words

the world is broken and bleeding
and from a crack in the ground they come,
an army of little red men
wearing little black suits
with little red ties,
smoking and laughing, shaking hands,
they scale the shear wall of my back
with fish hooks and ephemeral ropes of hair,
their cloven hooves leave little burning tracks
on either side of my spine,
those little bastards are mean
and grinning loudly like serial rapists.
they reach my shoulders and here
they all clamor around the rim of my ear
and whisper all at once suggestions, loops,
obsessions, a maelstrom of tiny outland voices
and it works, a suggestion, a loop,
an obsession takes hold and they climb in
through a hole in my head and make camp
and the smoke can be seen rising and rising
as it pours from out my skull.

they chew the fat,
they have a drink,
they settle in and dream little dreams,
my head itches and i shake it
and they shout in protest,
a foreign tongue, dirty looks.

they come for the cards,
they march on and my brain stinks
with steam and bad thoughts
and i start to forget things
and remember days that don’t belong to me.

every footfall comes with an explosion of nerves,
a branching network,
a brownout, the lights dim one by one by one
and then they stop, they come for the cards
so tables are set,
wages are waged,
cigars and bourbon,
poker chips and soul bits for currency
and they play for days,
never pausing, never ceasing,
drinking and shouting and seething,
mexican sweat, blackjack and seven card stud,
a cloud of weird weird thoughts
hangs over everything and my mind chokes,
convulses, and spits
and they are ejected, sent flying
in to the world outside my head again,
they hit the ground and crawl back in
to that other place from which they came,
coughing and cursing
and waving little red fists in the air,
those little red bastards,
they will be back again at another time
and we’ll do it all over again.

-S.C. Martinez

the paper read words bled black ink news
the same shit everyday, smearing on your fingers
the harsh reek of some ordinary nothing,
burning nations and burning dollars
and each and every a sore moment, a hangover,
this, then, is that and this again
is this, a waste of words and love and hate
and everything, a melody with a hoarse thin shiver,
your tambourine is a gesture,
and this is then that this again,
this again, your tambourine is a gesture
without words or looks, a gesture,
a means to some end, cigarettes and cancer,
a world within a breath,
a heartbeat slow and without rhythm,
a means to some end, cigarettes and cancer,
smoke rings and slow death,
your tambourine is a gesture,
slow and steady and ringing,
this then is that and this again.

-S.C. Martinez

i have become accustomed to
a sharp pain in my jaw
and in my neck that creeps in
whenever i smoke
and i know it is death
or some idiot cousin of
attempting to gain residency.

my question is now
where did these little words go,
where have they gone on to
that they are nearly impossible to catch
and re-arrange in to some fitting mimic
of my thoughts, are they gone
for the rest of these terminal nights,
did the smoke drive them away?

i must stalk them now,
i watch their shadows move
and i draw reference from this
to follow and to capture,
to drag them back and push them
through the tips of my fingers
where sometimes they live,
and sometimes they are smushed
between skin and black plastic keys,
sometimes they are drown in ink
and sometimes they are dead from the start.

what is this if not the death of things,
failure, they have left for more suitable men
with greater hearts and stranger eyes,
men who carry steel in their blood
and death in their pockets,
men who do not fear smoke,
men who do not fear auto accidents
and climbing interest rates,
bad weather and withering families,
men who are not tethered to earthly bonds
and do not wait for the words
but grab them from the air
and bleed them of their secrets,
men who eat bullets and drink gasoline,
men who shit pain and say fuck the words.

