Places Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

I am caught here in the eye of the maroon tiles -

Marred from the ember of the Sun, in putrid floors

Swiveling doors that pivoted across the rancid halls

Suffocated in the quagmire of the decline in one’s voice

That resonate in the background like buses

And motor engine across the windows of opaque skin

Carrying one pane after another, the pendulum so brightly

Described in the mouths of the people playing on the concrete

I saw you walking, past me, your eyes were not

As sharp as they used to be, blunt maybe by time -

Cohesion has another motherly passion of adamantine physique

On the inert energy sleeping among the flailing hands

Fledgling like a tyro who decides to sleep over books

Rather than the silken comfort of a bed

Where forty-winks land like the brink of one’s self-destruction

In the library, in the car, security office or whereabouts that are jarring

I called your name, and it hurts me to the bone

That the rattle of it, fractured in the heavens punctured

With needles size 19” on the infinitesimal decadent noontime shine

With streaks not of luminosity, but of austerity in the calm leather compartment

Of the car’s subcompact, where I place my body of morose

With a rose on the chest, and a suitcase near the feet

On a Sunday, you would only think of me, and not visit the tomb

How long shall nights under the inebriated pill pass

Like days in lieu of the passing of the stars

In a cartwheel slowly carried by a tether of indifferences

That clasp like gauntlets on calloused hands

With the strands of the hair, gossamer projection of lips

That look like hills of Spain or mountains of some foreign sanctuary

I have no place - Where is my place?

You heard me call you -

And sprung forth, careening towards the door

Half-open, separating, like a barricade

To guard yourself from preying upon my earthly vulnerability

And to restrain myself from falling towards you

Free-falling without any help from the hands

That quiver and withdraw from the mere presence of

The pettiest things that could break, slice or sever

No courage, valor must have been obsolete

I have no place,

Where is my place?