Did You Say That Your Only Freedom From Pain Is Death? Poem by RIC BASTASA

sad indeed,

there are other freedoms
still

freedom from having no ideas, from this dryness,
freedom from having you
as a poet on forced wit and half-cooked cleverness
freedom from a reader
who has nothing to offer
except his own loneliness
his having nothing to do
freedom from being bored
to death
freedom from having nothing
to say and comment
freedom from this feeling of emptiness
this bigotry
this indigestion of dumb thoughts
freedom
from impertinence, immateriality, irrelevance,
freedom from thinking about freedom
freedom from freedom itself
there are more

freedom from pain
is useless now

that you are dead.