words

i am spinning in place
alone in this bed,
i am a revolver
holding hollow points
in my iron grip
to dispel whatever
may creep upon me
in my sleep.

i am the bore
through which you pass,
the terminal you must navigate,
the blind vessel from one pause
to the next.

i weld sound to memory,
drunken nights of youth
carried out in smoke filled rooms,
the neon lights of my young eyes,
the terrible laughter
that sprang from my throat,
the horror of that boy i was.

the criminal heart caged in my chest
comprised of smoke and glass,
my bones are brick and my skin rubber,
i am a stranger in your world
and i wear it like a crown.

-S.C. Martinez

a cold halo circles the night
and there are fires out there
burning in the dark
but none so as in my heart.

it wavers from winds of passion
and has before been snuffed out
by such gales that are common to all
and those only common to i
yet in those moments
i am a primitive man
huddled over the burnt brazier within
where embers fade as if they never were,
scratching together twigs of soul
to produce some spark with which
to ignite the flame again,
charges of blue like maniac dreams,
flares of microbial lightning
summoning forth intellective voltage
and metaphysical coughs of thunder.

so dark it nearly swallows the light,
consumes the thought of light, the idea,
the science of it ever having been,
still i send my better parts
out in to that burning cold
to tend the fires of my heart.

-S.C. Martinez

i have expired to the waiting form of a caterpillar,
embossed in this silken repose
i await each day on tiny strands of hair,
caressing the limbs upon which i tread
with thread-like patience
in a pre-determined glide toward full bloom.

i sleep with a tactile nonchalance,
breathing deep the evening hours of this life,
this stage performed at medium capacity
awaiting some greater circumstance,
something with wings and color of a nature
only gods could produce.

tethered to the promise of flight,
of leaving this branch with utter disregard
and sailing on the winds of hope,
alive for as long as this breath can carry,
born to consume life like a vengeful titan
until i find a moment of peaceful recollect
upon which to anchor.

-S.C. Martinez

where is there to be
if not sequestered in my bed,
bearing this cold night
like a burden,
giving blackness to the world,
erasing what god has put there,
removing stars
with the ends of my burning fingers.

what is there to be
if not the observer,
watching you go among them
far from here,
their worlds peopled with strangers,
madness,
you float among them like a dream
in morning light,
pulling me back to the sordid depths
of solitude,
again, again,
each time you move further
from my seclusion.

you seek some deeper meaning
to be had in all of this
and there is none;
you have left me
with pale ribbons and photographs
and these things will perish
but you will always haunt me.

slight remnants of your hand,
the things you left behind
that have not moved away,
the impression of your form
in my burning memory
and in my lecherous bed,
you walk my dreams and god,
you have nearly destroyed me.

-S.C. Martinez

long shadows from wind swept trees
move like spiders on the pavement,
vesperal arachnids pursuing some tender,
i smoke with my left hand
while the pen in the other
hammers out words of iron and steel
like a blacksmith on this paper anvil,
i am surrounded by flowers
that stretch away from the sun,
ornaments from a life other than my own.

i’ve become a slave to this craft,
the words must be had
or the world will fade from me softly
without sign or warning
and so it is that i am,
picking through the mess of these thoughts
to scavenge any usable articles
with which to construct my pantheon
to house dead heroes and idols
of my divination.

i see piles of leaves like dead insects,
i see wormholes in the clouds
and portals in the dark,
i see vapor trails of gods’ thoughts
drawn about the night sky
in luminary scripture,
i see paradigms shift
before they have been felt,
i see dreams in orbit
like quiet temporal satellites
following what trace of mathematic ink,
grating against the ethereal trenches,
gliding through the black liquid of out there.

i must swallow my spirit each night before bed
and leave no trace of my renaissance
for the sun to glare upon,
no imprint of my inquisition,
and so i must extinguish each little ember
with the broken limb of my cigarette
before dividing myself back into a fraction
for discovery is murder,
to be seen is to conspire
against the native elements of my inception,
i must burn alive wrapped in kerosine sheets
and wake each morning to sift through the ashes
of my immolate charge,
to begin anew each night
as if the aggregate never was,
as if there exists no parable to this life,
as if there is no provocation
against the materials i am forged together from
and no seeking to unravel the thread of its fabric.

-S.C. Martinez

your gentle touch pulls me from sleep
like the soft tapping of rain on glass
or warm embrace of morning lightfall,
your breath a calm wind
at the nape of my neck
and your lips are then sails
that move me far from any earthen shore
and all its timid meaning.

you smell of honey
and i supplicate myself before you
to drink of your body,
cultivate your wildness
to taste sweet mystery,
wild enigma rolling off my tongue
and into my throat
to be cherished and consumed.

and there is so much smoke
we are like harbingers of disaster
and we cloud this place
with choked tendrils of graying sunlight
turning slowly in your bedroom,
holding particles of dust
like sedimentary cosmos
forming in the long ago
replicated here before our eyes,
watching the universe built again
from the weight of our slow suicides.

i share the world with you in your bed
and i marvel at the soft contours of your skin,
your pale thighs, your trembling stomach,
your raw beauty like a diamond
shines through even the darkest corner of my heart
and i feel as though perhaps
the world is justified by your creation
and the sharing of your presence.

