I’ve seen your sterile landscapes, devoid of emotion

Your sanitary life where everything fits into its assigned slot

I’ve seen you looking at me with your furrowed brow, and your tight little brain

Squeezed and pinched into it’s gelatin mold

Who the hell am I, you ask

I’m the one you warned your daughter about

I’m the one who will make her pant and rave and cry sweet Jesus in the middle of the night

I’m the stuff your nightmares are made of

I’m the virus in your computer

I’m the one your insurance policy doesn’t cover

08-08-1992

Ascending with ancient river rocks,
Triumph descends upon the mountain’s top –

Nourished by a feast of views;
Tasting colors, drinking hues.

Longing for the valley below,
Where there are rivers, the lakes, the waters flow…

Moose quench their thirst,
A pair of geese glide in –
We undress and go for a swim.

Refreshed and invigorated we go about our day-
Going this way and that way, we laugh, dance, and pray.

Sauntering along scattered sage-lined paths,
Out in the open and vulnerable to the storms that pass.

We stay faithful to trails that promise home,
Emersed in moments, together, alone.

Denise Martini 5-15-15

I AM AN AMERICAN DREAM

I DREAM OF FENCES AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

I DREAM OF A PLACE WHERE I AM THE UNDISPUTED RULER

I DREAM OF SANITARY PRODUCTS TO MAKE ME CLEAN

I DREAM THAT MY FINANCIAL DEBTS WON’T COME DUE TILL I’M DEAD

I DREAM THE REAPER HAS LOST MY NAME

I DREAM THE RIGHT PERSON FOR ME IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER

I DREAM THE SUBSTANCES I ABUSE ARE THE CORRECT ONES

I DREAM THE RIGHTEOUS WILL BE REWARDED

I DREAM THE MEEK WILL INHERIT A 3X6 PLOT

I DREAM MY JUSTICE IS YOUR JUSTICE

I DREAM MY TRUTH IS YOUR TRUTH

I DREAM I HAVE ENOUGH FIRE POWER TO PROTECT MY DREAMS

I DREAM THAT I AM NOT DREAMING , SO I WON’T HAVE TO WAKE UP

I DREAM THE WORLD WILL ONE DAY WAKE UP AND REALIZE WHO I AM

IN A SOFT SUBDUED ROOM, CANDLE LIT, A CHANCE TO REFLECT ON SOME OLD WOUNDS

A TIME OF TRANSITION

A FEW OLD THOUGHTS DISCARDED

THE MOTIVES QUESTIONED, AM I JUST A MOUSE IN A MAZE?

DAM THE UNSEEN HAND, IT PUSHES AT MY BACK AND I ACT AND I ACT

THIS IS GOOD, BETTER SMOKE MORE OF THAT

YOU KNOW YOUR JUST AN EMOTIONAL JUNKY

SO WHAT, EVERYONE IS SOME SORT OF JUNKY, BE IT DRUGS, SEX , FOOD OR WHATEVER THEY CAN CRAM INTO THAT INSATIABLE GAPING HOLE IN THEIR GUT

SURE, THAT’S EVERYONE ELSE

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR HOLE?

TRY TO FILL IT OR WRESTLE WITH YOUR COMPULSIONS?

COME ON NOW, DO YOU REALLY WANT TO OVERCOME, OR DO YOU JUST WANT COME ALL OVER?

I have viewed your secret dreams

Where loveless people drink from empty cups

Where the color runs from my lips to satiate the sunset crimson

Where only the soul can see and the minds eye with blinders blunders about

Where night descends to cover your nakedness

A bird sings a solitary song while trees sway to unheard melodies

Another empty room in a vault of tears

You look upon this landscape reinventing the universe to suite your secret dreams

Sometimes life reaches beyond fiction or anything that may seem plausible or within odds of happening; here is such a sequence of events:

AUTO-COP This is a letter to the Editor I sent in response to an overzealous traffic cop who was making it unpleasant to park our cars and go about our daily life on the Sonoma plaza. It was published and we all had a good laugh. Published date: 1987

Editor, Sonoma Index Tribune,

Look up the street it’s a superhuman, no it’s AUTOCOP. Quite unbelievable from where I’m standing and the whole downtown crowd is in agreement. I am just another mild mannered civilian in awe of the new super AUTOCOP ticket dispensing machine. It seems our small town police department has let loose it’s brilliant conceived device to eradicate parking offenders, skate boarders and other scoundrels.

This marvelous automaton can see down whole city blocks and find tires that are six inches out of their white boundaries. He can hear skateboard wheels on concrete a quarter mile away, and yes he swoops down with camera in one hand and citation book in the other in less than a heartbeat.

Here he comes, perhaps he will give us an interview. Mr. AUTOCOP could you answer a few questions for your fans. “Of course, anything to better the relations between the Force and the small people”. We would like to know where you learned to be so efficient and unemotional? “I was programmed in large cities with small tolerances”. We have noticed that you no longer cite delivery trucks parked in red zones. “Yes my leaders reprogrammed my visible scanning receptors to delete these sightings, I however am allowed to ticket all other moving and stationary objects”. We realize with your speed and efficiency you must be making the city a small fortune. “This is correct, we can now afford to buy more units like myself to patrol the residential quadrants and are planning to buy improved units with X-ray scanners that can peer through walls”.

This is all very encouraging, maybe we will finally see the end of dumb tourists and other people who crowd our downtown area. “You are very perceptive for a human, this is one of my prime directives”. Are there any other priorities that you are programmed for? “another of my prime directives is to cite dogs tied up outside of stores”. “I must be going now, I just spotted a non commercial vehicle in a yellow zone with a man rushing back to it with boxes in his hands, percentages are high for beating him there”.

——————————————————————————–

It appears that my prophecy of a ticket dispensing auto-cop came true. I was the privileged person to receive the first ticket dispensed by their new portable automatic ticket printing machine. About eight years later I parked my motorcycle between two cars on the plaza and Mr. Autocop gave me a ticket after I tried for 10 minutes to convince not to. I told him that it may be within the written law but was not in the spirit of the law. I told him I would take it his superiors and have it dismissed. Soon as I got the ticket I went over to the police station and got the lieutenant to dismiss it. I asked to keep the ticket as a souvenir of which he obliged me. I then drove over to the Sonoma Index Tribune and told them I had a human interest story… Published date: 1995

 

I was thirteen when I wrote this poem. I had left a foster home in a nice middles class neighborhood and returned to the ghetto where I was previously from. I however kept attending the same middle school. Every day I would commute to school by bus for an hour. I was living between two worlds. One of the chaos of the ghetto and one where there was some order, peace, and prosperity.

It was under these stressful conditions that I wrote this poem. I did not fully understand what I had written. At age 19 I somewhat understood it. It was not until a bit later in my life that a fully understood it.

Up with my spirit, down with my soul
For years and years I did not know which way to go
As I grow older I come closer to know that in-between lie fields aglow, and lighter my burden grows

Ken Martini 1963

 

 I am on a hilltop. You are ascending. I await your arrival.

Your hand brushes against mine. I do not grasp. I await your arrival.

In your darkness, you seek light. I await your arrival.

You are tired of holding; you are letting go. I await your arrival.

You are on a journey. Take your time. I await your arrival.

Ken Martini 3-21-2021