Loquacious Poem by RIC BASTASA

this afternoon, i talk a lot, and the more i talk,
the more words flowed from my mouth, the more i become less
of myself,

that is the irony of talking, the more i empty myself of this burden
using words, the lighter i become, the more useless i become of myself,
words and more words,
the more i have of them, the more meaningless my thoughts have become

and they who are listening have become more silent than ever,
i know, their minds are somewhere else, and i know that they know
that there is this spirit in front of them so restless,
wriggling like a worm, jumping like a horse, flapping like a bird

wanting to get rid of something: the fruit wanting to be free from the worm,
the horse from a gadfly, and the bird from the pricking flea....

what else can they say? they must have been saying.
we perfectly understand, we have been there, we were once a fruit
with a worm in our pulp, a horse with a gadfly in our tail,
a bird unable to get rid of the flea....

we were rotten once, we jumped the more, and now we are flying away.
what a life we have, we are never free, and we are never for even once
comfortable with what we are and what we have....

what we do not have of course, is what bothers us the most.
be it a horse, a bird, or a fruit, a flea, a worm, a gadfly of old
like what Socrates once mentioned before he took the fatal poison.

well he died, and here we are always trying to remember.