What Happened When The Lights Went Out Poem by RIC BASTASA

early that evening
there was a total blackout in the city
for an unknown
cause again, and

this happens not just for that
lonely time
only but for the nth time
when the hours are lonelier
than usual, and

to make use of those dark hours
since we see nothing
more important to do than read,
we spend the hours, and hours
talking,

it is you who is doing most
of the talking, choosing the words,
and arranging them
to perhaps please me, but i was
not there anymore,
i was then, and am mostly,
a wanderer amidst the forest of your
sentences,

and i feel like your are sentencing
me into a listener imprisoned
in those bars of
senseless words, and i

as i once told you, always escape
as a swift bird,
and you as usual do not notice it
when i am already
far away into my own
kind of personal homeland
where you cannot find me
or catch me

naked and innocent like a native,
and i do not hear about you anymore
and when i come back
and take the shape of a man

you are already fast asleep and then
i step silently inside the room
via an open window
slip on the bed wet with your tears
and then i gently sleep beside you

and i cannot sleep that night
as i judge myself guilty of an injustice
which i have inflicted against
love and trust

a la Cupid to
Psyche,

and then i, before my own
sleepy eyes,
blow that stupid candle
away

and then it is so dark
deep into the night i journey
burdened
like one of the Furies
into the
cliffs of Sisyphus.