A Conundrum Begins. Poem by RIC BASTASA

IN THIS you are supposed to write
what you feel.
and to make it feel like a poem
something indirect must be done.
sometimes you simply have to
hide the fingers, so your hand
appears like a ball, and when
those feelings come out like threads
or shadows of grass like edges,
connections are made. Once a snake
was seen as benzene ring in a dream.
it was a scientific success.

so feelings become innocent guides
to something greater than them.
symbols and flowing images like water
from a jar into a hole without a bottom,
and then when you finally wake up
you grasp for air, because every color
there winding like a DNA structure,
though beautiful and factual, at the least,
makes you dizzy, and then as you gaze
around the corners of your room,
you find yourself alone.

your heartbeats drum
a conundrum begins.