Alien Nation

Killer Ending

At a Denny’s,
eating pancakes in the afternoon.

A friend is remembering old times,
lost times,
times from before I knew him.

“You know, I was in a band,”
he tells me.
“We were pretty bad, and
I couldn’t really sing back then,
but wow, were we explosive.”

I dip a floppy piece of bacon
into syrup.

“But those were certainly some great times.”

I ask the waitress for
some more coffee.
“Why don’t you join another band,”
I ask.

“Maybe. I’m kinda busy with stuff now.”

My coffee arrives. I hope it’s not decaf.
They give you decaf sometimes when they
run out of the regular stuff.
Can’t really taste the difference.

“But man, we had some killer endings.
Whenever we finished a set
the crowd was always in an uproar.
We were freakin rockstars!”

“Did you write anything good?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, did you have any
really meaningful songs?”

“Uh, I don’t know.
But what does it matter anyways?
The crowed loved our act!”

“Oh, I see.
I suppose endings aren’t my
particular specialty, though,”
I say.
I shove another warm soggy
bite of pancake into my mouth,
and ask for the check.

2 notes

Journal

The cover is scarred, and stained.
The place ribbon is frayed at the end.
The script is messy;
it seems rushed, and cramped.
At times, the words are too small.
Frequently, the sentences stray
off the lines.
But at no place does the ink thin.
It never runs, never bleeds through.
It never smudges; it comes out true,
as it should.
No, it may not be pretty,
but I have created
a beautiful thing.

4 notes

Merry

Drink, and be merry!
I know I do.
When I drink I can laugh again,
and everyone laughs with me.
All around, laughter, loud and often,
all of the faces smiling and laughing
‘till tears are at the corners of ours eyes
and our cheeks take the color of wine,
our abdomens tight with the strain of mirth.
As the night goes on I drink more.
More, and all the men become my friends.
More, and all the women become more beautiful.
More, and the night is always young,
and we are always happy,
and everything will be
like I want it to be.
So, please, drink with me!
Drink, and be merry!
I know I do.

2 notes

Inspiration

Sometimes it starts with a word.
Sometimes, it is a scent,
or a place, that will start it.
This time, for me,
It was a person that set it off,
the feeling,
a gush of emotions
like an orgasm
for the soul,
what
we have
called

inspiration,

love,

and God,

and we go forth,
to write, draw, sing, fuck,
to
somehow
express and share
this
magnificent
thing
that has been born
inside
of us,
eager to

explode

and when we have done it,
when we have finally exhausted ourselves
and we are limp, panting,
wasted from the effort,
the end result
lays before us
in the afterglow,
ringing in our ears,
this poem,
a cumstain,
a reminder of what was
momentarily
some kind
of beautiful
ultimate
truth.

5 notes

A Friend from When I Was Young

She ran into me on the street
last night.
She was with familiar friends,
and soon, she was on her way
again.

Three years.
No, more than that,
yet before me she was like a ghost.

Before that, I just wanted her to know that I’d changed.
I wanted her to see me
  tell jokes and laugh strong and loud,
  and look people in the eye.
I wanted her to see me
  eating and drinking with my friends.
I wanted her to see me
  with my hand on a pretty girl.
I wanted her to see
  I wasn’t the same confused boy from high school anymore.
I wanted her to see that I wasn’t a boy.

But the brief encounter did shock me.
After that, it felt like
the years between us were just a dream,
and that it was not so long ago when
we were friends, and then not friends.
Not so long ago when
I was younger and confused
and much more lonely than I am now.

And for a time,
a short while, only,
I was that same boy, just
playing at being a man.
So, when I meet her next,
let it be
just
a reunion
with a friend
from when
I was young.

