Tag: dying

Waiting for a Commercial

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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.

Just…Wreckage

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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

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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?

Another Dead Bird

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Tyler R. Martin

My dog, with a dead bird in his mouth, was waiting for me

This morning on the stoop of my home’s back door.

I stood in the doorway, waiting to let him in, hung over, 

Bleary eyed, still naked at six AM, drowsy and half asleep, 

Desperately wanting him in the house so I could grab 

Another hour of sleep without fear of him pissing on my floor.

And there he was, staring up at me, ears up, tail wagging,

Dead bird in his mouth and big blue eyes popping from

Their sockets with excitement. “Put it down!” I told him,

“Fuck you,” his eyes responded, I looked down at him,

Dead bird in his mouth, gray sloberry feathers hanging from

His jowls, tail wagging very rapidly. “My bird,” his eyes said.

Fuck it, I lit a cigarette and let him and his dead bird inside,

Head high, tail wagging, he trotted into the house, almost skipping

Towards my bedroom to show his prize to the hungover blonde 

Still comatose in my bed. I sat at my kitchen table smoking,

Head back against the back of the chair blowing plumes of smoke 

Into the stagnant air and waited for the inevitable screams.