Unconscious, right?

A Renaissance of Self-Regard. Guerrilla Literature poetry conceptualized, written and published by Kerr Martin, 8/14/26.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

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There is blood on the sand.
Consciousness
Floats
Through desert trees
Into the parlor of gods.
No man survives the nether
Unscathed,
Married to the wild woodlands,
Ethereal animals
Filled with traitorous screams.
Don’t you see?
The Padahar calls for unity,
But bandits scurry along the borderline
As Death finds a path into the kingdom.

Watch the octopus.
Kanaloa meets with the primordial
Pontus.
Island breeze.
Men voyage
And tell tales of titans
As they fill the expanse.
Conquest.
Smoke the peace pipe.
Lady Moth
Feeds the treaty to a flame.
There’s nothing more to take.
We write, fight,
Or fade away.

Listen to the lies
Of the renaissance man.
Shoreline sitter.
Borderland crawler.
Earworm of the masses.
Inert.
Statue at the gate.
Certain beyond reason.
Be the hammer.
Wielded trident.
Equip all eight arms.
Slayer.
Sacred-cow killer.
Cover your eyes, pick up your pen.

Begin.

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Check out my new spoken word album, Silence Nor Death, available on Bandcamp. Gothic poetry and resurrection horror mixed with Christian struggle and vampire blood. What else could you want on the mic? Click the link below and listen now.

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This piece was partly inspired by Stefan Baciu, who recently discussed the importance of writers referencing each other’s stories and poetry in their own work and building something bigger than our own individual pages. It spoke to me particularly because I’d already done exactly that with my last piece, Life In Pink, which was written in creative conversation with the fantastic and compelling work of Pink Visions. Referencing another writer doesn’t make your work less yours but it does give it expanded roots. Someone leaves an image behind, you find it, carry it somewhere else, chop it, twist it and reimagine it. Suddenly characters, phrases, symbols and ideas are crossing borders and what might have started as two completely separate bodies of work are now occupying the same territory.

If we want any kind of genuine creative foothold in an attention deficit world, I don’t think we get there by building isolated kingdoms, sticking a flag in the ground or guarding the gate from everyone else. We get there by letting our worlds touch, influence and expanding each other.

Which, considering what this particular poem is about, feels rather appropriate.