4 notes

Numb

I would like very much for life to be easy.
I am very tired and would
like it very much to rest though
I do not like to admit that because I know
I will not be able to.
It should not be that way I think.
I do not even have enough energy to
work at night anymore.
I don’t relax then though.
I can’t because it is like there is a stranger
with me at all times
witnessing my incompetance.
Of course it is nothing more than my shame.
If not for that I do believe my
free time would truly be free and
I would not spend my nights
drinking.
But as things are
my days are very stressful and so
I do spend my nights drinking.
Sincerely I wish to be
numb
even for one of these nights
so that there could be nothing left
except seeing that it is time to sleep
and then going to sleep.

3 notes

A Toast

In the middle of the afternoon,
I pour myself a goblet of red wine
and raise it in a silent toast
and take a drink.
Was it to life? Was it to the end of spring
and to the start of summer?
To nothing, the truth of things?
The more I think about it,
the less I can comprehend why
I did it so suddenly.
Maybe it was a toast to everything, then,
the kind of toast a crazy, desperate man would give,
in honor of meaningless connections
between imagined things,
things that even he himself
could not to comprehend.

A toast then, to life and to
nothing and to the truth,
and to everything,
including hip hop beats and Liszt,
to good conclusions,
to the way the backyard smells damp
after watering,
to the wrong medicine,
to Okonkwo and rainbow bridges to Valhalla,
to gravity and human flags,
to the coming and going of ignorance,
to holes in plastic bags,
to bottled Chinese stir-fry sauce,
and to lonliness and
a two dollar bottle of red wine.

2 notes

It’s Crossed My Mind Before (I, II)

I.

I am playing the host
and reciting a joke at a party,
but as I deliver the punch
my attention is drawn to his:
the girl on his arm
is young and beautiful,
a fresh new breeze,
a warm and moist breath of life
that has revitalized his spirit.
She is the thing that he has sought for,
then finally, found.
Jealousy, then, and concealed anger,
but then fear.
I can not compete, or I am not meant to.
What can I, once great friend,
now relic of the past,
mean to him in her light?
All this crosses my mind
as the laughter rings out,
as I prepare my next words
and as I deliever them:
more laughter, and his too, and hers,
and it does sound sweet.
I relax then, because
I’m surrounded by beautiful people,
on a beautiful day,
and no one is leaving soon.

II.

On a different night,
I shiver under my coat, and
my breath is a fog under a streetlight.
When I am depressed and when
my heart is racing, many things
seem more attractive.
How easy it is,
to drink straight from the bottle,
to light up a cigarillo and
exhale my worries out with the smoke
from my lungs.
The gravel vibrates underfoot and
a horn calls in the distance.
How attractive, and
How easy it would be, too,
to stop wandering and lie down
upon the tracks, knowing that
relief would soon arrive?
The thought crosses my mind:
easy indeed.
The horn calls again, louder, closer,
and it reminds me what ungodly hour
of the night it actually is,
and I realize how cold I actually feel.
Suddenly, my thoughts turn to
warm blankets and hot handmade soup.
I put my cigarette out,
and head for home.

12 notes

rachelnml asked: hey martialman! i deactivated my account so i couldn't read your fancy poems and short stories anymore ): i realized that long after and i started to miss them :/ hehehs. i like the way you write, they just fit in with the subject so easily. It's nice to see your posts again. Keep writing and keep inspiring your readers. There's always a reason to write wonderful things. :D

Well thank you.

It all depends on my mood really, which hasn’t been a writing one. We’ll see what happens now.

poeticpulses asked: Where have you gone? I want to read more of your beautiful work!

Eh, I haven’t felt like writing, so I haven’t written. I used to write about times I felt bad, but I stopped for the same reason I don’t read much anymore: I just figured that if I had time to write about it, I had time to do something about it instead. So, I spent the time being more buddhist instead (lol whatever that means).

On the other hand, my roomate says to write about the times when I feel good instead, my life now, I mean. Or about what I think of my struggles past.

Ionno, we’ll just have to see if I do write anymore. I think I’ll attempt one and see where it takes me.