words

she fills the glass halfway
and laughs at the metaphor,
surrenders to the sensation
and closes a weary eye.

it is this way everytime–
she fills the glass over,
pulls wings from the flies
caught in the tsunami–
the girl’s got grip.

she drains the glass empty
and watches the last drop
suffocate before her eye.
she pulls the sleeve of wisdom
and keeps the truth
buried safely in the sand.

she walks with sages,
skirts the edge of the way,
and slides along the magnet.

she laughs at the metaphor
every single time–
the girl’s got it down,
this pattern of method science–
she laughs at the hilarity
of it all.

-S.C. Martinez

in her room the light is just a little brighter,
the darkness just a little darker.
i lie in her bed with a cigarette brandished
between two fingers and the light from that
is moreso than in any other place.
above and behind us the window cracked softly
to let in just a trace of that from outside,
enough to stand out stark and bold
against the darkened retreat of her room.
whether moonlight or streetlamps,
it spills in through that horizon
and forms itself perfect against her skin,
sitting there above me naked in all but purpose,
she wears the light like no other,
wrapping it about her like static
made from pieces of other heavenly bodies.
i study her like a painting,
i drink of her like wine of perfect age,
i consume her complete in my heart and
in my head, in my soul and in my hands.
we spill outside to say goodnight
and even there the majesty of her pull
brings all things to the space we command
and the wind blows on cue
with our movement and our breath,
caressing hair and skin and memory
softly and forever without disturbing a thing,
perfect in that moment we share
like all moments we share, vivid
against the backdrop of a world we can escape
in the company of one another.

-S.C. Martinez

in that valley lined with street signs
and overhead lights
come the dregs like bad omens,
loping with their crooked grins
and burned out eyes,
they come across the road
alone or in the company of others,
trailing children behind them
in a train of utterly horrifying lineage
while ants with iron hides and headlight eyes
crawl along the earth.

they sling profanities at the wind
and spit on the concrete,
long thick wads of brown liquid
that hang leftover on their bottom lip
and tremble when they laugh,
these are the neighbors,
these strangers that make me want to abandon my home
and turn nomad in the face of their company.

too many lies have made them this way,
giants they have become, lacking sense or purpose,
giggling in front of the television
while the static glow
casts dancing shadows
across their vacant eyes.

parked cars in pancake house parking lots,
the stench of cheap whiskey
and cigarettes and perfume
choke the interior of their impromptu bedrooms,
rocking back and forth
to the rhythm of their labored breath
and grunts and moans,
ravaging more than each other.

humanity suffers at the hand of their creation,
the children come out
and are much unchanged,
strange before the age of clarity,
discontent with knowledge
but all too comfortable with being fed and groomed
by some hand wiser than their own.

the jackals that breathe down the neck of genius
they know nothing of,
they have found the philosopher’s stone
in the form of stuttering madness
and their spines tingle
a caress from morphine fingers
at the very mention of a savior
but they’ve no need to be saved;
they’re already home.

-S.C. Martinez

she’s inches away
dancing on the edge of reason,
speaking in a language i can’t recall,
drifting in and out of focus,
always throwing me spirals yet
never letting me catch them.

she is a silhouette of possibility
sending premature shivers through me,
never listening to the others
she trusts my strange eyes
and she is always in my mind.

just one more second of vision,
one last glance at what could be
before that flame flickers out
and leaves me empty once more,
longing for the change of seasons.

i’ll always remember her face
and the curves of her body,
every last one of her,
i’ll always be true to her
but she’ll never know me.

-S.C. Martinez

looking into the abysmal heart of heaven for hours
i watched fallen kings burn out in the atmosphere,
my eyes trained upward to such a degree that
it became unclear whether the stars were real
or manifested from a desire to have them there
and like some fallen god stationed to a remote world
i felt alone in my wisdom
watching as that which came of my hand
flung themselves into unwanting atmospheres,
a cosmic suicide that held no cause, some faint
yet others lighting up the sky with their deaths
like the preamble to a great sadness,
lurching through the night like lambent serpents
in a lake of outer darkness
and the insects of the world tried to reach them
but could not and so fell back to the earth
and perished in their lament.

touching the stars with the end of my cigarette
i felt a longing beyond any common want
to reach out and grab those bits of light
and keep them as my own
and on the threshold of the world the night faded
and became nothing but the efforts of men
bleeding upward profusely
whether in homage to a god who left
or to replicate his work for the sake of vanity
none but they could know,
the necessity of such things lost in the making of.

the outer edge of the galaxy hinted
somewhere between here and there,
much to be taken for granted yet
nothing to lose in doing so,
falling into unseen ends they do as they are told,
searching or merely being the same in the end
and now the moon nowhere in sight
so as not to bear witness to such tragedy.

tethered between this world and the next
they chose the latter like those who seek the lord’s favor,
the moon nowhere in sight
so as not to bear witness to such tragedy.

-S.C. Martinez

they live outside the well,
indiscreet in their pilgrimage towards nothing,
fearless from a lack of understanding
the very things that can tear them apart.

they soak up the sun and ride the waves
while i hide in the shade, and smoke,
and dream, and write absurd observations
i wonder if they write about me.

we share many compromising moments
of moral dilapidation and infidelities
but the common ground ends there,
on the hill of some great truth
that only one of us will ascend,
or maybe neither of us,
but certainly not both.

we search for different titans
all in our respective heads,
never knowing that we’ll never find them
in this life or the other.

we’ll always be looking
but in different directions
and in the places where our gazes cross
we destroy one another in equal mistrust,
tossing modern stones from on high
like the titans we will never find.

