words

there is nothing to kill but time
so i consider urinating
in my neighbor’s front yard,
just to see the response it elicits,
yet somehow that seems like an event
that can only end in my being questioned
by authorities and counselors
and any manner of delegates sent forth
to condemn those like myself
back among the dregs of society
to consort among our own
like flames from trash fires,
those without reason who terrorize
the world of ordinary becoming
just to keep from being sucked in to
that wild maelstrom of mediocrity.

i just sit here, waiting,
waiting, waiting, waiting
and bored, i imagine
planets aligned on a pool table
and the green felt surface of space
is dusted with blue chalk
like the ghosted presence of dark matter
and the planets go click clack
among one another
and nothing is ever resolved or understood,
no one ever really wins,
they just rack them up and begin again
and they go click clack
and it’s all so very dull,
pornography has replaced television
and even it has become mindless and
without substance,
it is analog static,
the absence of information
and how it comes to reckon itself
in black and white storms of madness,
endlessly scratching at the glass
and screaming in agonizing entrapment,
the whole of it like a congregation
of crazed spirits contained there for all time
to struggle against the bindings of electrical impulse
and writhe among one another in strained voltage,
hissing and spitting derelicts
all so that we are kept from staring into the void,
the black abyss that otherwise would assume that ponderable moment.

-S.C. Martinez

have you yet grown tired
of these yawning streets,
asphalt relics patched
and broken and patched again,
forlorn highways
and endless churches,
liquor stores, used cars,
the whole of it
like a shameless circus show
in constant motion yet
void of progress,
the old citizenry lumbering forth
from out their tired estates
to march solemn and divested of sense
like a demential army
toward an ever elusive sunset,
tethered rightly
to the frayed elastic wires
of their own slow demise,
watch their eyes cloud with storm,
their hands trembling and uncertain,
a lifetime of reeling
toward this very moment
each and all
muttering the same dead mantra.

watch the young trample underfoot
the world they have inherited
careful as manic elephants,
crazed with life
like drunks of its grain,
junkies of its naked promise,
watch their eyes clear as midnight
squander the early hours
with dumb and vacant purpose,
in pursuit of false idols
and fleeting highs,
each containing within them
the implements of their own end,
the clock that counts
to one inevitable moment
that is not marked anywhere
upon that weathered face,
the instant bespoken visiting each
and every in its exact right place,
preordained by the thread
to which all fates are common
and singular in its exactness,
from one warm terminal to another,
the womb to the earth,
all things ending
when the end has deemed it so.

-S.C. Martinez

i want it darker still,
the world purged of all light
and i want to live in ultimate shadow
without a drop of luma,
i want the sky blacker than black
and i want to exist only in suspicion
of the genetic frequency
with which my own soul reverberates,
prowling a void naked of form
in absolute rumor and theory,
i want dark tentacles of night
to enshroud the furthest corners
of my chosen pathos,
the only betrayal to this edict
that of lightning and fire,
meteors and supernovae,
the smokey walls of this galactic house
and such luminaries allowed
to persuade my endarkened heart
the earth has not fallen from under me
in this forever night of my choosing,
wandering this place like some dark minstrel
of antiquated maundering
huddled before my black replica
in the brief flares of light
from what unreckonable reaches of sanity.

-S.C. Martinez

leaves turning in strange revolutions
in the wind in the dark in the night,
skittering across all manner of surfaces
like things accustomed to such modes of flight,
like things articulating themselves
only in the absence of witness
and bonding to only their own relevance,
the hushed tones of their cascading,
things bereft of meaning or order
joining their cackled scrapings
to one another and again only,
derived from terrors nameless
and unreal to any but the dead,
the black tunneling of souls gone ahead
through utter vacuous space
as wormholes in cosmic poetics,
deranged as all proxies of hell
in their wicked loping,
turning and turning
the veined bones of their skin
crude fans in such spiral conjecturing,
things not real,
things only held in dreams or madness,
undocumented by any hand but mine
in this troubled ideation
to join form with abstract,
these words from this head
crumbling softly like leaves
turning in strange revolutions
in the wind in the dark and in the night.

-S.C. Martinez

spread out before me
an ocean of earthbound stars for miles,
those stationary,
those that rifle down dark highway
all alabaster and crimson,
solitary among them
a wavering flame
breathes life into a cigarette
that pulses thereafter
like a small orange heart
rebating not blood nor life
but smoke and ash
while filling me with strange impulse,
its very monument an afterthought
to that which burned the night before
in the dark chaos of your presence,
were there not contained
in your eyes two perfect liquid embers
measuring time by the pull and release of smoke?

i walked concrete and indecision
in the early hours and i did pause
to compose the moon austere and implacable
in the pale sky above,
only the thinnest sliver of said monolith
giving light to my intent
stenciled there in alien pro forma,
your hands free flowing in my thoughts,
drawing strings of light to your fingertips,
the whiskey in your veins
flew warm and profound
and i can sense it without evidence,
your laughter cosmic,
your hair dark and menacing
and the honey that you bear
is intoxicating enough
to bring me to such lurid conjectures,
trailing those vixen hips,
besieged before your temple
and your silken altar
like one condemned to a hysteria
greater than ordinary madness,
the wildness in your heart
lends to my soul credence
and though the night is sweet
morning is all brooding and deceit
and at some point we must give in
to its antic rule.

the arrival of others
signals the onset of my savage
and ungregarious character
and so now the city and those fallen stars
move away behind me
and i am left with longing
for your lips now so far beyond
and for your flesh and for your spirit
but such is the way of things;
i can feel your thoughts even from here
and i wonder if the visage in your mind
is greater than this strange bearer of lyric
and if the two will ever converge
in some space that you find agreeable.
still, still,
you question the quickness of my heart
as if your hand plays no part in its pace.
still your presence is larger than all the world,
still i crave, still i incline,
still i stave this strange narrative
in hopes of pulling at the strings
of your endearing heart.

