Timid Photographs Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

</>The timid photographs,
Where the moments are frozen
In the ocean of regret,
The pale rivers of abandonment
And perhaps, a carnival of bliss,
Shyly pry like flowers you find at the sidewalks
With all the people that scream like
Car engines and bustling verdure-
I looked at the photographs,
And shied away, the heavens cringed
And the perdition swayed to the direction
Of my careening body towards the empty space
To my left – where everything materialized
Into cold, dilapidated figures, and mirages
That cover me with a cloth to guise
My face and to pretend that I am beamed forth into
The plush visions of the heavens
But I am far from heaven,
And my arms are impotent – there is no force
Left in these roof beams – they are empty vessels
Set to voyage into the bosom of her wearisome forests
Until then, with or without her presence
Of dashing tulips, fresh from the pastures, from her gardens
I will stare forever at her timid photographs,
Until one morning, maybe, her photograph would stare back
And I would come to realize all that was lost, that there
Is a fire still left inside of me that never tarnished,
Never extinguished,
Only fanned into a whole spiral of flare –
But then her photographs never stared back at me,
They remained intact inside solid, morose frames
Hanged by a wall, pinned to it by a tiny nail
That will never be confiscated from the walls,
She remained to the walls, caged inside borders
Perpendicular to the roof, to the light bulbs,
Parallel to my universe, if there is such –
Oh, your timid photographs:
They prompt my demise demurely.