Over The Waves

Sun, please watch me

tear the unruffled lake
into waves of white
this morning 
after many nights

denied me some sleep

For you cannot bring me
the sea I've wished to live by,
a yearning to embrace the

island and anchor
myself against this longing 

From this bed

of confinement,

this lingering question,

who is going to bring me home?

Icicle

The shadow of a tree 
bears endless phrases

Her empty womb has been poisoned,
her breast pointing south
is weakening like an autumn leaf

The braided hair begs
to be untangled like a
long handwriting that cannot be
deciphered

Fat-filled belly in procrastination,
stubborn as the prairie's frost.

When the springtime ice thaws,
an icicle pierces her brain.

Janet Napoles, A pathetic rhyming

She ain't a protagonist of a popular teleserye
but a real con artist now engulfed in agony
like a cat from a barrel pussyfooting
ever ready for her daughter's spree shopping

Must have thought  of flying to the earth's periphery
to avoid answering the pork barrel's mystery
although she looks unfazed by media's questioning
but reasons eluded, with words she is grappling

I wonder if she is nagged with self-reproach
in a society where corruption is not just a thought
the taxpayer's money from sweat and blood
ended up in a barrel of pigs in mud

Pinoys never trust your politician as your coach
their decayed morality is feasted by a cockroach
abolish the pork barrel if not the senate's crud
or rue the loss of  liberty we used to trudge

Human sa Sa-ad

Di na ko mosunod nimo,
mao nga nalambid ko 
sa sa-ad nga akong gibugto.

Kadtong gugma nga akong
giingon nga way katapusan
sama lang kadto sa akong
giingon nga anino'ng
gipatunga-an sa duha ka poste
sa suga, napikas.

Kaniadto, may kabangis ang
imong pagwiris-wiris sa mga letra,
sa kaulaw sa pagbudhi,
nangamas og tingog alang
sa akong pagmata nga nag-inusara
nga nagtawag kanimo
apan wala ka mo-abot.

kalipay 

bisan sa kadulom
sa lawak-higdaanan
nangita gayud lutsanan ang adlaw 
lahos sa nagkang-ang
tabil sa bintana

gitanyag ang kahayag
sa piniling niyang kangitngit.
Pagka wala bay puangod
sa modumili sa lamdag

bisan sa pa kasakit
anaa gihapon ang kalipay
ang pagtagad sa tanyag,
ang pagpasalamat
sa gugma nga walay sukod

Tick tock goes the clock

The mindful hands of minutes
and seconds
of an hour
scampered when a day
was folded
in fragments to fit
a dream

yesterday is a chunk of
missing time, disconnected

Rejected To Better

She thought she had surpassed fair to better,
fixed a new course to recover.
After the initial chapter that had gone downhill,
a black-colored glasses dimmed an odd level.
What seemed to be real was a mockery,
years of burden, a dark ghost entirely.
An ego fettered when no one has put her on a leash
is now a complacent terrain across the seas.

A Pacifier

The painting looks
idyllic when the night
starts to cradle
the edge of darkness,
even the vault of heaven
is choked up with the glut.

Inside a mouth,
a honey-fertilized tongue
is a comforter
of nothingness.

Her Poetry

Her poems are lies.
She is not a phrenic elderly woman,
she can kick the muse's tush
including yours without you
grasping it.
It can be cloaked with Gordian knot
and you will end up slicing it into half.

Babysit the wind-sound,
watch your steps on the sidewalk,
for a lone ant is zigzagging
on sizzling mid-day.

Although the punch line can split
in thin air but it is hammered
with reality.

Love Unrequited

A love has no ending
for it hasn't come into being.
The heart-rendering despair,
assumed another bearer.
Crushed down to a place secluded,
buckled and wounded.
Love unreturned is a windstorm,
invisibly in silent autumn.
A lonesome heart's infinite bane
for losing someone you really have never gained.

Echo and Narcissus

"Can I enter in your body?"
She is relentless, 
An Echo in his soul, an abysmal voice
incarnates love that he could fancy.
"A clear day" , Echo said.
Yearning for love, he conceded.
He traces the contours
of his face from the pool.
But she knew the water is not blue,
the cloud in the pond
is a lie.
When the truth sunk in,
she is not what he wanted,
"She is ugly! I would rather die than love her!"
His steady gaze into the pond
continued on until he died,
for that beauty that he never was.

Ric S. Bastasa

there are those who choose to stay
and just be home

if there is a home, if there is someone
that is a wise choice, safe,

in the walls of the comfort zone
within the parameters of stillness

and quite reading of a beautiful life
upon a bench, with a cat on the side and

a dog near the door, sometimes you look
outside the window, mistaking a car stopping

as someone who may soon live with you,
but again, it is your neighbor's guest,

at any rate, you go back to the comfort of
a book, chapter eight now, lovers reunited

refurnishing a house, painting the wooden fences
brick red, and pruning the bushes, and

plating seeds of tomatoes, and then
when the sun is at its hottest, you sit

under the shade of a tree, gazing at the world,
still so gentle, and beautiful in its freshness

a life you choose, a home, a house, a chair,
and the same coolness of the shade for all these years.

Ric S. Bastasa

the beginning is always mine
always always mine
and it gets too tiring at times
since the hard part,if you only know,
is the beginning

when i lift my hands and carry
my body to yours,
the fear that something's wrong
will always be there

you are there like the bed lazy
with its sheets
and indifferent with my longings
i am in a quandary as to what to say
about what i feel

i like that somehow beginnings must
be borne by you
but beginnings have always been mine
always mine

tonight it will be different
i will stay late in my longings and
be numb with my feelings
and then i will practice how is it to say

goodbye.

or if i cannot master this art of grace
and gentleness
i still have one option left, i will take

silence.

by Ric S. Bastasa

untitled

the man that you once
loved
had the sweetest winks
you can still giggle
when you were close together
cheek to cheek
at the palace of the sky

friend, you did not make it
at the end
split like two pieces of wood
cut like head and tail of a red dragonfly
snapped like thread stretched beyond
its limits

exploded like short-circuited bulb
you had mourning for
forty days and forty nights
like a widow

but then
all people recover
back to your feet
your hands stretch to the sky
reaching God
and feeling his
hands

then one day
as face book would have it
you see his picture
his back arched like a
bow
without an arrow
his eyes like caves
his skin wrinkling like lettuce
on salt water

and you say, omg! he has become too
old for his age
he looks sick and needing help
is he dying?

flashbacks, and flashbacks
you were at the peak, or the ridge
he wants to take the bus
and you want to go to crater of
Taal
taking a boat by the lake
and hiking
towards its peak
to see the
world

love ended.

Lines

This is not a myth from afar,
if you come to think of it,
whatever the significance
or insignificance of life is,
no matter how good looking,
how rich and powerful you are,
from a distance, we are all reduced
to a line that separates the earth
and sky called horizon.