words

smell of mesquite and creosote
clings to my skin,
hums the secrets of my heart
and i close my eyes.

paints my lungs with dark tar
these immolate sirens,
whispering flames to the night
like voices in hell.

my words go soft as cotton
and these thoughts dim
to a slow vibration,
worry wrapped in fear.

oh, it’s everywhere,
my head is but the origin,
the  beginning,
the avenue of conception.

of light tentacles
the grappling of this
is choked in heavy heartbeats,
reaching out to eyes ringed like planets.

and i know, i know,
the fire breathes from within
like breath in winter,
goddammit i know, i know.

the smell of this burning earth
gently calls through the open window,
lips of tar spitting smoke
in the shape of my name.

smell of grinding teeth
and the scratching of chipped nails
cloud the room with medicinal memory
and i breathe it in
like a cancer patient
reduced to the bottom of human principle.

-S.C. Martinez

i watch the world condense
to a singular point of origin
and it is without purity,
without clarity,
a non inspired critical mass
that i am left out of.

with every domain,
every kilobyte and internet protocol
the string between everything
goes slack and distance is dissolved,
there is no place to disappear
but for the valleys made in loosing
that still harbor the shiver
of baud rate dialect
like an echo of machine birth,
turning the blood to bits of data
and the brain to spinning discs.

caught up in it like arachnid prey,
twisting and gripping the confines
while this new god from the machine
codes a world i do not wish to be part of,
his face a flat panel monitor
and his body a mainframe,
his veins are graphed to a circuit board
and his arms are wires,
his blood coolant
and his word novelty, mindless indulgence
much like the old
but much newer, shiny and metallic
and fluid, a conglomerate
of open source idiocy
bleeding from every phone line
and cable conduit
and the eyes of everyone, everyone.

-S.C. Martinez

it tastes of dust and is sedimentary,
tiny flecks of questionable matter
rotating slowly in the small current
of the glass container,
the walls stained with thin soap residue
recalling a more primitive version of self,
water in thin supply
but the cigarettes grow like vines
and smoke rings revolve around the ceiling fan
like planets in slow orbit threatening to vanish,
caught in the gravity of a sun turned off,
deviating from law and condensing to a purity
of self identification,
burning only in the shadow of reason.

the jar is spotted with orphaned drops
and there is none left to drink
and a profound thirst becomes this elegant moment,
like pollinating flowers in winter,
the ashtray is filled with deformed missiles
from this dirty war bedroom
and there are veins in everything
showing through the thin flesh of thought,
writhing with fluidity
and thirsty as men in hell.

-S.C. Martinez

is this a casualty or product of windswept war,
mixing the good thoughts with the bad
and drinking them even and impartial at six a.m.
on a thursday morning,
scrawling algorithms on the bare walls of the mind,
carbonizing strange nodes of fear
with thoughts like flame and words like iron,
a slow burn of wanton anger,
conjuring up lions from the intricate maze
of this ridiculous paranoia
and slaying them in an orgy of blood and laughter
at some incalculable cost.

all aspects of this dilemma of but smaller battles
in a greater broad scale war
and it is difficult to differentiate between the two
until the outcome has been made clear
with victory and with defeat,
definitive lines drawn and acknowledged
by all sides having been reduced to this moment,
leering at the smoke and the carnage
and breathing it in, the ambrosia of spirit
to be consumed at whole
and at some incalculable cost.

all things are an extension of this principle,
all things, and this is of no exception,
and if i am wrong it is only so
inasmuch as being right is flawed and negative,
a swift soulbound weariness
that cannot be mistaken for any thing other,
these wars having different names and borders
but the same stakes, the same results
being only the ones to exist
and i am a warrior to this degree
and i am no stranger to this conflict
and i am a painter of this truth,
contingent to the kernel of indelible facts
at what incalculable cost.

-S.C. Martinez

blur corridor,
i got a sense of direction
that’s wrong,
all wrong this life’s moral compass
spinning like a mad clock
in the grips of a speed fit,
dead friends back to life
shake their heads disapprovingly
and the past is present again
in wine bottles and cardboard containers,
ashtrays in variable forms
and the dull light of poverty,
smoke shadows in the ceiling fan
and karma coming fast
i’ve seen approaching for miles,
people don’t like my face
and my eyes are too strong
so they push me away
or maybe i push them away
for being too weak,
i can’t sleep in this phase
wearing this sheet
at 25 years an hour,
doesn’t matter,
doesn’t matter,
the words fly past
with hummingbird wings
and find a more suitable host
to nurture their short life spans.

