Honorable X... Poem by RIC BASTASA

it was only less than a year
his grandchild was charred by fire
that razed their house and car

they are still in mourning
the wife died two years ago
of an unknown infection
the doctor declares that there
was something incurable

his son had to stop the lawyering
on a broken tendon from a high fall
but he seems not to be shaken

a man needs to be shaken
like a tree that must shed its leaves
to grown new ones

last night he slept while driving
his Honda Civic
running over five pedestrians
scurrying for fish
one died on the spot
the rest of the four were badly injured
and had to be rushed to the hospital

his eyes are sharp
he is 78, retired and still teaches
Special Proceedings
he is thinner now
and still skips lunch
to stay fit he says

everything can be paid
there is always a price for every man
no one sticks to a certain integrity
unreasonably vis-a-vis
one man's need for money
in order to survive
the high cost of living
and dying

it boils down to money he continues
pouring his legal wisdom based on his
50 years or so of legal practice
money does not only talk
it covers crimes and washes away man's
sins in society
he says some more but my mind like a black bird
flies away from a steel cage
wanting the freedom of the mountains
the wider expanse of the horizons
and oceans

i like to leave but he grips my hand as though trying to say
he hates being alone now
in his distress
(the one that he cannot accept and
does not want to talk about it)

there is always a hypocrisy for past greatness
building its empires in the bones of those who are guilty
of reckless imprudence
of those who think that money is the living god
that man is nothing but a creature
of debits and credits

i bid him goodbye
and wish him luck and as usual the cliche of having to tell him
'God bless you'

again serves as
another empty rhetoric. Man says sometimes what he does not
really mean
and that makes no difference with man's
concubines too.