36 Poem by RIC BASTASA

a metaphor is easy to make
and so easy to recall

remember the cat's feet like a fog
leaving softly the harbor in the city?
remember a misery that jumps like a flea &
bites you and you cannot sleep
and you say life is like that
a flea

remember
you think of time as a growing child
a man,
a wild man running and chasing
virgins that must make most of their time
because
time is a-flying and
the rose that blooms today
tomorrow
may be dying

remember time in a bottle

remember life like a fruit fly trapped
trying to figure
out how to escape
and you say life is like that
a fruit fly

remember death
like a woman sleeping in her chambers
closing the curtains
and you say
death is like that
a mere closing of a curtain

just like that

remember how
loneliness is like a steel tunnel
you get in there,
some birds hover and fly away from you
you get in there,
and there seems to be no light visible
at the end

loneliness

life is like that

you see
metaphors and dissect every vein
every artery
every bone and
cartilage of
these metaphors that you
say do not exist
in prose


, , , , , , , , , , , that you say do not exist in my prose

mine is not poetry
mine is a poverty of poetry
and you claim
yours is the basket the cornocupia of true poetry

good for you, you are the prima donna
of this
dance
this quibble in poetry

it does not matter

give me some metaphors
about poverty, discrimination, meaninglessness,
purposelessness,
non-being, the metaphysics of early death
a being-in-distress
an addict
a streetchild
a battered wife
a cruel father
a hypocirte priest
an embittered professor
a disgruntled student
give me some metaphors about
corruption, lying presidents, secret killings

you are the master of metaphor
you are the queen of slave
metaphors

so be it.
make me a poem to the strictures of metaphor
give poems a strange face
a hybrid of dog and man

make them read and not understand
delude them
give them illusions
confusions

make them baffled, submissive, uncritical, uncomplaining
complacent,

bewilder them to your secret,
derivative and too personalized
metaphors

and you are happy
they do not understand a thing

and they will believe that you are God.

for those that we do not understand
we call it mystery
we call it metaphor
we call it

unquestionable.

let the oppression stay.
let the discrimination live in the metaphors that
you have made.