Worn-Out Days Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

Your presence fills me
Like a gorged chasm,
But then, let me punctuate
This ill-begotten satisfaction
With a few subtle verses
That are not too subtle
For you to comprehend.

Let me confess:
A clandestine drudgery.

It’s the blank hours
Of sitting in front of a grotesque
Portion in front of a den of fools,
Reading Bukowski and
Disemboweling the verses
And trying to purge the intentions.

It’s the stale hours
Of seeing lovers entwined
As they pass me by
Like the moment of passing cars.
I tell you, the most squalid
Of times is when
I run towards the other end of the
Street without paying attention
To the speeding automobiles.
It’s like cheating death
But I tell you,
Death cheated me frequently
With flagrant disregard.

It’s in the anguished hours
Of sitting alone, with my head
Careening on a wall
With my rigid hands frailly
Holding a bottle that excreted
Cold vapor.
It’s one of those miserable days
Where nothing was lost
Because nothing was found
And that nothing will ever
Be sent to oblivion or forgotten
Because nothing had to be
Remembered or discarded
Away into abeyance.

Trust me.
The loneliest of days
Are not the nights alone in a room
Where the squalor of desolation
Swathed the walls and tainted it
Pastel.
The loneliest of days
Are the times where
The sunlight felt modest
On my skin: assuming the moonlight.
And vice versa.
It’s like, coming vis-a-vis
With nothing but feigned bliss
And you let yourself
Be pulled in the system:
Pull a string
And a sordid extremity gestures
Into acquiescence.

It’s like
I ride a carousel
A sully-go-round.
Day in,
Day out.
Night in,
Night out
Until the twilight
Disdains the liaison
Of the night with
The emptied skies -
The forlorn,
The azure.

It’s just one of those days
That I feel terribly alone
That nothing else will ever
Fill because my savagery
Is so insatiable that
Even the rabid beasts
Grew envious of my
Melancholy.