-S.C. Martinez

i have come to know well
the metallic undressing of her hands
as a signal for whats to come–
ring after ring,
then watch and bracelet
until her bare wrists and fingers
collide with mine.

a soft neon blue twilight
shifts our focus on one another
and we glide between the sheets,
the medium of words
replaced by language of an ancient source,
the curtains of her eyes
pulled half-to,
her lips parted slightly to reveal
the slightest glimmer of teeth,
the sight of which
causes my eyelids to stutter.

and at the dawn of our hour,
as the sun begins its plague anew
she is gone,
and i am still here
alone,
my breath quick and shallow,
unsure if she is real
or a product of madness,
the answer, however, does not concern me
as sure as the question does.

i lose her behind the veil
of my strange fixation with the night
and i find suddenly that sleep
will not come as easy
or for as long
as before
and my subconscious threatens to take over
and fix my reality with dreams in technicolor,
films without meaning or direction,
the camera rolling without pause
or cuts,
just the strange observations of everything
that amount to little more than fear of myself
and it would be nice if when she left
she took my anxiety with her.

-S.C. Martinez

we are strange people living strange lives
but we are not strangers,
the devil between you and i
still hollow and unrefined,
leering down naked halls
and coughing wasted breath from out crystal lungs
like some vagrant lacking cause.

each second that passes
holds the hand of my patience,
leaving footprints leading away
from my heart and taking with it
my ability to understand, to be compassionate,
my willingness to accept what i cannot change
and all things out of reach.

to look out past these waters
and into the hearts of other lands
longing for the embrace of my strangeness,
clinging to one another in the dark
and whispering lies of passion
before moving on ahead of the sun
and into nights of foreign tongue.

i leave my mark on everything
and even those who came before me
knew that i was coming,
the imprint of my being there
already forming itself ahead of my touch,
a ghosted principle working in negative.

back and forth in my throat
i feel the beating of wings miles away,
their sole purpose to give meaning
to my being, something to dignify my
having ever been at all.

i am strange and at war with it,
a stalemate of polar ends that cannot meet
in this life or the next,
driven on only by the promise
of one night never having to know that feeling
ever again, this haunted melody
that refuses to subside.

-S.C. Martinez

one night i sat on the edge of the world,
the great blackness of space before me
interrupted by pinpricks of light beyond that cover,
i turned estranged with their presence
and began to put out the stars and planetary bodies
with the ends of my fingers.

into the early morning i made work of this,
balanced on the earth like some failed atlas
before lying to rest along the spine of himalaya.

i awoke the evening following and commenced my task
with a diligence greater still
than the hand that placed them there to begin with.

at the end of the third dawn
there were no cosmic eyes to speak of,
the night now perfect and whole, and then i did sleep.

sometime later the moon crept up out of that abyss
and ashamed at having forgotten it,
i grabbed that sphere from out its orbit
and hurled it deeper into outer space,
its destiny from that moment onward
blind and unknown, then at last we were in peace,
the night and i lovers locked in a timeless covenant.

the planes then mocked my solace, claiming the skies their own
when i had worked to hold that black substance alone,
then they too had to be released from their cause
and with the slightest effort i crushed them from the heavens
until there were none left nor would they dare to raise up more.

the solitude, the deepest isolation of those nights that followed,
my rage subdued then grew and turned against me,
tethered to my heart and my hands like spirited shackles
till i yearned for the company of all i had banished
and turned nomad in the face of insanity, rumbling across the earth
with a lust born of instinct, tearing up whatever lay in my path
like some derelict architect destroying what others had built,
i claimed all things mine by right of my desire to own them
only to discard them as if their existence threatened mine.

the only star i had not defeated lay eager above all sight,
calling me to relieve it from such ancient woe, the gravity
of the universe never letting such things be free.

i held the sun there in the palms of my hands
and brought it closer, setting myself down to weep at its presence,
to bathe in that light i had forsaken, and it dried up my tears
and the oceans and all things alike, till there was nothing left
but i and the sun, falling through space like outcasts of all law,
and then it did burn out and i fell alone into that void i had created,
cradling in my blackened hands the only vestige of my ever having been.

-S.C. Martinez

on both sides of the argument
there is little to be said;
they buy their false gods
in pill and powder form
from men with calloused hands
and bury themselves each night
in that waste of confusion.

those with heart bear witness
to the fall of language
and the birth of broken vestige,
still struggling to stead in that place
like newborn equine shuddering placenta
into the surrounding air.

the gravity there, greater than numbers,
pulling form and image alike
toward the center of that draw,
swine without cause or knowing
yet outward the force from the earth,
the dead pulling themselves up from out it’s grasp
all bone and baptized afterlife.

to the west the sun departs
and that place is filled with maniac purpose,
lust for the unborn and disdain for the living,
scavengers tearing pieces of normalcy
from the world and hiding them from each other,
bearing down on fate like reason on hope.

-S.C. Martinez