-S.C. Martinez

these hands are not my own,
they draw fire from shadow
and bring old ways
back in to concession,
parodies of will,
beguilers of want.

the drink reveberates
in the hollow cavern
where once was clarity,
but what harm is in it?
what injustice derived
from lapses in totality?

it brings with it
old foes and lost memories,
wood floors and slanted
green houses,
nights of smoke,
nights of parlay,
the sum of all reckoning
and revocation of god’s gift
to chew it like a gland
until it is stone dry.

it is the ferrier
on distant shore,
joining worlds
in dark and narrow crevice,
bringing to fruition
a mild genius
this conjurer of words,
giver and taker of madness,
ultimate wanton spirit
wrapped in sheets of bitter gale,
sifting through the fires
of other sorrowed habits
left on roadsides
and in notebooks
and in the hearts of fellow savages,
is it greeting or farewell
that raises these hands
in ominous repose?

dance the dead to slumber
and in their musings
come renegade processes,
hourglass figurines
with soft hair and angel skin,
all remnants of a younger night,
all fading come morning.

-S.C. Martinez

my sordid company
your fellowship awaits.

this island moves about me
and the waves from the world without
refuse to subside,
bringing these criminal winds
i struggle to recuse.

a recluse from the world of others,
their thoughts, their griefs,
their panic is mine
and this island
can go no further out
before the ocean ends.

this place troubles my heart,
this place like all places,
there is a choking
in the air you breathe
and i see through
the facade of everyday squalor
into the depths of common madness,
the broken string,
a minute hand rocking back and forth
on a single breath,
a pause in the earth’s toiling,
as if this has all rendered before
some resonance of the first life,
skipping, skipping,
skipping second to second
and back again
here in this bed,
these blue sheets,
this black ink.

this constant felonious muttering,
those words i birthed
that fell dead in my hands
before they were so much
as a scratch in stone,
now here the night again
and one must draw in to question
the very nature of these things,
of time and space
and the old nations
of biblical conspiracy,
whether these words are of use
or merely non possibilities,
to pass hour after woeful hour
before reaching out
and pulling handfuls of stars
from out their stations.

i have seen the night for what it is
and like a lunatic i have counseled
with the agents of its recourse,
i have watched this naked wine
clamor down the dark gullet
of celestial throats,
still they withhold,
still they refuse to unveil
the secrets of their endless charting
from one theory to the next.

-S.C. Martinez

goddamn the words won’t come
and the silence is death,
the emptiness is murder,
the vein is transparent
and the night burns slow
like a cigarette
but the words won’t come,
women move away
and the sun spits fire,
i can feel its reach
through and through the earth,
the streets are peopled with scarecrows
and garish whores with dollar sign eyes,
fishnet and leather skin
and painted sinister grins,
china eyes and needle wounds,
clowns from some awful sister world,
bearers of the universe without
and the way things will come to be,
dragging their wares there and back
calling drunkenly to the night
the names of the dead
who have gone here before,
this is the burning town
in my head, the madhouse paradigm
by which all outer elements are judged
and sorted by no order than the lack thereof,
i am the avatar of naught,
confection of discarded materials,
lacker of words,
bearer of wet thoughts,
keeper of abandoned conquests
slowly fading
from the collective,
the heart,
the order,
the night.

-S.C. Martinez

sail about this departing night,
the hours have formed a mind
obeying only the ebb and flow
of some greater darkness without.

a nightbird has taken my spirit,
i watch with tired eyes
the tree limbs wake and shudder
at her nimble footfall,
the cyclone of insects
in their desperate attempt
to merge with light
are consumed again and again,
this thoughtless pursuit of the unattainable
their ultimate undoing.

this age has long since expired,
like light from distant stars
we will know only after
the moment has passed.

the bird calls out to the dark,
a grieving vertebrate of unknown fortune,
those black eyes eons of insight hold,
that which will never escape,
such is their charge,
such is their way in the world.

under brick and mortar
the earth moans,
what we take we offer back
in the form of our departed,
forever bound to the laws
of a greater purpose
left behind perhaps by the macrocosm
of kindred souls well beyond
the veil of these times,
these strange quixotic hours
spent in the company of nightbirds
and their prey,
by ancient objects in the sky,
this tiny speck of dust
floating here in the void,
firm in its quiet lonely orbit
around the great beating heart
of some cosmic monster
beyond men’s knowing.

-S.C. Martinez

it comes at midnight,
the dark drone of lonely hours
spills forth from out this soul
like so much smoke
and you can almost smell the burning.

there is mist on the window
and in the wet cold written
the names of possibles,
dirty finger prints
and telephone numbers,
the hollow wind rattle
sucking sound back with it.

flight of shame
through town after town
under shade of night,
a bitter spectre
passing highway itinerants
trailing bits of karmic viscera
and dead smiles
like transient arms fleeing the world.

the intimate murmur
of this verbose guilt,
the lion’s gaping maw
and the thunder in its throat,
sedative eyes beyond cognition
watching clouds race overhead
like propellant dark islands
moving from some alien precipice.

hear the trains at midnight
deplete the night’s tranquility
with its shrill steam laughter,
a rusted ghost from archaic pondering
turning silence to fire,
crossing terminal to terminal
this crying earth tonight.

-S.C. Martinez