In Vain.... Poem by RIC BASTASA

a road runner
never stops running
for it is
its essence

in the same way
how can a
sparrow cease to
fly? no sparrow
has ever
cut its own wings
to deny itself
of its birthright
to fly

or an ant to stop
walking on barks of
trees and
live upon the enclosures
of leaves or
sand empires
of their own creation

i feel odd
for i ask the same question
how can a poet
or a pseudo-poet
stop being one

how its fingers ever
stop to dance with
syllables and sentences
and lines?


i was not born with
ink in my mouth
and pen in my hand
and poems in my heart
and stories in my
brain

neither were words
kept in my veins
and neither were there
nymphs in my
lymphs

for i was a tabula rasa from
the start

what might have caused it
i still too ask

this ceaseless scribbling
which you
in your impatience may
have already found
disturbing or
irritating

nevertheless i do not
write for you
forgive me
but i only have myself
to blame for
this selfishnessfor i write only
for myself
(and i do not really
care what happens
next
or what tragedy may
come at the end
of this literary journey
into a desert without
camels
into the sea without
islands
into the sky without
planets and stars
into a window without
a moon)

this eternal damnation
to words
this masochistic carpentry
of ideas transformed into
the letters of the
flesh
that may haunt all of us
into
inevitable damnation

but we are we to judge
our futilities?
who are we to say that
we have wasted our time
and that what we are
are doing in the end
shall nothing but be in
vain?