrestling the agents of our own doom
in an attempt to suffocate them beneath the sheets,
drown them in our sweat and deafen them with shouts,
anything to ultimately rid ourselves
of their dark and depressing presence.

i long now more than ever for some halving
of this burden, some chemistry to dissolve it with
and some stone to bury it under,
some morning built on a smile and a sundrop
yet here we are, stranded, driving down the hours
behind engine growling greed, a psychopath in protest
reserved to remain in outlands of loneliness
to keep the monster quiet, to keep the timid tame,
to keep pulsing this machinegun heartbeat
for fear it may slow, then stop, then fade forever.

-S.C. Martinez

i am an artist, ask any woman
who has known my carnal heart
and she will tell you,
yes, yes, he is an artist.

she will tell you of my words,
how i described her form,
her eyes like ringed planets,
the curves of her side
like sand dunes touched with silk
that i would often slide down
with my hands and my lips,
around her navel and over her hips,
where i would leave little traces
across the spaces that i had been.

yes, yes, i am an artist,
and so i drew starry nights
and sunflowers on her back
with the brush of my fingers,
almond branches in bloom
and bell lilies in a copper vase,
i would borrow from other artists
to strengthen my work
and i know that were they there
they would have nodded sagely
before turning their eyes
back to that translucent mirror
they each and all had crossed.

yes, yes, he is an artist,
she would say, before unveiling
the horrible artifacts
that all artists carry around
in their worn out pockets,
the madness, the black hearts,
the red eyes and shouting,
the vengeance, the swearing,
the lies and idiot behavior,
the violence so serene and pure
that it may only express itself
through disappointment and fear.

the drinking, nights of drinking,
sitting alone with a glass
and a cigarette stirring trouble
in the substance of the soul,
bottling it and preserving it,
placing it neatly on a shelf
to collect dust and be forgotten
until one evening some months on
it would be recalled and opened
and out would come the horror,
the horror of the artistry,
broken things and spilled drinks,
ugly words thrown at such pretty faces,
crushed hearts and footsteps leading away
back out in to the night
that had been before and would again
until no more nights were made at all.

yes, yes, i am an artist,
i mix the apollonian with the dionysian
and carry around this amalgamous god matter
to make something i can live with,
some essence that keeps back
the monotony and the chaos,
and though from time to time
i slide further upon one end
and back then to the other, i am an artist,
and i will eat my own rabid heart
before i give in to the squalor
of ordinary, everyday splendor.

-S.C. Martinez

let’s suffocate together
between our
little
personal
dramas.

let’s drown together
wrapped in the arms
of our
heavy
maternal
waters.

let’s experiment with form,
matter, sound, and light,
rhyme, meter, method,
and slip in to a
slow
strange
expression.

let’s enact a tragedy
with characters old and new,
let’s dance through life
and cast dark replicas
against a
high
autistic
curtain.

let’s murder morning
and make pretty patterns
in the blood, let’s be killers
and let’s write our names in it
so those that pass through
where morning used to be
know
who
did it.

-S.C. Martinez

i have encountered again the panic,
the residual fear that hangs about
and it brings me to a howl,
loud and cold and alone, naked, shivering,
again terrified of what each moment brings.

it follows me like an instinct,
through hallways and down highways
and across states and in to cities,
through the tangled mess of cars and arms
it comes like a virus, like a storm,
like some murder close of blood.

and so i must consume, devour,
give back to the night
some vestige of what i once was,
and so i dance with devils
and women with bullet hole hearts
and those without any heart at all,
women made of steam
like phantoms of industrial automation,
and so i dance with the panic
hour round hour to get closer
to that which must ultimately
bring me to some end
and as i move further away from home
the shadows grow long on the road
and my heart knows only sorrow.

-S.C. Martinez

watch patterns turn over and over
and feed back in to your world,
women and chemical affairs,
the same stars that have witnessed
since birth the patterns emerge
and repeat, repeat, recycle and repeat.

the moving parts of this machine
run not on gasoline but blood,
time, spirit and ethereal concept,
love and lust and hate and regret
and all manner of invisible fuels
that keep the universe fluid.

the heart burns on internal combustion
and every other part reacts with motion,
motion of thought and motion of hand
drawing from the turbines within
to keep pace against the patterns
that are in a state of constant flux
and determined to burn you out
in a haze of smoke, oil and confusion.

-S.C. Martinez

i have become something
other than the sum of my own parts,
hands through thin and troubled hair,
eyes bloodshot and out of focus,
everything thrice dissolved
and offset by its own simulacral image.

blood memory and familial madness,
interactions with others,
a strange presence permeates
throughout the heart and follows
wherever i go, ghosts present
in the forms of lesson and mistake,
a cosmic dry heave grating
from and through the throat of god.

drowning in the piss and shit,
wading through the filth
and finding in it diamonds and dollars,
winks and smiles, things to keep
and thus define this life by,
night after night in the dark
to piece together some life of work
by which everyone else can learn from
so that i may go in peace,
fading like a smoke trail,
a breath, an aurora of grit and soul.