-S.C. Martinez

my thoughts are a red rubber band,
an endless current of elasticity
that stretches on and on
through time and the threat of snapping
is prevalent, the fear of breaking
is always there and the sound of it
beckons me back from the outer reaches
of my strange revolutions.

my thoughts are a light fixture
flickering timid and uncertain
in the immortal socket of this mind,
the filament burns and fades
and it is never clear which way
these things will go,
to burn out this wattage
without reason or lucidity
and left to swelter in the aftermath
like a paranoid insect
blindly caught within, always fighting
against the burnt glass prison
of curious consequence.

my thoughts are diamonds
glinting brilliantly in the glow of this life,
sharp as any the earth can make
and a prize for the vain
and bored of heart to marvel over,
holding all the world has ever been
tightly in my transparent skin,
bought and sold and lost and stolen,
an heirloom to what inconceivable family
of thinly veiled sanity, never fading, never scratched,
longing to be the center of the universe.

-S.C. Martinez

all that i can hear
is the clicking of a mouse,
a rodent on speed
and the clacking of keys
as you hammer out your thoughts
on the keyboard like morse code
whose meaning is kept hidden from me.

click clack. click clack.
all that i can hear,
click clack, click clack,
and the vibration of your phone
like a death rattle in the throats of gods
and a lighter tapping on its quiet
little keys, tip tap, tip tap,
click clack. tip tap.

otherwise, it is quiet
for you cannot hear my thoughts
as they propel further inward
with locomotive fervor lacking control
and silent despite its weight
and the slow grating halt
of substance on substance.

-S.C. Martinez

would it be more reasonable
to remove an ear,
to dress in yellow,
to chase my thoughts
round and round
like a burning wheel,
to sift through the penstrokes
of my indelible ministry,
the hypergraphia in my nerves,
wormholes in my limbic system.

are you there,
manifesting nights from your eyes
and drinking daylight from a jar,
can you hear my footsteps
hollow and deep in the terminals
of your narrow memory?

bring the summer with you,
glorious phenomenon,
disrupt this awful chill
and the black thoughts it conjures,
speak to me in vibrations,
rolling waves of your vocal touch
in alien frequency,
spill the ink of your words
upon everything i see
then drift, drift, drift casually
like a ghost lamenting the form
it has assumed.

i found something cosmic
between the lines on a sheet of paper
and i pulled its lettered limbs apart
with the end of my pen
and smeared it into spirals,
stray thoughts and odd drawings,
i murdered the thing
and it then became quite beautiful
and pleasant to observe.

-S.C. Martinez

the line separating this from that
is charged with lonesome axioms
and electromagnetic impulses
spur your legs to walk away,
walk far into the night darling girl
and wear it about your shoulders
and weave it through your hair
and tie it to your wrist
and hang it from your hips.

twirl a cigarette between your fingers,
roll it over the backs of your knuckles
and press it between your crimson lips
all gloss and sheen and daring,
leave a stain around the filter
and burn that baby down
like a pyromaniacal wet dream,
balance guilty pleasure
between your ivory teeth
with the end of your tongue.

where are we now that you have come,
in a parked car just off the map,
in a church fire, a wounded confessional,
a raid, a riot, in a film, in a song;
do you see me to my arms in dirt
building mountains with my hands,
digging for change,
seeking to unearth notions i buried long ago,
long ago.

it could be that i will have a drink
to quell the slow recess of spirit,
to augment this strangeness of my heart,
it could be that i have set my course
by the dark ebb of midnight
and the cruel drawing of myself has followed
and as the cold grows colder
and the wind shakes the glass of my windows
and insomnia settles in for the night
i do not know whether to pray or repent or sin
and so i do none of these things,
i have a drink, or two, and revert back
to the younger savage i have moved forward from.

-S.C. Martinez

i am volatile
like an open flame near gasoline,
i am the threat of spontaneous combustion,
arson sparked wildfires
tearing worlds apart
and shuddering embers
at the mention of vapor.

i am an explosion of the heart
carrying blood and nerve
through terminating footprints,
disintegrating form and memory
like napalm over treelines,
i spit flame and cough hail
and chew shrapnel and bleed smoke.

i am a terminal man
in crowded streets where disaster has reigned,
lifting promise from the pockets of refugees
and squandering them on cheap laughs, cheap souls,
burned out thoughts, languid as i sit
ready in the shade to spring upon any who may pass
and show their eyes at me,
who dare to witness my expression faltering
in realization of the way i have come to be.

-S.C. Martinez