A Confession For El Cabir Poem by RIC BASTASA

you have been immersed
in a pond filled with the holiest of all the
purified waters blessed by
all the saints in your mind
by all the angels in your books

yet you are still silenced by your restraints
every morning you stand by your window watching nothing

yes the wind that sweeps away the mahogany leaves
on the roof of the catwalk where no one is walking because the semester
just ended and you have no home to
go

the apartment is another lonely room
it serves you no good
you never had sex there with a stranger

you have been growing money in your bank
and it is giving you more grief

it is not greed, but it is the inability to be open to yourself
and give yourself a break by stepping out of the university and
be
happy,

you have many definitions about what happiness is
and it is a waste of deliberation
alone in your room
where the papers are mute and as usual
dead

do not define happiness
just grab it
be blind
set aside your eyes for a while
have a leaping heart
be a frog

or a reptile, that snake with red lines and black lines alternating on its
scaled belly

or the grasshopper that sings on summer
teasing the ants.

i look at you with scrutiny as i make myself comfortable on that
velvet sofa inside your well kept philosophy office

it is a field of sadness
and i pity you

but what can i do? you are the wise man and i am the loose jackal.
you are shrinking like hell
and i am bloating like heaven.

what a conceit i have? never mind, call me a typographical error
of the university

nevertheless, i must tell you, i am not real.