A Mantra At Ymca Cebu Poem by RIC BASTASA

it is just three days
but here i am
and it is like three long years
this absence

shall remember the intensity of
not being
incomplete

the sad room cannot put to sleep
the restless sea
as it enters invincibly
in a closed door

something is choking being
and being has to walk away and be with the crowd
on those city lights
along the multitude
of lonely people who at 2 o'clock dawn
still roams
the corners of the mind

one must see a shrink
they advise you
that need to lie down on a sofa
and to begin talking about
anything

it is like a thread and you are crawling like
an insect
like a dropping teardrop
feeling the
dryness of the cheek

finally i give up sleep
and till morning
i think upon what is happening

the sad fact is that nothing really happens from the way they are seeing you
calm, clueless see without a rock
a fish
placid, brown skin without a crease of a trauma
someone looks at you
like a god
but there you are
a wall

you accept and then you put silence in your pockets
the sockets sink
you are getting nonsensical
talking without a clue
as to the meaning
of your
sighs

all these are but the conversations of the soul
losing its faith about
a body
a map that is found in paper
spread on the floor
and being washed away by the rain that seeps
and penetrates
the holes of the roof