I Was Born To Listen To You & You Poem by RIC BASTASA

and then recently i learned
something
like a mission for my life: to listen

to you
& you, whose mouths are drying in your own
kind of depression
your hair falling like some dry leaves of
a very hot summer and you
appear like
a bald mountain to me
as i behave
cool as a river as i flow steadily
following the path
to the blue sea

you ask for my ears and i add my eyes
and even
my eyelids that shut to put more color to your imaginations
some flowers wilting in your mind
some snakes spitting venom in your head
all these
that sometimes too threaten me
that i touch my skin
and bones
if i am still myself: born to listen to all your woes
and sadness

you & you alone
how many are you really
so i may know
also how many selves do i have to invent to solve
the riddles of your mind?

now i know my mission
to resolve and draw the many faces of you
to remake
a stuff of a hollow being
fill you with some
essences
so you may finally come to your senses

now a shrink
tomorrow your papa or your mama
or your brother

sometimes I feel like I am God
to watch you
to see to it that unlike your ancestors
and my ancestors
we may not fall again on the same
abyss

of not really knowing ourselves
of having many names
and finally losing what we really are
in the sea

of missing identities. Now, i pray that i may have more ears
and eyes
to listen to see and more hands to hold

more of you and you and you and you
split and shattered