Tyler R. Martin
Why must I lift weights
At some strange far away gym
When my booze is home?
Tag: apathy
Waiting for a Commercial
Tyler R. Martin
Tough to gain your footing on the black ice under feet
As you stumble with your bottle down the dark dreary street.
The change in your coat jingles, the last few cents not spent,
As you’re staggering toward home to imbibe, sigh and lament.
Trudging through slush toward steps stacked with snow
While you’re swearing at yourself for all the effort you forgo.
Turning your key to enter, hands and feet are frozen numb
As you grip your bottle tighter, with just one finger and a thumb.
The door swings open slowly and you quickly step inside
Then you close the door behind you, to this place in which you hide.
Spend a minute searching, and find the remote control
And then peruse the television, through the sitcoms you do stroll.
Icing down your bourbon, small glass and a frozen cube,
As you surf the daytime networks and stare blankly at the tube.
Feet up on the table, sipping slowly at your booze
And you savor tastes of poison and the comfort that ensues.
When that glass is empty, exert the effort for one more
And you drain that one even faster, then the third is quite a chore.
Now you’re feeling so lightheaded, best you’ve felt all week
And then you wait for a commercial
For there’s a task you must complete.
Picking up your pistol, laying right beside your chair
Then you cock the hammer slowly
And blow your teeth right through your hair.
Liquor Store
Tyler R. Martin
Ringing in the liquor store and jealous
Of the booze these people buy.
87.56 for single malt scotch,
64.99 for the gentleman’s
Sweet sour mash,
A 48.26 small batch bourbon, all before
Old Uncle Sam’s greedy share.
And the vodkas, my man,
The oceans of Goose and Svedka
Coursing through the veins of America
Make my envy rise and mouth thirst
For the pure and safe sanctity of spirits
And the docile feeling connecting you
With the holiest of spirits and you feel God
And you…
Keep ringing soberly in the liquor store
While other people drop hundred dollar bills
On tequilas supported by that cunt Cloony
Who couldn’t understand the depth a true drunk
Must contend with daily.
Then the then true drunks step in and
You find seriousness in their slurs
As you decipher their need for a pint
And know instinctively that they will
Provide exact change….
The Cardinal in my Yard
Tyler R. Martin
The cardinal in my yard won’t sing
He just stares.
He stares blankly at nothing while I stare
Blankly at him.
It’s cold in January in New York
And my grandfather’s grapevine
On which he sits is bare and branches
Shiver in the breeze.
Nothing moves in my backyard today
Aside from an infrequent neck twitch when
The cardinal hears something.
He stays very still but the bright red is
Nothing but a beacon in the dull brown
of the grape vine.
Good for getting laid, I suppose,
But a bad target nevertheless.
He puffs his feathers in the cold
And I watch him and
I think we’re both wondering the same thing,
That is:
When the predator finally comes down on you
Is that day worse than any other?
Simultaneously sicked by this thought
The cardinal flew away and I put my
Boots on to go to work.
New Chucks
Tyler R. Martin
I bought new Chucks a week ago
And now they’re dirty.
The white had sparkled and glimmered,
The black was stark, rich and deep,
The laces, pristine as fresh fell snow.
But now they’re dirty.
Now the white is grass stained green
And the laces dulled with dust
And stark black has surrendered
It’s rich deep dark to the elements.
A week ago I bought new Chucks,
And the world
Has made them dirty.
Another Cigarette
Tyler R. Martin
Light another cigarette,
The world won’t care in the morning,
Just another butt in the ashtray, another
Glob of flem in your lungs.
Light another cigarette,
The dog’s asleep on your couch,
He watches your house and he won’t mind
If you light another cigarette, and
Light one for your girl too before you wake her up
To smoke one with you and maybe crack two beers,
She’ll enjoy that, you know?
Amazing how she sleeps through the music, dog too,
But they’re used to it and a nocturnal man needs his nicotine,
His muses and his music, all at maximum volume.
Light another cigarette and
Type out a poem at two in the morning,
Two in the morning is undoubtedly a poet’s time,
Its unavailable to the cogs of society, so we snach it up
And light another cigarette without the slightest inclination
To go to sleep in the immediate future.
So you finish your beer…then finish hers…
You light another cigarette and look out the window.
If you’re lucky you’ll see the sky and the smoke looks so pretty
Against the star peppered abyss of heaven.
So light another cigarette and sigh,
“Perhaps, if I am lucky,
I’ll do this every night
Until I die.”
