Fire & A Morning With Tigers Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

By two drunken pillars
That singe in the afternoon,

Sometimes, I am silent.
I wish not to engage
In such a drudgery
Of crowds conversing about
How well they walk
Through fire.

Sometimes the reticence
Wells up in me like mad
Platoons of men with vicious rifles.
Sometimes it would take
The drizzle and the stench
Of petrichor to drive the madness away.

But still,
The flare lives inside of me
It will never ebb,
And as the cold wind blusters,
It fans the flame
Engulfing me like bewildered ivies.

The crowds still continued
To talk, and sometimes
Pull the conversation out of
The waters and
Try something new -
Perhaps talk about
Being alive in the tiger’s
Morning.

And there, I was lulled,
Tranquilized by the thought
Of a stampede of wild
Beasts taking a toll inside
My system.

Again, by two pillars
Now solemn
That freeze in the twilight
I remained there,
Making stories and love
Out of
People who walk perfectly
Through fire,
And a morning
With tigers.