10: 56........ Poem by RIC BASTASA

you brag that life is not complicated
everything is simple

like, baring yourself, nothing hidden,
speaking, shying away from silence
because silence is strange
it is not named specifically like
a goat with horns, a bird with claws
a fish with fins,

you speak your mind,
a square is a square
a spade is a spade
not a thing is the same,
everything unique
simplify, simplify, is that a hard
thing to do? i say it is not.

you grow, you experience pain,
you shed tears on people they do not really
consider important

time and pressure are two twins now
you like to die, you once tell me
as candid as tomorrow you will take your like away

like jumping from the 12th floor or
simply, as you put, withholding breath
or pulling the trigger
'bang! ' is that complicated? i say it is not
since life, your life, is always your hands


there is meaning to all these, i tell you,
you look for it like standing by and looking at the faces of people
who suffer like us,

then life unfolds with so many petals,
it becomes a tree with so many rings worn inside its body
so many twigs, branching out as though it is following an edict

you follow the veins of a dried leaf
or listen to the stories of the child
you begin to count the stars in the dark skies
or lull yourself with the eternal numbers that the waves of the sea
are carrying to the shore

endless, moon to moon, sun to sun, horizons that tire your eyes
deserts that make you feel the thirst
numerous deaths, births and rebirths of thoughts and
memories of windchimes

it is now simple to accept, sometimes one cannot tell a person that
you love and that your love is something that you cannot really grasp
beyond speech,
beyond hold,
beyond feeling, it is what you see at noon when you stare at the sun

hurting, you cannot attack that long,
lest you get blinded by so much light

now i know how is it to write to someone and you try hard that you cannot be understood
because

life is not simple, and saying i love you is not just to utter the word and then
everything turns to be alright

it is more than that
honestly, until now, i cannot say it, or if i say it, until now i have never understood it

do not attempt to understand what i too have not understood
it is like this: when i tell you that i love you, everything in me vanishes
day turns to night, and i will be lost forever
denying what i am
destroying what i have built from the beginning

my love is a nihilist.
you, as always, can be my sun, without you
feeling it.