i am happy to see you flying

i am happy to see you flying
freely in the skies
like you are making a painting
with the wind

go, take time with the friendly clouds
go, be aware of the colours and scents of the winds

wait, in a moment, watch the bursting of the sun

Each shall have a room, as they are distinct
As love is blind, lust has eyes wide open for its games
As love is day, lust is the night at the bar
As love speaks the truth, lust can just lay silent looking for the tasty froth
Love need not be beautiful but lust makes it a requisite
Love may abstain, but lust cannot
By its nature it thrives in banquets

Love is pure but lust goes to mud in all wild wrestling for what it desires
I can love you without lust
But you may not like it after all
I love and lust you

And in you
Love and lust shall
Hold hands, kiss tight, hiss all the night
Love and lust
The two becoming one
To both of us

So this union may last
This communion of souls

RIC S. BASTASA

Like the planets you take your own orbit
away from the rest
eluding this fatal collision
you travel alone keeping on your own gravitation
balancing the forces of your being
outside inside
near and far
coming and going
centrifugal centripetal

that is the way you move
to be alive
then the moment comes
when you complete
one revolution

how time trickled
like some drops from a rock
you flow
bit by bit
you are so busy then
about almost everything

on the other side
the clear pool of water
mirror of the sky and sun and moon

it is you
you have earned it
it is you
on your birthday

RIC S. BASTASA

A sense of humor

listen to a joke
just listen and then don't mind the face of the teller
just listen and then something clicks
and you catch something funny
and you laugh

keep the joke and dissect it
let it stay
retell it to yourself or even to your friend
retell it how many times to him
and let him write it

you see there is no click anymore
something funny was lost
because you want to keep it
because you want to let it stay in you

one thing with a joke is that it must
always be something new
one that you have not heard it before
i tell you, it is just like a poem

there is this switch, a clicking
and then something happens

how can you tell it?
you can't
tell it

for by then
in an instant
it is gone

sad indeed, there are other freedoms still freedom from having no ideas, from this dryness, freedom from having you as a poet on forced wit and half-cooked cleverness freedom from a reader who has nothing to offer except his own loneliness his having nothing to do freedom from being bored to death freedom from having nothing to say and comment freedom from this feeling of emptiness this bigotry this indigestion of dumb thoughts freedom from impertinence, immateriality, irrelevance, freedom from thinking about freedom freedom from freedom itself there are more freedom from pain is useless now that you are

dead.

RIC S. BASTASA

55 • 365 : Flying away

February 24, 2009 (55/365)

Flying away

i like to see the image of a lone bird flying away from me
two steady wings carrying a very light body of blue feathers
a kingfisher flying away against the morning sun
moving nowhere getting farther until it becomes a blue dot
dissolving in the distance that your eyes can no longer see

i sometimes like to think i am that bird flying away
from where i am
because this place is sad and cruel
i like to fly away
to leave everything behind me and then simply forget
and make new beginnings
as easy as that

sometimes however i ask myself:
where shall i go?
nowhere?
just nowhere?
where is nowhere?

just fly away and go

RIC S. BASTASA

what's the hurry?

the days never consume themselves
and the nights are always there when you need to talk to the stars
the river keeps flowing and the oceans have always been far and wide
the glaciers keep their formation and when the break and fall they come back

shapes and colors and light and darkness and faces and bodies
there are always seasons and new moons and fall moons
for every leaf that falls another bud sprouts
i wonder to all these
and there is no hurry, i take time communing with what nature is giving.

happiness like a bunch of grapes.
joy like an overflowing river.

so why hurry? there are more reasons why we must stay.

painting the wall white is what is done this morning.
removing the stains and the marks of wrongs
some spits and phlegm sticking
and we wonder if this shall please him
he who had died a long, long time ago
who wished all the walls are white and neat
and clean.
who wished that it will be like his body
or his soul, but then there was not enough time.
he never wished to die
that early and so dirty.

and so i rode on the white car and someone
was driving who does not talk, it was strange
there was this typhoon that kept on coming
and i was holding on the door of the car
and it was raining hard on the winding
and slippery road towards nowhere
fog and mist and a bunch of rain and wind
and then i heard the sound of the car falling on
a cliff and then
there was something that was as absolute as
involuntary silence.
all the fears vanished.

i woke up.

i let the years pass on my busy days
this and that
those and there and here
contemplation is a monk and he has not come
my door is open
and the crowd came in. Leaves of years keep
falling like it is caused by the cyclone
of my moving forward onward
this and that and those and there and everywhere
until one moment when the last white hair fell
and then i shudder
to all these and that and those and there and here
and nowhere
and nothing, until the monk in saffron cloth came
asking me
if i am finally going.

between us is this chasm of silence
we are like a river
and i am on the other side of its banks

at the middle is this haze of the fog
and the transparency of twilight

between us is the thread of a word
a line of syllables that must connect us

to connect our loneliness
you on the other side has only to utter the words
but you cannot do it

neither I, and so we have become the widest sea
without a shore.

Now we are faraway islands.