An Option Poem by RIC BASTASA

i have decided not to be serious.
i like being lackadaisical,
sorrow-free, sadness-insulated,
to just let my depression
go and leave me for a while
something that i have not
accepted really, like the way
i keep on advising this
mentally-challenged neighbor
of mine who keeps on belittling
and humiliating her husband
in front of me, telling him
that he is no good, povery stricken pig
and that she wasted her time
on him, her beauty, intelligence, and youth
squandered on
the lazy bone as him, not of her own choosing,
that she was just empty and needing
some filling, crazy indeed, but

let us start talking about myself,
i am bored and fed up
with so much lecturing and posturing
about my career and so ambitious
about climbing the ladder of success,

did i not have too much? i ask
myself, did i not have too much for the taking?
fortune, fame, family, all the 'f's' and the

'ifs', so many 'ifs' and it is making me
less of myself, undoing what i am,
looking at myself lesser, seeing always
that out there are the greener pastures,
comparing, and always in the mood
for change and something else, trying
to grab all the candies in the store.

i stop.

there is so much crowd in here, and
too much materialism, and less of the
spirit thing.

i retreat.

there is something to this world still
unexplored and misunderstood. i know.

what is happiness? i know it. i know it.
i just don't have the time. i know.

God passed me by. I did not even notice.
And i become sadder than ever.