Voices Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

And there were voices
Wailing in my head like despaired fellows
Of distraught.
How are you?
I feel morosely candid.
What are the voices telling you?
Run, run, run, run.
Can you recognize the voices?
I think I did at some point,
Where I sauntered away from
The people who play an emotional
Tug-of-war. I feel dead – a taciturn
Vivacity can be heard from a mile away
But it never lurched too close enough
For me to grasp.
Do you know why the voices tell you to run?
Yes, but sometimes,
All the right reasons do not
Equate to equanimity.
I am a tattered son,
A jealous man,
An impatient maudlin.
Do you have hope?
Yes, in fragments.
Do you believe that there’s still hope?
Even in this labyrinthine perdition.
Even in the muted hours of the day.
Do I believe? Yes.
Do I act upon belief? No.
Tell me a story.
One time, I saw a pigeon.
It perched atop a cypress,
And from then, the verdure blustered
And disentangled the leaves one by one,
The pigeon remained dauntless
I think as though, it squinted
From the very stifles of the wind
Cats were waiting for the pigeon
Perhaps, to fall weak on his structure
And then, the cats will devour the pigeon
But the pigeon held on
Held on too tight until it started to rain.
The cats retreated.
The pigeon remained the same.
It must be really hard for you.
Who cares?
You don’t even care.
You just pretend to be,
Because this is your job.
To find someone who’d care?
That is bizarre. You only find few ones,
And they fade. As always.
What made you think like this? Act like this?
I walked past the shore.
And I starved to my bone,
But never cared. I wrote my name,
And next to my name, was another one
And I wrote it larger than mine
And I loved how larger it was
And the image made me smile,
And as soon as I caressed the names
The waves pilfered the vision
And there was nothing I could do.
Okay. What are your plans?
Plans?
We plan. But we always fail.
There’s nothing left. Only desolation.