-S.C. Martinez

the words have gone on ahead
in to that blurring maelstrom
and what remains is insufficient
to consider oneself a master at anything;
there is only mediocrity
and it has become the form
to represent all forms,
a nerve-ending that writhes
in hydrogen winds
existing in a sort of non-strata
just beyond the edge of things,
just within a spider crack in greatness.

short breaths and bursts of light
and softly kindled fires
in either hemisphere of the brain,
something to take with you
on nights of octane spirit
wielding solitude while running on
in to the dark like a thing
lamenting its own form
and place in the universe.

recall hollow days filled with stanzas
beyond any reasonable defining,
where words came from somewhere
far below the skin and hidden
in some turning molten core
that seems to have burned through
and collapsed in on itself
like a dying star out there
in all that black matter.

days of beauty, nights of madness,
pages upon pages of distant requiem
written far before the passing of
its author, much advanced
upon the plain of genius
to come suddenly and ultimately
to a quiet terminus with which
no barter can be drawn,
it is the end of words
and so it is the end of things.

-S.C. Martinez

walking the worn gray steps of countless sad bastards,
parking fees ahead and the mingling
of other wasted lives, indigents,
clutching to words like prayer and hope and will,
false prophets each and every
haunting the narrow shit-smell corridors,
reek of death and dying, ultimate sadness.

outside among the birdshit and homeless
clouds of smoke issue from idle visitors,
a strange premonition eats the air
and red-eyed drug addicts line the walkways,
itching, itching, searching for angles
and easy dollars to put towards
things to put in their veins
and food if there is time to kill,
the stench of failure and heartbreak is overwhelming.

the poor and wounded shuffle about in poorly tied gowns
stained with blood and vomit and unidentified hues
of brown and green like pastoral landscapes,
clutching boxes of cigarettes and pulling with them
machines tied to their veins, keeping them quietly alive
even if their wretched frames have chosen otherwise,
hacking into closed fists, leaping phlegm and spittle,
bits of the body fleeing these sinking vessels
of flame and ire.

watching IV bubbles race to lanes of blood,
some biological super highway
whose vehicular citizens cluster and brake
in capillaried confusion, joining the fray
without regard for the outcome or the reason,
following the road to its terminus.

hair falling out in slow retreat,
eyes dilated infinitely and an equilibrium strike
against the warehouse rationale of brain and body,
falling slowly and a slow deviation from the idea of a god
whose love is boundless, whose blueprint is without fault
and whose will has put you here
among the piss and shit and elevators and beeping machines
and has placed your life in the hands of an animal
no different than you, no direct line to heaven,
no knowledge of the string to which all life is thread from.

know that god is not watching or waiting
to witness the outcome of your slow demise,
he is too far removed to hear your rolling moans
and your strange stroke dialect,
this house we have constructed to push away the inevitable
will crumble around you one way or another,
such is the way of things, no matter how greatly
it pains me.

-S.C. Martinez

the light gone,
dreams i’ve dreamt return
from their quiet corners
like lost things
in the early pause
of reasoning things out.

your smile is rain
in this arid climate
and you have gone back
to conduct again
with your orchestral hands
symphonies in my heart.

so quiet in your absence
the calm is paralytic,
a low echo rolling in waves
along this tuxedo soul.

my hands are spiders
dancing upon your skin,
my mind a projector
of wild thoughts
splayed out on the wall
in strobic trails
for you and you alone.

my words curl in the air
like falling leaves,
i crush the universe
in the palm of my hand
and render from its torn filaments
constellations, dreams, satellites
like strange pits
from some dark cosmic fruit,
all things sifted through
and sorted out like memories
in worn brown boxes.

the world turns
and the blood courses
and your reflection burns in the light
along the rim of the glass
and your eyes, your eyes
are an entity unto themselves
that dim the stars in such stark contrast.

