To Ourselves Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

The partial motions,
The parceled truths,
The skived lattices
One on one.

To mar,
To defend,
To use one’s body
To shield against one’s sharp, protruding tongue.
Are we any good
To each other?

Follow the rendezvous
Of the dog at night,
Hide behind the trees,
Sleep under the trellis,
Search for an acutely precise point
Where you can see this hound
Keep his bones, safe and sound
Away from us.
Away from you.
Away from me.
We are really no good
To some people.

Listen to the horrors
Of the clocks
Inside the hospital
And write poetry
About the man who lies idly
On the hospital bed,
Counting how many shaking
Motions the arms of the clock does
Until the clock can’t any more -
Drained of life.
Elegiac, you are for a moment
Sympathetic.
Disgusting.
And afterwards, laugh.
Live. Seize moments and entrap them
In photographs.
Remember for a moment so short,
Forget for a moment too long.
We are really no good
To ourselves.