When I Talk And Think About Albert Poem by RIC BASTASA

sometimes
(did i tell you that this is my
favorite word?)

i am shocked by my own
ingenuity
(sometimes i equate it with
shallowness
a loquacious mouth of the river
falling upon
a rock and smashing its
hands on the
floor of the
earth)

i blame myself for
changing the meaning of a word
like the way
i am changing the meaning of
my life

(or perhaps the lives of
other people
around me)

creating landscapes
putting trees where there are
no mountain
putting talkative women
in the house where
the house is still a
thought

(a student wants to say
i am crazy
but there is also a doubt
whether i am
one
she has the wisdom of
keeping her
mouth in the silent
mode)

i am not stupid
not crazy i still know what right
is,
i can still tell you
who are those in the left
side of the
equation

one day
i redefined a poem
it need not be a house
with a door and
windows

i can simply be stairs
or path
it can simply be a star
on the roof

it can simply be a conversation
without a direction
like a Freudian dialogue on
the sofa
where comfort is actually
moving the paths
of meteors
with a broom and
light

(do you always talk
to achieve
fulfill a mission?
what is your mission?
what is your
purpose?)

women go to the market
buy some things
for the kitchen
they do not linger upon a
talk

men go to their work
thinking about their kids
most of the time
they do not bother about
work really
they also dwell in the bodies
of other women
about those nights away
from the eyes
of their wives

people have scattered minds
unto each other
they pretend that they are devoted
into something
worthwhile

kids go to school
carrying bags filled with books
that they do not bother really reading
if they have to be honest
about who they are
the only care for the games of their
minds in those
playgrounds and
play stations

what kind of world is this
there are only so few
that live
so many people are going to
the places of death
without really knowing
each step

the famous man (you know his name)
discovered the bomb
and from then own
they own all these countries of this world

he is the real meaning and so they claim
him to be
the only meaning of this world
a nuclear god
who cannot die in that history of pain
and misery

may his soul (if he has one)
rest in peace.