• two cookies later and still
    there is no peace among the constituents
    of that far off hillside
    nestled in the outer rim of my skull.

    they demand more. more cookies.
    their disruptive demonstrations
    spread like wildfire over the grey horizons
    and suddenly all is at need,
    more ∞, more sugar, more salt,
    pepper, basil, paprika.
    more nicotine. more oxygen.

    war breaks out
    for some unknown and unimportant reason,
    my legs give way to motor command
    and we are slouching toward the kitchen,
    toward the refrigerator, toward nuclear holocaust,
    toward cake and all manner of wonderful things.

    2014sm

  • the crows grew angry with the onset of rain,
    aligned in fits along the electrical wire,
    the trees rose from memory,
    pre-runners, the universal neurons,
    early dendrites, thoughts that span millenia,
    expanding elegantly inside a little bubble.

    2014sm

  • there are no masters,
    only variables,
    divisors meant to prevent your progress
    through the arithmetic,
    to keep the answers unstable.

    2014sm

  • my mind is an asshole
    always pitting against me
    perilous loops, paradoxes,
    false messages from a broken filter
    that serves some other master,
    the maker of ultimate entropy

    my mind is an asshole
    clogging the days with terror and lies,
    a deadbeat waiting on a check in the mail
    meanwhile grooving in lanes of muddy neurology, the bastard ethos and patterns of enemy

    my mind is an asshole
    and i am forced to battle for turf,
    for mental territory over which I may roam unmolested
    but the infinite wellspring of thoughts which bear no semblance of my wishes,
    my true concept, which are instead some counter measure against peace
    does not cease.

    2014sm

  • and then i recall her
    as we are entwined
    transient holocausts
    fleeing the day’s terrible grasp

    2014sm

     

  • the dead live forever.

    alfred hitchcock speaks a slow morbid poem in our room,

    what of his atomic descendents; are they spread out like dust,

    nestled in a nerve cell, a tree limb, or are they gone.

    2014sm

  • there is no parallel to the horrors
    held within familiar neuronal roads
    that lead back to birth,
    the first lines fired and the fates that formed
    are strange and large decades on.

    i am a poet first
    and a failed human thereafter,
    well versed in mimicry
    and vouyerism,
    watcher of other threads
    unwinding in this present loop.

    would that god come claim this,
    this that is i some wandering minstrel,
    deaf to the sounds of earth,
    proud and plagued by indifference;
    bored of the signals so familiar,
    afraid of those unknown.

    -S.C. Martinez

     

  • at the same time,
    god and we meet.

    upon the awakening,
    when the self is born,
    molecular hands assemble
    through the mess of organization
    the scaffold that of this creature,
    a being greater than the sum
    of its very orderly parts,
    grinding away at the local universe,
    enduring the regulatory storms,
    the systemic panic
    and here it is that i realize
    drinking pinot in the toilet
    is the closest i will ever come
    to achievement.

    i grow tired, belligerently so,
    by the pacing of tests,
    interviews, moral dilemmas,
    interpersonal interactions,
    4-way traffic stops,
    grocery lines,
    avoiding eye contact,
    hiding underneath
    digital overpasses,
    trying to stay at the edge
    of the people soup.

    what little art we begin with,
    unless nurtured and exercised,
    withers into this terribly ineffectual
    but desperately needy
    self-indulgent
    bullshit.

    but it feels good to type
    to a rhythm
    that is my own.

    look forward,
    why not,
    and pretend like we don’t all notice
    that creeping tremble
    of an unsteady gait toward
    that at last indivisible thing.

    -S.C. Martinez

  • in the shadow of ancestry
    we lesser sentries huddle,
    locked in paralytics
    as formless terrors possess us,
    anxious lions.

    atonement far from attainment,
    transforming daily with the sun,
    chasing round its burning gaze
    through a trail of sweat and repetition.

    streams move through us,
    bits of existence,
    the wind of god,
    and we awaken slowly,
    sit up aware and afraid
    generation after generation
    cycling perpetual fear,
    fear of the bomb
    or global warming
    or gays in the military,
    blacks with voices,
    women with power,
    whatever the momentary resistance,
    that heavy undercurrent of inhibiting master.

    we learned the language of electromagnetism
    and the slow crawl of knowledge
    was overrun by Jerry Springer,
    fat american pounds for dollars,
    the consumption of animal rectum
    in the most unholy display of humanity,
    while continuously, endlessly
    we push forth the genetic cosmonauts
    into a future muddled
    by the mess of our own shit and grime,
    the erosion of the signal.

    -S.C. Martinez

  • a man came to an understanding.

    “HOLY FUCK,” he said. “i’m dying.”

    he held his hands out before him, as if the metrics to this were floating there, little, vaporous.

    no one said anything. they were all dying, also, in parallel.

    he fell to his knees, boorish.

    they were just mostly used to the idea of it.