.....Not Really Enduring..... Poem by RIC BASTASA

it becomes a child
playful, and you love
it since it has too
become you, ball and
seesaw, playing top, and
a doll's fake eyelashes

you take a gun, remembering
childhood, you pull the trigger
to erase what was once
so beautiful and nostalgic,

all mothers are memories,
all memories turn into mothers'
skirts and tender hands


the sight of tendrils of red
flowers on the wall and a blue
butterfly where the air is
transparent like a cobweb,

the little boy climbs a tree
the branch falls creating laughter
to the grass

a horse comes running creating
an eddy of dusts, the tall man
watches all these like a mirage


grandfather had been a street
full of landmarks, i remember
he married a girl without a mind.

i hear a door forcibly opened.
blood oozed from a broken head,
all over the floor red liquid,
sticky to the memory of the boy.

no one remains disturbed forever,
i tell you, here i am writing
whatever flows like ants carrying
a morsel of bread to their dead queen.


i guess something must also be beautiful
or made beautiful, a mess arranged and
rearranged to create beauty from the rags
and tumble.

colors need not be black and white, i tell
you, Gary made the color gay and bright. i
am not saying that he lived happily ever
after for he did not even reach twenty when
he met his eternity, feigned as a poseur-buyer
drugging him to his extinction.

life begins now, i tell you, sitting on a place
mat like a cup of tea, brewing to the ceiling
a hazy smoke of images, awesome, original, pure
and well, i tell you, not really enduring.