Stopping Poem by RIC BASTASA

This morning i did not attend mass

i woke up earlier than yesterday and
i was carried away by thoughts that keep coming like profuse light

outside, and into the window of my soul
i did not think at all

it is like the world is heavy with ice in the sky and then it melted
abruptly causing flood to my
brain,

i felt a cascade of what i cannot explain
i did not even bother what all these mean

when you are carried away logic dies
when you are carried by a flood and you think you will drown
when you see a drift wood ahead of you and you are about to be hit by its weight
you do not scream

what i remember was that feeling of being a stranger
to the world

it is a river taking every piece of us to nowhere
and we are travelers with empty pockets and trembling hands
without right to ask where shall we be taken

it is just this drift. so poetic and formless
taking its shape to what we want to utter but still can't

so i keep on writing, my hands blind on the keys
but punching the letters
making the words, forming phrases

which i do not understand too well,
the same way that you feel when you like me arrive
at the last
word

a word that means nothing but
stopping