Soldier's Wife Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

Do you ever do this?

In the nights where the veneer wanders away

Heading to the chest of the forest,

You genuflect on the prickly floor,

Waiting for someone to

Open the door for you,

Because you have been sleeping,

Making love with frailty

Like an estranged wife

And a disheveled husband

Reunited?

I have been seeking

My soul, and its fragments

Across lines in a poem

In quotes, in short stories

In perspectives of black

And white – lest should I show

A perspective so dark and glum

Before acquiring such

Resplendent of a standpoint

I acutely lie,90 degrees

10 thousand miles of a river of tears

Far away from the Sun.

She does not look for me,

So I do not have the need to

Veil myself beyond pillars, beyond dead street lamps

Beyond stationary cars just to steer clear of your face

I don’t like markets

Malls, churches even

I like your God, like my God

But I do not like people,

Because the more I see people,

The more I come to realize

How lonely I am with them,

I am alone with all the other people

I wish to be one with them in revelry,

But the situation I hold in the palm of my hand

Is desultory.

Life is a broken watch,

And time is a hapless vessel

I feel as lonely as a soldier’s wife,

My heart is a frozen brook,

And I drink wine,

As I, in twenty-thousand fathoms

Try to liquefy the ice.