Gratis Et Amore (2) Poem by RIC BASTASA

helen cannot sleep,
and she keeps on sneering at the moon
and writing it
with poems as though the moon is a man
and as though the poems are her
letters pleading
to be loved by its glimmer
and shimmer imagining
them to be the rough hands
of a lover and
throughout many nights
she had been waiting
to be loved

there were many things that she did
all for the moon not even for the stars
until one morning she was found
dead inside her room
her face towards the moon
her eyes closed
her window open
and the people who buried her
that same day
told about the shame
that she was naked

i know how it is to be like her
and it was all done in the name of love
gratis et amore.

and they said, all of them, after all the prayers were said
Amen.