-S.C. Martinez

a cycle of inadequacy,
checking the spaces between what is
and what it should be,
lining up all my thoughts
and knocking them over
like a game with no purpose
other than the act of,
a spectacle for others to pass over
as i sit slackjawed and bleary eyed
watching nothing happen before me,
no words, no images, no sound,
the tyranny of self loathing.

i smoke more and more and more
and i care less and less,
the ashtray becomes a boneyard
and the space i inhabit
is clogged with stale sorrow like mold,
a slow moving dementia
slipping through dirty sheets
and boxes never unpacked,
the smell of failure
is overwhelming and it lingers
on and on, my heart beats slower
and slower and seldom do i blink.

my lips move as if words were formed
yet there is no one to hear
even if they came to be,
the sun i shunned is slow to return
and drive away the burning winter,
it is a parade of tobacco
and lonely battles
and frightened paranoia,
the blinds are choked
by their own cords
and the night is now less welcoming,
something of a luxury to encounter
on dark voyages of the mind,
bereft of realness,
a soft memory slowly tearing,
a slow heartbeat,
a slackjawed idiot
hammering out words of sadness
for no reason other than to do so.

-S.C. Martinez

the wine burns the barren pan
of my empty gut like a lavaflow
and i draw pull after pull
from a cigarette
and my soul is heavy.

i lie in bed naked
drifting back and forth
the locales of inner deep
and my mind stretches thin
and my skin is cold,
the air is plagued
with faraway thoughts
and i flood the room with smoke.

scratching at the world
like a stray dog
lost to the politics of it all,
dreaming dollar signs
and tender voices
that call me to distant cities
but the wine burns on
and my eyes dry out
and this is all a passing sigh.

-S.C. Martinez

it is everywhere.

where the heart should recoil
instead it expands,
fluttering like wings
and what the mind should reject
it then embraces,
wrapping ephemeral arms
around this strange node of coital knuckle.

an encyclopedia of father issues,
volume after volume
the outcome is the same
these fiends on bent knees
sucking for all the world’s mystery
until they are assaulted
by a warm mass of projectile vomit
from cocks the size of arms
welded to men with rape smiles
and sweat in their eyes,
those who would in any other time
be committed to the savagery
of their own noncommittal thread
in a greater tapestry of depravity,
hulking forms shrouded in horror
haunting hillsides and alleyways
with gap-toothed grins
and a pall of madness and degeneracy,
cave dwellers come forth
to instill in others
a fear beyond word or reason.

the far away cast off look in the eyes
of every whore pushing her tits together
and spreading her legs apart,
winking at the camera
and running a venom lined tongue
along the curves of whatever body is near,
whatever appendage of extremity or genitalia
is aimed in their general direction,
with eyes closed they seem at once at peace
and at war with some inner simulacrum
that is weeping and bleeding and sweating
at the very thought of this path.

what medium could hold such an art,
so oppressive and dislocated
and damaging beyond cognition,
imprisoned within the glass of the television
and kept secret in a scrambled flicker,
loading and dancing inside the border
of a web browser, CLICK CLICK CLICK
analcams and incest,
barely legal and amateur cavalcades,
still frames of preview cunts
and monster cocks,
the dead tranquility of innocence
a commodity, a draw for advertising dollars
and underage boys to dwell over in the dark
in secrecy behind closed doors
with the volume low,
the very world a massive venereal disease
and everyone infected, their spines
entwined with red helix fingers
that drip, drip, drip
and nothing can house the beast
that has been let wild,
nothing can subdue the thirst
for its presence and its maniac slaughter
of boredom and fatigue,
it is all a virus that cannot be quarantined
and the world a conglomerate of coughing shaking souls.

-S.C. Martinez

wine with ice and medication
like breath from the ocean,
the wave climbs until
no sun can be derived,
only the pale shadow
of its preamble,
the slow embrace,
a deep blue streak in the sky.

arrested by a synaptic shower,
born in this here and this now
where these chalk melodies
are common as blood and fire,
secrets measured in milligrams
and swallowed every morning
with a cigarette and a shudder.

the patterns slowly fade,
the words turn to fog
and the whole infrastructure
melts into something else entirely,
an ink blot containing the universe,
a flower in the ground,
a dog stretched out in the shade.

i can’t see it but i know it is there,
dividing the focus,
breaking the bend,
brick and mortar keeping this world
from the other like a shepherd,
i watch the rain streak down the screen
and think of heartburn and laughter,
and all other thoughts fade.

-S.C. Martinez