words

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

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.

i remember the sun in a remote way,
through a thin film of helical pictures
the memory of the come before,
soft and very faded,
and compare it to this burning monster
in the death of autumn, unchanged,
unchanging, and i sweat
even though it is so far out there.

do you hear the future calling
or are you to expire in this generation,
will your memory of the sun
bleed through to the next,
or will you take it with you.

i am breathing in a double violin,
exhaling in D minor while the car hums
a terminal hum and the waves touch,
gently in the air just before your antenna
and now it is all so very short,
it is all so very long and drawn out
and re-entry is a burden.

i elect to drift lightly along
some ultimate breeze,
getting lost in the waves,
drifting as they drift,
approaching the source
but life is so very long
and each new cycle
brings with it a wearing out
of the heart,
burning at the lungs and stripping the thread
of what contraption holds this all together,
centuries of it and my legs are tired
from the endless march.

–S.C. Martinez

outside
i can feel the world
pulse with rhythm
as cars float like cells
down the vascular stretch
and the verse breathes,
expands and contracts
in the infinite beauty
against that terror
held in hydrogen arms
that seem to suffocate
with love and fear
indifferent.

even as i drown
in the mess of myself
i am anchored to the light,
the origin,
desperate for the reconnect
to recollect
that which has gone missing
from my heart.

as i watch the stars
and consider their reach
i am struck
by the recursive loop
to those points of light
that are in me
and i am rendered speechless
by this ultimate of all reckonings.

-S.C. Martinez