For Pio..... Poem by RIC BASTASA

Yes, there were eternally bleeding palms
Pio, do you remember the name?
astigmatic, and there were those
many names, many images
so many mirages
And the desert suns, oasis, camels, Bedouins,
scimitars of the past conversations;
the origami of storks and ponds

There was this chinese frog
who made it to the seven rivers
The koi that turned into a dragon
guarding the eunuch of the empire

So many words said and you think
those were wastes,
they never had any meaning at all except,
the gullibility of the gulls
But who knows, you maybe wrong
ultimately for dismissing some facades of poems

People are poets and they cannot tell you
the meanings of surfaces
submarines go deeper and will not
announce its resurfacing
corals there, colored fish, pearls,
sunken treasures of the past;
who knows, there may be real stories there
hands that bury metaphors
euphemisms that actually carry truth
between the legs of their syllables

you should have known better,
when you believe all these at once
I tell you, you were never wrong.

it is just one of those days
when words are more real.
i never regret having said them,
drawn the lines, and fortified my forts.