The Summary Execution Poem by RIC BASTASA

we are talking about changes
of this country of this self of this and that
and i like it

changes for the better, selves shedding off old skins,
countries washed away, cleansers and cleansed,
wave upon wave of something new and exhilarating
those who are taken away we forget easily
we the survivors keep on talking
there is sense to being here, there is reason why we are still alive
there are blessing in disguises

then we begin counting off from one to ten
to twenty to a hundred, we are seeing a network
of cobwebs of people trapped in the matrix
of fireflies extinct, and flies still wrapped in
the sleep of paralysis, as soon we shall decide
whether it will be life or death

do we know too that someone bigger than us is watching and
deep in his thinking about what to do with us finally?
He says, he can decide, and he can make or unmake us, too?

it is a case again of man dreaming to be a butterfly and
butterfly dreaming to be man..., and i get confused, and they say
it is a normal happening, it is in fact, a fact.

as the words continue parading during the utterances i remember
a forest, and i was inside it, and there were killer chimps and
chimpanzees killing each other, eating each other's flesh and saving some of the bones in their safe houses and hideouts,

there is a chill in my spine, there is winter in my heart
howls of jackals reverberate in my ear, and i am afraid of my
own lies, and multiple identities,
A-bomb of the class, Bombastic in my youth, Coward in my middle
years, and Drunkard in between, and finally Deaf, and
turning Eloquent in my near end years,

I am change. I travel everyday. I grow stories in my fingertips.
Budding into old age. Forgetting and De-frogging. Kermit, Super Steel.
Soap Opera idol.

Lying low later, and in the heart of the matter, Still judging other people.Fragile as a worm, Milk spilled over a Heart Breaking.