-S.C. Martinez

i have become ill with obsession
beyond any reasonable measure,
a great lapse in sensibility
that has left me lacking conviction,
muttering powerless incantations
hour after timid hour,
night after night
in this carnival mind
that is filled with the lights
and attractions of doomed methods,
all things undone
by the demented gesturing
of my own careless hand.

ill formed words
and strange compulsions
haunt me on such nights as this,
growing colder
each more than the one before,
summer slowly dissipating
beyond the edge of the world
leaving behind a changeling
of frail disguise
that erases all progress
from this heart;
i am certain there are other ways
to accord oneself
with those who have gone on,
other ways to atone
for such idiosyncrasy,
other rituals to advocate.

deplorable behavior, this,
and i’ll not argue
against my own unbecoming,
the way that meaning falls
silent and godless
as autumn leaves
from the aura of my invention,
spinning slow and perfect
in the space i have left behind,
destroying worlds i have encountered
and leaving at the onset of night
like a thing ashamed of its actions,
but what source other is there
to be held accountable?
as if some simulacrum within
were marking out my trajectory
against the very angle
i mean to follow,
as if it were not me
who breaks each day in half
and from its molten kernel
drinks the blood of existence.

-S.C. Martinez

i watched dusk descend in its western slide
a pale gradient from purple to orange
between power lines and rooftops
and the silhouette of trees
and the immediate world before me.

the polestar sat dim and remote
tethered to the makings of the universe
and i wondered when it would burn out
and if so too would the world
that had set its course for eons
by its fixed sweep in the dark space without.

a spider crawled from ground to tree
and in this alien perception
of neither night nor day
it appeared the thing was climbing
to consume the star as prey
caught in its silken web
and then it moved back down
and perhaps pondered
these same thoughts,
these forlorn wonderings.

the sun was well below the horizon
and it seemed as though a great fire
surged on the outer reaches of the earth,
slow malaise of god’s grace
in far away lands,
the second coming under way,
a pause in the deliberate slaying
of old world method, predark massacre.

this macabre end of day
well suited to the strange witness,
an eclipse of enterprise
separating one life from the next,
obscured these splitting atoms
to a malarian onslaught of amber eves,
this burning core of molten anima
taking back earth, sky, star and spider
in its ultimate reckoning.

-S.C. Martinez

as you stand on that precipice
can you see where it all ends?
is there some beacon calling you
out there in all that dark?
can you tell me what you see?

if i could go with you,
would you be less afraid?
if i could be your son
even in the after,
would you show me that way also?

or is this all a prelude,
a preamble of great sadness yet to come,
of motions yet to falter,
ends yet to meet,
will you outlive me
and ask the same questions?

how you have brought this here,
this fate that all must barter with,
is a strangeness unto itself,
and i am unequipped to bear it
and the constant stirring
of a child’s thoughts and wonders,
the imponderable end of the world
where no suns blot the day
and no moons cross the night
drawing questions of origin and terminus,
watching myself in the long ago,
my child’s hands, my startled eyes,
my small voice and my little rapid heart,
all things past tense
yet here in this moment,
never exceeding, naught of tangible evidence.

can you smell its harrowing presence,
does it permeate throughout this house
when none but you are home to breathe it?
would you speak of such things at all
had you the words within you to speak?
would you keep it locked away,
in a bottle, in a chamber,
would you show me such terrible certainty?

i have grown accustomed to the fear
of your departure
and it leaves me breathless,
a personified nightmare that strangles
my heart with its mere vicinity,
its dark form from what dark continent
where all this life’s sorrow originates,
i would ask you not to go,
but would you stay? would you choose
to be here still when only the inescapable awaits?
would you teach me, only a moment more,
how to live, how to be the bearer
of this blood we share?
would you counsel me on poisoning
the terrible things within?

fly, do not pause when that moment comes,
go on in to the dark
and fill it with your igneous soul.

-S.C. Martinez

a deep atavistic cold war is growing,
in my veins the malevolent conflict
of old terrors with new remorse,
as if my very nature is enslaved
by its own keeper,
the talons of my youth,
explosions within the battlefields
of my drunken heart,
in jungle encased in the withered arms
of monolithic trees like fossilized limbs
of petrified giants,
in desert swimming the sands
like an other world amphibian outcast
tracing tandem suns with exotic marble eyes,
in sea bearing salt-laden burden
and wavering crests of self that crash
from shore to shore in the endless squall,
in sky raining hell on all manner
of ant life below in their intrepid pursuit
of things that bear not reason,
defaulted to the only order
that is in all creatures
down to the least,
hidden within their paper wings,
in the greater darkness without
where all things are contained
and the clank and grind of universal gears
laboring toward a speck of dust
wherein god is hiding and watching,
the sharp metal echo of sorrowing,
the soft chord of euphoria,
of love and wildness,
how it is to be here in this shell
watching things die without pause
and quick as they have passed
others are sprung to replace them
in a ceaseless turning of fate
and blood and tissue and bone and marrow,
none certain but that which swallows all
impartial and spits it back anew
in various other forms,
the shape and the sound and the fluid,
the pneumatic speech of life and death
that comes like wind in lunar tow,
follow this wave until it has broken,
follow until there is no liquid
left in your great heart.

-S.C. Martinez