Until We Can Feel..........................<<<<<<<<< Poem by RIC BASTASA

and so i just learned that you learned the trick
albeit after so many years of crying and kicking and
running on the road till you reach a dead-end, ah, yes,
it arrived when you have nowhere to go.
hope came when everything was hopeless.

and so you are a magician now. a dream come true.
but i agree you are much better, more potent than poison.

you take black rabbits from your splitting hair.
and rabbits turn to money.

people clap their hands and the earthquake came.
there was silence but brief. Earthquake is gone.
the shaking did not live that long enough to be
minded by the great minds.

your eye sockets turn into irises.
believe me i could not even believe it
how did you do it?

and your feet have become gondolas in venice.
and you got all the money. Boatloads of them.

the audience clap some more. Fame reverberating
on the walls. The grandfather's clock almost broke
its hands.

and time is forgotten. The hours lose themselves in
awe and ecstasy. There are no children on the halls

only beguiled women with their lonely husbands.
only miserly elderly statesmen with their secrets.

i want to end this magical show. And here i can outwit you.
I end it myself. I end myself. And so everything is gone.

Did they not tell you that this is not your home?
That everything here is not real. That what is real is out there

always waiting for us to change, to shed off our clothes, our skins
to throw away all our bones?

what is real is not mystical. No swindling for now. No deception.
Now is just the two of us out of the hall. The audience all dead.

Hand scatter on the road blown by the wind like litters of
tetrapacks, and hamburger wrappers, and banana peelings.

this is the place and it is not here yet. Meanwhile, our cars broke
their engines. We walk we keep on walking until we can feel.