Old Photographs Poem by Gert Strydom

Old photographs are dangerous things
if you have a jealous girlfriend, fiancée
or wife
who enquires when she sees them
and wants to know everything
about old flames,
why they left and with whom
and then tries to be a cleansing broom,
to sweep everything right into the dustbin

and when at a party, at the cinema, at a restaurant
or even on the sidewalk in the street
you meet someone who is depicted
in a photograph

the girlfriend, fiancée,
or wife
leers at her with killer eyes
as if a laser rays are going
to blaze to dissolve, to destroy
and old photographs are dangerous things
especially if they are quite revealing
and later they have the ability
to bite with a dangerous sting.