We Are Here, And That Is Good Enough For Us... Poem by RIC BASTASA

i never have an inkling
to sit beside the greatness of a

Maya, a Langstone, a Pablo
or Robert

i am but a simple blogger
in this age
of facebook and twitter
and email encounters

let me get it straight
fame is not my cup of tea
all i need is just to be me.

it is all about loneliness
all about arriving home with no one to talk to
or taking your dinner alone
under the light of a bulb
and the chatter of TV series

it is not about romance even
there is none

it is the other side of reading books
and dog-earing a page
because your eyes are tired
and you need sleep because tomorrow

is another routine, of a walk to the office
filling up forms, disrobing yourself of
the excitement of earthly existence

lunch, and the quiet of officer dividers
and taking naps like cats

evenings without meanings
blankets without human warmth
pillows like clear consciences
guilt like fecal matter flushed
on the morning bowl

we all live this way
we do not complain because there are no solutions in sight
we do not work for a fulfillment
we work to pay our bills and be just like the rest of this
wave of humanity
arriving and leaving like foams of sea on the shore

then like you, we write, poems or non-poems
we keep holding to words, hoping that there is a cure
to this paper existentialism

we write for nothing at all
we know we are duped by websites that earn money for themselves
we do not care
we are passionate, we contribute the success of others
we make them happy, we do not count how much feeling have we
invested

we do not know, much less do we really care to know.
we're here, playing our noise, we do not crave for responses

we exist, we make you feel that we exist.
who knows? we are not alone, we also have the rest

wave upon wave, sunset upon sunset, all the days of our lives
till we die, and this page shall be blank, and then we are
deleted.