Just…Wreckage
Tyler R. Martin
Life is more a second to second, day to day, drink to drink,
Mood to mood, cigarette to cigarette type of deal with way, way
Too many variables for any kind of long to term plan.
Today I drove up on a car, two cars actually, splintered and savaged
In collision of scattered steel and warped plastic as if the two cars
Were melded into one fiery display of wreckage and carnage and blood.
The passengers, all of whom were burnt to a blazing crisp,
Were being carted away like slaughtered livestock in black body bags.
It was early, the sun was just rising and the sirens stirred the cold,
Crisp morning air. Both sets of vehicles were on their way somewhere
To go do something with some other people. Planning their day
Their week, their year, the rest of their waning lives.
They were moving forward onto the future, willfully blind
To the metaphorical brick wall boldly awaiting interception,
They never would have known it but
Hell
They shoulda just stayed
Home
Madness, So Mundane
Tyler R. Martin
Asking yourself what lies within
Winter fields and all that freezes in the storm, or
Perhaps burns in horrid heat, floods, drowns, or
Withers with age and decays under pain of time, or,
Drinks and smokes and fights over status disputes, or,
Reads to find reason and understand the empty void, or,
Revels in the combat against self and man and nature, or,
Becomes sickened by the gross anomaly of existence, or,
Breaks down in a grand display welled up from years, or,
Gives up and self inflicts a gunshot wound to the head, or,
Chain smokes for days on end without eating anything, or,
Breaks knuckles against the wall in puffs of white plaster, or,
Writes a poem about apathy and contempt for existence, or,
Drives too fast in a rainstorm with road beers and crashes laughing, or,
Admiring winter fields and all that freezes in the storm, or
Learning not only to live with hangovers but to enjoy them, or,
Trying to figure out what it means to really “live”, or,
Trying to figure out what it means to really “die”, or,
To die “nobley” and wondering what that even means, or,
Large swaths of star speckled skies over the desert, and,
Is there still a meaning to things arcane? Or,
Has all madness become mundane?
To Avoid Choas
Tyler R Martin
Smoke screen of a thousand cigarettes,
in a place where tomes of madness fell,
Where silent nights go on forever
And your own thoughts become a hell
In this self imposed abyss of blackness
Where the torrents of dark rum swell.
Through this shroud I cannot see
Imprisoned by my ending…what tragedy
Has God in store for me?
But, by now I should have figured
And deciphered all the plans,
By now I should have noticed
I’m weakened only by my hands.
Engaged with my goliath
I cannot submit to my demands,
For through this shroud I cannot see
Imprisoned by my ending…what tragedy
Has God in store for me?
To gaze upon a dark horizon–
The horizon glows as day becomes alive
And ask yourself the solemn question “why
Was it only the darkness which I derive?
For is day’s illumination always so bitter
That tis only in deep abyss that I survive?”
For through this shroud I cannot see
Imprisoned by my ending…what tragedy
Has God in store for me?
And there’s a comfort in seeing nothing,
Yet, still darkness fails to quell the woes,
And my locked doors still feel so fragile
And it is this I fear life’s horror knows;
So i meditate on each second passing,
As outside a terrible chaos softly flows
For through this shroud I cannot see
Imprisoned by my ending…what tragedy
Has God in store for me?
Voyeur by the Shore
Tyler R. Martin
What a brilliant display I witnessed today
As dawn broke in the great sea’s front line.
And what a scene, like from a glorious dream.
Which I had dreamt once upon a time
And so gazing this morning upon murky sea
It seemed conflict had encountered our shore
As shining steel ships faced off in the distance
I prayed for viciousness, bloodshed and gore!
And all at once a gleeful group had gathered;
We, by the shore, with the waves lapping near
To witness the hell rain and the scorn splatter
From the certain safety of this distant pier.
In a moment, cannon blast broke loose in a fiery blaze!
The crowd laughed and shouted in a heated cheer!
While sea rocked and ships swayed in a thrash!
We watched from the safety of this distant pier.
The ship’s explosions echoed in the salty sea air,
Viciously trading volleys of a thousand hot spheres,
A cataclysm of chaos, shrapnel, cannon blast and blood
And we watched from the safety of this distant pier.
The ships began to sink, one after one after one;
And yet, we on the pier, felt fevered joy, not fear,
As splintering ships sank in the smoke and flame
And we cheered from the safety of this distant pier.
bourbon, cigarettes and syllables 