tales from another life

seven poems for susan

            A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
                    -- Gustav Mahler



1. precision has no words
precision-guided death angel blood 
for the grieving child 
whose ragged voice 
has no words

no one touches the far off daughter cold
as rocky fragments unimagined before 
silent dreams of the 
hole in time

yesterday a smile
stunned one
stone in the sky
with longing


2. waiting for thunder
beethoven’s sonata drifts by 
thunderous memory
driving down the coast where
mother screeches at

icy haloed dwarf planet
behind her eyes spewing
scary stories
of moonlit women 

stabbed in the heart driving 
motorcycles on the coast
looking for mother 
on the high cliff

whales spout far off 
mother finds a jar 
filled with tiny jewels
and can’t stop weeping 
 

3. counting the hours
blue veins writhe beneath
lovers’  
longing muscles  
   
a name unknown
and ancient  
writhing  everywhere 
   
curious skin
kiss her foggy
curves 

ancient lovers 
kiss like
never before 


4. planet glow
northern leaves caress tiny 
squid-ink cathedrals
stroke gentle
gravity crystals 

every turn of the dial 
the radio squawks blood
it covers the car seats
the doctor reveals the name of the flower

you told me a crystal grows under your soft fur
"i can’t make it without you"
bleeds the breathing radio 
its liquid voice fills your crystal heart with tiny jewels
 

5. blood forgot once 
imagine 
the nearest star     
won’t see you  
and hangs up 
  
drifting blood surrounds  
satellite 
packed into sky
imagine   
  
i wonder what eye sees everything     
fallen from 
butterfly    
airplanes imagine    
  
naked beauty years
over 
and over and
happier than ever

i nearly cry
because war
murders child wonder
beastly planet later

this coded message
means i’m sorry
i can’t see you
tonight


6. come over, i need you
swept into the Lethe gravity well,
tumbling over the rocky edge,
exploding and shimmering in shapeless sunlight, 
yearning for the silent pool,

i crawl down the wall to a tiny crack.
inside is a bustling city
filled with policemen, ants, 
a sail boat on a lake that becomes desert.

i give you no water from my canteen,
wake up and cry,
beg for mercy from the drowned ants.
my apology, they tell me, has already fallen 

in another time inside me,
where you and i joyously celebrate
the forgotten wounds
my parched lips will never again caress.


7. every morning
inside the drop of sunrise blood
lizard molecule
shines every morning 
without you

inside the heart drop light the way 
so the spaniard at the long table filled
with overflowing heaps of food
can find the leg of lamb

he was mouthing when the light turned black
when the taxi ran off the road and flipped over
startled mothers now bloody eating sandwiches on the lawn 
children running up the church steps to see farther

inside this tiny drop of water
vast memory unfolded
but whose stories did it tell you?
gone now but the warning

the lizard and the spaniard will 
thrive every morning i bleed
a molecule in your heart
every morning





                — martinez
                     december  2015 - february 2016