The Basics Of The Legal Self Poem by RIC BASTASA

i enter a room
and discuss
law

there is nothing
there
except law

no one sees me
except law

no one amazes me
except law

and everyone thinks
that all my nerves
and flesh and bones
and even my
organ of reproduction
are nothing but laws

what they see is
only the hard core of myself
the carapace of
of a blue crab
and that i must have loved
only sand
and the waves that constantly
erase what
law has written

they want to find if
i have a heart

someone finally asks
if i have any
and where must have i placed it
hoping to find
the soft part of
my turgid
existence

it makes me
egoistic at times
when questions like
these are
asked

i've lost my ego a long long time
ago
and i lost it when
poetry was born

i do not know exactly when
but even if by chance
a memorandum shall tell me

how can i ever tell you?

what you shall see perhaps
is a spatter of water
coming from
a broken
bowl of glass