A WHOLE LOT OF EMPTY – F.R. Martinez
Prison as a whole is a dark hole a whole lot of empty. Nobody talks about prison until they end up there. Then it becomes central gravitational a main theme a radical scheme a right-wing meme. Prison is an asylum from the world’s insanity from what is required, prison itself has no reality or centrality, …
COLLAPSE – F.R. Martinez
[From watching televised reports covering the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey/Syria while in federal prison] Here’s how it is: buried under tons of earthquake rubble but still breathing survival above all, mostly death. Structures collapse lives are crushed cries for help are silenced. What we have built will not endure despite our most earnest intentions, …
CYCLE – F.R. Martinez
We fluctuate from minute to minute year to year from there to here here to there mostly unaware who we are who we were. Rise and fall of tides the ever-spinning cosmos invisibly ordered orbit of electrons a constant vibration surrounding us within us the tormented energy of the universe ever restless, formless. We, actors …
DRAFT – F.R. Martinez
Poetry on the fly, is why here on the corrlinks draft on a flimsy raft speed-drifting toward the white rapids of zero zero time zero characters left no more tru-credits no more money on the books Poetry on the sly, is why so they don’t see but they see all and they laugh at the …
FLIGHT – F.R. Martinez
Black shadow wings across my path streaks across the red gravel of the prison yard track: a bird overhead like a passing evil thought, a premonition. Etched against harsh sunlight my own shadow, solid and solemn, plods on, step by step, a struggle to move this body old bone, muscle, sinew tired of the weight …
JOURNEY – F.R. Martinez
Please do come in. Welcome. Feel free to relax here among these ruins where I currently reside. You must forgive my lack of social graces. I have been absent from civilized company for far too long. I have been ‘abroad’ on a long journey. I assume you find me despicable unkempt not worthy of respect. …
MAGAZINES – F.R. Martinez
prison inmates look at gourmet food luxury cars boats Greek islands the Caribbean women glossy images from another planet not the one they live on and will live on for decades. 2023
PARADISE MISPLACED – F.R. Martinez
From pinnacle to debacle might be a great fall but possibly short-lived. Sultry shady satin-smooth super Mario brothers Satan can attest to this, sent down to the PIT for daring to be top-dog material. Hu-Hu-Hubris! sings the angelic choir Only room for one God up in this bitch! Is how the story goes. (And maybe …
PATTERN – F.R. Martinez
I. Trapped in concentric circles, blind, I was circumscribed. Now I am a wound pierced from every direction. There’s such agony in finally perceiving. The beauty and multiplicity is too much for an old man’s eyes. The world too vast to be encompassed. I might have said back then back when that I was a …
SQUIRREL TIME – F.R. Martinez
I am the connection between yesterday and today in this universe (call it mine) I am the Timepiece. I seek no broader observations and assumptions am untouched by the wider scope (the social). At this center of myself time is simplicity. Zero. As an inmate on this prison compound I may be deemed irrelevant, dead …
THE KENNEL – F.R. Martinez
If there is a term meaning the opposite of ‘anthropomorphism’, i.e. giving animals ‘human’ qualities, I don’t know it. What do you call it when humans are given animal qualities, as in prison for instance? Here in prison all of us inmates are dogs. Dogs in a kennel. It was, and probably still is, a …
WORMS – F.R. Martinez
Words scattered on the floor, alive scrawled and crawling scrambling for sense, angling for my attention wriggling and writhing worms words that slither through me in and out of me like when I’m dead and in the ground which is why I’d rather burn and be ash scattered in the wind. All these words point …