-S.C. Martinez

i live among arachnids great and small
and i have entered in to a conflict
with the greater and more terrifying,
their long thin legs stretching slow
and full of horror like death threats,
dark agony, filled with genetic wisdom
and necessity, these wretched bastards.

these many legged maniacs that drift
across the carpet, who emerge from between
the clefts in the walls, the dark corners
of the room, the spaces the mind neglects
and their spindles throb with thread,
with rotten acrimony and poison intent,
they crawl across the skin at night
and it is strange and it is terrible.

their black and bulbous bodies
dance within the confines of the night
and with every eye they judge fact from lie,
cephalothoracic nightmare blending black and white
and i have engaged this war with insight,
with respect and admiration, skill and cunning
and so i have made a truce with the lesser tribes
to eradicate their brethren entire.

you can see the aftermath of their battles
like napalm-scarred villages,
a quiet stillness on the river,
a soft memory fading from itself,
a genetic proof evident stark
among their heavy webs like smeared semen
caught in the corners of the room
where one crawls over and around the dead
of their enemy, a message to the others,
a head trophied on a stake,
a tremble in the mess of things,
a ritual fire built and burned.

in the blackness we converge
to an order beyond helix or structure,
a machine to push forward the breath of evolution
by violence and neglect, the usual suspects,
a fire in the blood to divide one from the other
and here we come to a greater understanding
in that i am a third party, a greater foe
and a friend to none and i navigate
espionage and undercover treason
to reach an ultimate terminus
whereby no spiders exist in my company at all
and i will war night and day
for no other reason than to do so.

-S.C. Martinez

i dreamt that you and i were devils
and we slowly destroyed one another
with fire and hail and shrapnel,
words of murder and consequence
thrown about carelessly
like so many wasted hours.

i dreamt that you and i were lovers
and we reveled in the company
of only one another,
rolling and rolling wrapped in sheets
and purring smoke
from between your modest lips,
finding in the eyes of the other
some parable by which to live.

i dreamt that you and i were mad
and by some tragedy
we were forced to stand by one another,
savage paracletes of nocuous intent
grinding teeth and crushing our hearts
between the fear and the longing,
where our hands should have met
instead we pointed fingers
and slung words of perilous monument.

i dreamt that you and i were one another
and in this dream i found out
the horror of my spirit,
the numinous ego that is this
and every other indictment
against the substance of my own heart,
i dreamt that you and i were what we are
and i awoke to find this true.

-S.C. Martinez

this is an expression of nature,
this word, ‘war’,
it is a necessary catharsis
through which all things expel
the waste product of power and being,
the shedding of hope and fear
and the removal of those
who can not adequately adhere
to this principle.

this is necessary,
this word, ‘war’,
it must be maintained
and cultivated, perfected,
the antiquated parts hacked off
and buried to appease the universe,
to burn a bond in to the fabric
of everything, to sacrifice,
this is necessity, this is purpose.

this is what wakes men from sleep,
this word, ‘war’,
it is the organism behind
that which we see with our eyes
and all conflicts here
are but parts of the greater war without,
that one which envelopes all,
a blade of grass struggling
against the wind is at war
and is as noble a warrior as ever there was,
for he has found this moment in the universe
that will stand alone as inherently his,
this moment, apart from all moments,
this moment is the one that gives light
to all others.

this is the way of things,
this word, ‘war’,
our lives are always taking place
against the backdrop of war
and it is from this play of light and shadow
that we are to pull from existence
the parts needed to remain within it,
alive, burning, killing, consuming,
expounding upon the very conflicts
taking place in our hearts
and pouring them out on to the earth
in whatever form is most efficient,
this is the notion of being,
this is the purpose of dying,
this is the way of things,
this word, ‘war’.

-S.C. Martinez

fluorescent light from my younger days,
a child of strange merging, wandering
through the house looking for things unknown;
such light now, so many years on,
spoils the utter darkness of her apartment
though it scarcely finds us in the bedroom
and it is just enough to know we exist.

she lies naked on her stomach
and her pale breasts touch the edge of the bed
in perfect symmetry and geometric proof,
the light forms her body discreetly
and i run my fingers over her skin,
across her shoulders, down her spine, her thighs;
the boxfan on the floor, propped against the wall,
pulsates rhythmically like a distant song
and her dark hair is quietly disturbed
by its rippling waves and her eyes are wild
and serve as nurseries to stars in combusting births
and the color is difficult to pin down
and it may be that i love them and her
in equal jurisdiction marked out
within the strange spiral galaxies of my heart.

a glass of merlot cradled in her delicate hands
like an offering of arterial blood dark and foreboding,
the stuff of hearts that cascades down her lovely throat
and i am unworthy of her touch, her kiss, her gaze,
but she is kind, she is soft, lovely as those lands
of the earth as yet unfound and so unfaded,
a lunar eclipse that cannot be felt by hand,
cannot be heard, measured, can only be compared
against that which bears no common description,
the places kept hidden by the id, something greater
than words from the greatest of poets
in their greatest of hours.

she is sweet like spring evenings,
sunset of flame and enigmatic pondering,
inspiring pursuit from the lonesome argonauts
lost in the remote stations of my wayward spirit,
she is ice in my wine that clatters against the glass
as i walk back and forth her empty home
while she is away, ruminating over her and her mind
and she is wonderful and i lose this contest
of sculpting her beauty in paper and ink,
yet still i will carve her name in to a thousand nights
to catch and keep her affection.

-S.C. Martinez