When Hell Is Hell Poem by RIC BASTASA

if you keep on hiding
your skin gets too dark and like the night
it will be
accompanied by that unnecessary
coldness of
stone that knows what numb
what silence
tolerated

so many of them
those who have faced the harshness of opening
tell you, open up open up
since you are a closed gate
a locked door
a tight bud

they tell you
open up or you die
or you have no meaning at all
or you are
a brittle bread
a tick afraid of the light of the bulb
in that old
Persian carpet

and so you open up
to the grass to the sun to the clouds
and you are badly hurt
skin burning like paper
bones lighting up like firewood

you run like hell and hell is hell
(what do we really know about hell?)
and fire consumes you and they follow you to check
what you have become

it is too shocking to tell for now.
and they want to tell you that they are sorry for you.

and then
they forget

you were such a fool
to believe those bunch of fools