A Rose Tattoo? Poem by RIC BASTASA

you have that rose tattoo
on your arm
there is a bleeding heart on the
side
and when we bathe in the sea
the sun shines there
and i imagine how things bleed
and heal
and get immortalized somehow
on your tattoo of
love and hate and devotion and then
gone for good

you like to retain somehow the lessons
of the pain
the memories of the ecstasy
and the moment
of final separation

i told you last night when we made love
i don't keep memories
i let them drip like a rain in the gutter and they
are kept
better be
in the canals buried deep inside the earth

i like to grow and touch the sun
i am this flower that blooms only once and then die

i don't have a tattoo
i know what i am, i just pass by like a hush, like a sigh

i like the way things are, blank and clueless.